Toys2

Naga (1981)

This is a snake person from Dimensions for Children’s Dragonriders of the Styx toy line. If it looks familiar, that’s because the sculpt is pulled directly from David C. Sutherland III’s Monster Manual illustration for the naga.

DFC was, to my understanding, a Hong Kong toy manufacturer that specialized in cheap toys. I hesitate to call them knock-offs because, even though this is an obvious rip-off of a D&D monster, you have to admit it is a hell of a lot more true to the original illustration than many of the official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons toys from LJN. It also predates the LJN line by a year, first surfacing in 1981 (assuming DFC didn’t just backdate their date stamps).

As I mentioned a while back in my post for DFC’s orc figures, TSR sued the crap out of DFC and won. Instead of just forcing DFC to discontinue the toy, the company was obliged to change them so they could be differentiated from the original D&D art. As you can see from the photo, DFC did this by removing the face, turning a cool toy into a horrifically disturbing one.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *