Saturday, September 10, 2011

mysterious solved

Thanks to the Lost Minis Wiki I have solved a personal mystery that has baffled me for more than 25 years.  Circa 1983 was a different time for D&D.  On one hand, the Game we love was under attack for being Satanic.  On the other hand, you could find D&D stuff for sale in the Sears Christmas catalog.  One year some boxes of miniatures were among the wares stocked by Sears.  I fell in absolute love with this one figure in a tiny photo, a painted pic of a dude riding a giant spider and carrying a shield with a spider web device.  That dude was super bad.  How tough to you have to be to tame a friggin' giant spider and ride it around like a pony???

I've been looking for that spider riding badass one and off ever since.  Now I know why I've never found him.  Dude wasn't riding a spider, he was the spider!


I don't know why it never occurred to me that this elusive figure was a drider.  Maybe I just wanted it to be a cool dude riding a spider a little too badly.  Or maybe I'm just a dope.  Either way that shield is still awesome times five.

(Figure from the original Grenadier AD&D line.)
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Posted by Jeff Rients at 5:30 AM
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9 comments:

  1. Roger G-S7:13 AM

    Should be easy to kitbash a pair of legs onto him ... :)

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  2. Anonymous9:06 AM

    +1

    exactly what I thought... and small eyes and fangs for the spider.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Greyhawk Grognard10:33 AM

    Yeah that was a Grenadier figure. In the right hand, it also had a hand crossbow; you can see in the photo where the piece with the hand was supposed to be attached to the torso piece of the figure. I had a couple of these back in the day.

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  4. Anonymous10:52 AM

    Reminds me of Skulk from the Sectaurs toy line, Jeff.

    http://tinyurl.com/429pbvp

    ReplyDelete
  5. BigFella11:01 AM

    @ rorschachhamster

    Or for extra awesome, some other kind of head, like a wolf or a lion or something.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Legion12:29 PM

    I had these two in the '80s:

    http://www.dndlead.com/Grenadier/ADandD/106.jpg

    They looked great in the free-for-all Knights & Magick games we played across my basement floor.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Boric Glanduum10:20 PM

    FWIW: I still HAVE two of these. They were my favorites back in the day, and still some of my "prides and joys" -- even though they were painted with Testor's Enamels, and the spider bodies are an atrocious metallic gold color.

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  8. arcadayn11:04 PM

    This one came in the AD&D Action Art Monster Selection box. It was available in the '81 JC Penney's Xmas catalog.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Mark7:26 AM

    The hairy legs must have thrown you. Driders are usually depicted as being part black widow or something, not part tarantula.

    ReplyDelete

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