Thursday, December 22, 2022

Have you seen this monster?


What has 4 arms, 3 eyes 3 bat-like ears, and a purple tongue?
I don't know. What?
I don't know either, but it's eating your henchman!

This is an old (pre-1980, I think) figure from Archive minis. I've seen it listed as part of their Runequest line and separately as just another fantasy monster. It has multiple names attested to in the record: the Phoboflores, the Gootchy Gobbler, the Gootchy Goupe, and the Goochy Goop. I love, love, love the silly muppet quality it possesses.

What I have never seen is any RPG stats for this beast. Is it in a Runequest product somewhere? I am not an expert on RQ by any means. When I first discovered this thing many years ago I made up stats and replaced one of the entries on my Arduin-style wandering monster charts for levels 1-3. (Which reminds me, I need to finish up the other levels...)

Anyway, sans official stats it would still make a pretty darn good "What the hell is that?" figure, a concept I described in this old post about the Fantasy Monsters set from Pinnacle Products.

12 comments:

  1. "WTH" custom critters are something my players have come to expect from me over the years, and they only became more common when those cheap, easy to work with Reaper Bones figs started coming out. Some eye candy from my blog:

    https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2018/01/dreadful-things-custom-monster.html

    https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2018/07/dreadful-things-tricephalic-helltoad.html

    https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2018/09/dreadful-things-more-custom-monster.html

    https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2022/08/fantasy-conversions-eyes-of-gulvoth.html

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  2. I have a little box of "Dreamblade" miniatures assortment that I use for EPT and Arduin games as well as to throw in something out of the ordinary for D&D. Dreamblade was a collectable miniatures game produced by WotC for about a year in 2006-07 that has some trippy minis. I chisel the square stat block pieces of and add a little piece of adhesive green felt to the bottom of the base and the work really cool.

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    Replies
    1. Dreamblade has a lot of great monster designs! I love the pumpkin head figure in the line.

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  3. Couldn't find it in any Runequest book. What IS this thing?..

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  4. It looks a bit like the Quarang Slasher from the second All The Worlds Monsters (my favorite bestiary series and a Chaosium publication) with maybe a few things lost in translation. It's a plum colored, giant "reptile-mammal" with six legs, a shark like mouth that opens vertically, and a 14' long tongue (that possesses fire giant strength).

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  5. Anonymous9:36 PM

    I have this figure, as yet unpainted and unstatted. Someone needs to make up stats for it.

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    Replies
    1. Here are the quick stats I made years ago:
      Goochygoops Align: N, No. Appearing d4, AC 7(12), HD 3, 5 attacks d6 each, Move 90', Morale 8, takes double damage from fire

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  6. Reminds me of the weird Israeli Crazy Bone toys.
    I love really wacky designs.

    I looked for that image with Yandex and Tineye and Google Reverse image search - and found some other pictures of that miniature in unpainted lead form
    No stats, but if I find a minute I'll look more - I love playing scavenger hunt on the internet.

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    Replies
    1. Huh, that's good to know.
      Guess I'll stop using it.

      I only used it for reverse image searching - it pulls different results than Google and Tineye - so sometimes if I cannot find something , I'll try all three and one will work.

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  7. Anonymous11:09 PM

    It’s a Gobbler, a creation of gloranthan dwarves, whose job is to eat special metals and other materials the dwarves would prefer that humans, trolls, and others not get their grubby hands on.

    Basically the dwarves take it near where they suspect other races have been doing technological espionage, feed some Gobblers a sample of X material, and then those Gobblers go crazy for X, can sense it from far away, can digest it, will fight past anything just to reach it, and will eat it in preference to continuing to fight

    I don’t recall which book they are in. I don’t remember their RuneQuest stats either, but I don’t there was anything unusual about their combat abilities. Doubt they had magic, unlike nearly everything else in Glorantha, since they are artificial.

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