Saturday, May 3, 2014

The one that I chose was known in the Greyhawk campaign as the bullet...

Another iconic creature from D&D that began life as a toy monster from Hong Kong is the bulette. The toy is a quadruped version of the Ultraman kaiju Telesdon (テレスドン), also known as the Underground Monster (地底怪獣; Chitei Kaiju).

Telesdon was a subterranean creature, and had the ability to burrow underground. Its segmented tail and limbs were reminiscent of an earthworm.

In what seems to be an odd coincidence, Tim Kask who gave the D&D monster its stats, made the bulette a tunneling creature that would burst out of the ground to attack its prey.

Telesdon also had the ability to breathe fire, which the bulette does not have (but it would be cool if the bulette did have this ability).

Below is a comparison of the original plastic toy, and the Grenadier Juggernaut (Monster Manuscript Vol.V 1505, MM39).

Both figures look undersized compared to the pictures from the Monster Manual, and would probably be more suited for 15mm fantasy. The Juggernaut is sculpted with realism in mind, but I prefer the original design. Archive made a Sharkadillo that is the spitting image of the toy, but it is probably even harder to find than that plastic toy nowadays. In any event, I don't think the Sharkadillo miniature is any bigger, so the point is moot.

I don't know the context of this image from Ultra Zone, but I find it particularly funny because the bulette is also known as a "landshark", and Kask had the SNL skit firmly in mind when he gave the bulette its nickname.