The Carrion Crawler is one of the iconic D&D monsters, but there are almost no miniatures that accurately capture the segmented, worm-like appearance of the creature illustrated by David Sutherland in the AD&D Monster Manual.
The two miniatures that I have are both pretty difficult to find. On the left side is the Archive Miniatures Rotting Crawler (Dungeon Nasties 761). On the right is the MPC Carrion Crawler from one of the AD&D Action Scenes kits.
The MPC crawler is much harder to find, particularly with all the legs and tentacles intact (I have two MPC carrion crawlers - the one in the photo below, with a couple of broken off legs, and another one with all the legs intact, but most of the tentacles broken off).
The Archive crawler looks a bit like the OD&D carrion crawler, while the MPC crawler is much closer in appearance to the AD&D version.
Both miniatures only have a single row of nodules down the back. The LJN Carrion Crawler also shares this feature, so somewhere along the line, this seems to have become official. The illustration in the AD&D Monster Manual, however, shows that the monster has two rows of nodules down its back, although this is more apparent on the back cover of the book.
There is also a Citadel Carrion Crawler that is pretty close in appearance to the Monster Manual illustration. It has two rows of nodules down its back, but the legs are just too long and thick to look right. I'm also not sure how big it is, and am inclined to believe that it is probably too big for use with 1/72 figures.
Unfortunately, only the Archive crawler is suitable for gaming, as the MPC model is just too fragile for the table top. I just may have to try my hand at sculpting something up on my own.
