The footage of giant iguanas from this film was recycled in dozens of low budget dinosaur movies in the following decades.
The Harryhausen remake of the movie employed a giant blue iguana as an homage to the original film.
Later, in the 1981 comedy Caveman, technology had advanced to a point where even the giant lizard was stop motion animated.
The giant lizard crossed over to D&D as mounts and beasts of burden for lizardmen and drow.
One of my grail miniatures has always been the Dragontooth miniatures Champion on Giant Lizard (SMC1) upon which the Sutherland illustration in the Holmes Blue Book was based.
I was finally able to obtain one of these miniatures, and will eventually paint it up in the color scheme of the original Sutherland miniatures. Next to it is a smaller Archive Giant Lizard (Dungeon Nasties 774).
Both of them seem to be modeled after iguanas of some type and are pretty difficult to find.
More commonly available miniatures include the Pathfinder Battles Hodag (Legends of Golarion #33) and the D&D Icons of the Realms Guard Drake (Tyranny of Dragons #22).
The Hodag has been linked to the Paul Bunyan legends by some sources, but no specific legend is ever mentioned. The closest explanation I could find seems to suggest that the Hodag is somehow related to an ox owned by Bunyan (presumably not his Blue Ox?).
The Guard Drake is still easy to find, but kind of expensive nowadays. I bought my miniatures when they were first released, at about a quarter of the price they sell for currently.
The final picture includes the Pathfinder Battles Monitor Lizard (Kingmaker #13). Based on how it's painted, this miniature seems to represent a Greater Monitor Lizard. While for something closer to real-life monitor lizards, Mick Yarrow sells a prehistoric Megalanio [sic] (Inuit 86) stated to be for 15mm figures, but which I think falls within the size range of Megalania at 1/72 scale.
I still think that the Dragontooth miniature is the ideal giant lizard. I wish that there were some similarly sized plastic toy marine iguanas that I could use to assemble a squadron of lizard cavalry.
5 comments:
What a nice collection of lizards... and I always read your posts as I would read an Encyclopedia :)
Hi Phil,
Glad you enjoyed the post. I always try to give some context and history in my posts. I think that I meet too many people who act as if there was no pop culture prior to 1990, so I'm doing my best to try and set the record straight.
Might be some ideas here EY
https://sts-forum.forumieren.de/t19584-suy-march-2018-lizards
You might have to sign-up, but it's pretty straightforward, also, the pages are taking a long time to load, which I think is because a lot of the guys and girls over there are using high-res semi- or actual professional stuff? But it thinks about it for a minute or two, then loads all the images in a rush!
H
Hi Hugh,
I'll take a look at that forum. I used to look at a lot of different toy animal forums, but most of them require sign up now, which makes it kind of a hassle...
What annoys me is that you have to sign-up every 1st of the Month, even if you've ticked 'always remember me', but LRG is worst, it makes you log in if you've been away for more that about 72 hours! Hey-ho!
H
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