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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Misanthrope Prime" data-source="post: 9755277" data-attributes="member: 6776166">I'm not going to talk about game design. I'm going to talk about culture.Children's media started taking off heavily in the 1980s with many toylines getting animated tie in TV shows and movies. The linkage of the animated medium and the toy became solidified in the early part of the decade, which coincided with d&d's meteoric rise as a children's IP rather than a game played by adult wargaming nerds who read adult fiction like Conan the Barbarian and Lovecraft.In lots of animated shows and movies around this time, you'd see a kind of "ugly cute comic relief monster sidekick". Think Snarf from Thundercats (... Or Snarf from Elmore), Orko from He-Man or Slimer from Ghostbusters. I think it was a marketing attempt to appeal to both boys and girls: a gross monster but make it kinda cute and childlike for the little sister to latch on to. Either way, these characters has naughty word MERCH out the wazoo left right and center.So we learn that good, cute monsters mean beaucoup bucks. And hey, when do we see "good" monsters like flumphs start proliferating in the DMG? After d&d gets its toy contract with LJN.Thank you for coming to my ted talk.</blockquote>