Thursday, June 9, 2011

The Ads of Dragon: Advanced D&D Action Scenes

Issue #68 (December 1982) was the first issue of Dragon I received as part of a subscription rather than by buying it individually from a book or hobby store. Due to an error on the part of TSR, I received two copies of every issue from December 1982 to November 1983. Apparently someone in their periodicals department processed my subscription order twice, one with a Baltimore, Maryland address and another with a Baltimore, Mississippi address, both having the same addressee, house number, and zip code. Needless to say, I didn't complain.

Anyway, issue #68 contained this advertisement:
This was one of a series of D&D model kits put out by MPC. Basically, they took molds from Grenadier and used them to create plastic miniatures, along with some cheap dungeon terrain to create fantasy dioramas. I never owned any of these myself, but had a couple of friends who did. We liked them primarily because they were an inexpensive way to acquire a large number of miniatures, especially of monsters. The quality wasn't the highest, to be sure, but we weren't exactly connoisseurs back then, so we had fun with them, though, in retrospect, I have to admit that it's a pretty peculiar product (though not the most unusual).

11 comments:

  1. I always wanted one of these. Never got one though :(

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  2. The idea of cheap/replaceable miniatures is the only option to me as a GM nowadays. Thank goodness for papercraft!

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  3. These were definitely fun (though low-quality), and were available from the JC Penny and Sears catalogs too.

    Allan.

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  4. i love that advert. also i too got a double-subscription bonus for awhile, although it was later in the 80s (89-ish).

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  5. My friend had one of these!! He got it the same x-mas year I got the Well of the Souls Kenner Indiana Jones playset.

    The little plastic miniatures were awful quality wise, but back then we had nothing to compare them too.

    Also there was a fully painted one of these and the dungeon cave, at a con I went to a bit back. They still looked silly really well done.

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  6. I had that bottom set, before I ever started with D&D! Its what reaalllly made me want to play!

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  7. I remember having the bottom set. Hell, I still have one or two of the dwarves from that set in my minis collection...

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  8. For some reason I remember having a plastic carrion crawler that I thought came from the bottom set...yet I dont see it in the pic.

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  9. I had one of these! I didn't even play D&D at the time. I'm not sure I really know what D&D was. Alas, I was an only child and had no older brothers to torment while they tried to play with their friends. I didn't actually get to play until the early '90s. *sniff*

    But I still had one of these sets, damn it! :D

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  10. Wow. I totally forgot about these. I had one of the Orc War ones on top. I don't believe I ever painted it though.

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