Recently, I was browsing eBay when I came across a set of dragon mini figures I had never seen before. Even though I didn't know what they were, these cheap-looking monochromatic beasts called to me, and I had to snag 'em!
There are five different dragons in the set, with a nice variety of types and sizes. For example, some of them look more kaiju-like while others have a more medieval thing going on. They are made of a hard, light plastic and come in four colors—red, green, yellow and blue.
The seller had them listed as UK Nabisco cereal premiums from the 1960s, but some discussion I had about them on Instagram lead me to believe they might actually be more recent bootlegs. This is because the largest one in the set (shown in green here) seems to be a knock-off of a dragon included in a 1990s Mighty Max set, and the red guy on the right seems to be a knock-off of Raedon from Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad (thanks to countzackula51 for the info). Here are photos of those figures so you can see the similarities:
Whatever their origins, I'm happy I bought a set of these guys. They're pretty charming in that weirdo cheap toy way. Let's take a closer look at each of them:
This three-headed basilisk-type thing is my favorite. When it comes to dragons and monsters, the more heads, the better. Plus, the sculpt is just really awesome. These figures all appear to have come in more than one color (for example, you could get this sculpt in red, green, etc), but I love the way this one looks in yellow so I'm happy with what I got!
Here's the Raedon imposter. I like the cragginess of the sculpt.
This is the one that looks nearly identical to the Mighty Max dragon sculpt I mentioned above. I imagine this guy to be the boss of the group because he's so much larger and meaner looking than the rest. This is probably my second favorite of the set, behind three-headed basilisk.
Finally, we have the smallest figure of the set. It sort of looks like it could be Raedon's baby. You've got to love this little bugger.
What do you think of these things? Do you recognize any of the other dragons as being knock-offs from anything else? If anyone has any additional information about these figures, please let me know!