Bulette (‘Patchisaurs’)

Most monster toys are, naturally, inspired by or represent creatures from established fiction or folklore. But every now and again that relationship gets turned on its head. Take the bulette, for example, one of the rare cases where a random toy has inspired a fictional creature.

The birth of ‘Patchisaurs’

If you grew up in the 1970s and 80s you almost certainly encountered the ubiquitous range of simple plastic monster toys now known informally as patchisaurs. Patchisaurs are an eclectic mix of weird and wonderful sculpts. I remember playing with mine as a child in the 80s: burying them in the sand, making them fight each other.

Most patchisaur designs were just made up wholesale, or sometimes based extremely loosely on dinosaurs or Japanese monsters. This particular example appears to have been mildly inspired by a monster from Japanese television called Gabora, but despite some superficial similarities, the toy is clearly unique. So, when it was first produced it had no name and represented no known established monster.

Beware the burrowing bulette

The bulette was invented in 1976 by Tim Kask for Dungeons & Dragons, who based the ‘new’ monster on this squat ‘Chinasaur’ toy. It was one of several random patchisaur sculpts that have inspired D&D creatures, and we’ll explore more of them on the Monster Toy Blog in the future. The name ‘bulette’ was inspired by the toy’s bullet-like shape, and the ecology, behaviour and biology of the bulette is now well established in D&D lore. It’s a slow-witted but dangerous burrowing creature that feeds on humans, horses, and halflings. But, remember, the toy came first!

The bargain bin bulette

The small model is made of hard brown plastic with a crude spray of colourful paint on top. In this example the paint is green, but there’s a lot of variation. They’ve tried to pick out the eyes in black paint but missed! Mine is marked “MADE IN CHINA” on the underside, but the patchisaur moulds have been reused many times over the years and you can expect to find examples of the bulette with different markings, or no markings at all. The seams are very obvious and large flakes of waste plastic are still attached, but this is par for the course for patchisaurs, which are infamously cheap and cheerful. Yet, extremely robust and fantastically playable.

Bulette anatomy

The bulette is a squat little creature, like a cross between a beetle and an armadillo. The long pointed snout could almost be described as a beak, and there are sockets for teeth in the lower jaw, but no teeth. I suppose young bulettes had teeth but they fell out in old age! The bulette toy has four stubby legs each with rolls of fat(?), rather like the Michelin Man! It has three toes on each foot, a dumpy short tail, and is covered in armour plates. A large hooked spine protrudes from its back, almost mirroring the anatomy of the head – sneaky! It’s such a weird creature, which helps explain how it eventually became established in pop culture.

The patchisaurs were cheap then and cheap now, so they’re easy to find if you want to own a little bit of monster toy history. We’ll certainly be talking about patchisaur toys again some time!