Grendel's Mother Is So Cheap....

Grendel's mother is so cheap, I bought the action figure just so I could break it and use it for SPARE PARTS.

Huh. I don't get it.

Remember the CG Beowulf movie that came out a few years ago? Me, neither. Apparently, someone at McFarlane Toys thought it was going to be big, though, so they picked up the license and made a ton of action figures, including the one above.

I'm guessing that didn't work out so well for them.

It worked out pretty well for me, though: I grabbed two of those for around $2 each about a year after the movie came out. Then I pulled the figures apart (which is why the bottom half isn't actually connected in the above photo, in case you were wondering).

I got a lot of mileage out of these broken toys: the snake tails double beautifully as tentacles. I used them as miniatures in a D&D game once, and they went over well. Actually, I used the top halves as "statues" in another game once. And when I say "statues," I actually mean statues: despite the checkered floor in front of them, they were inanimate and entirely harmless. I thought the PC's were going to wet themselves.

Ha! Good times.

I also used the "tentacles" in a bunch of photos, including this rather amateurish photoshop job at my fiction site.

About a week ago, my wife and I rather literally divided one of these up, which is why I'm mentioning it here. I took the head; she took the arms. More about those projects soon....