Favourite Franchises - Monster In My Pocket

What's the Franchise you've chosen?
Monster In My Pocket. 

How did you get into it?
When I was but a small nipper, I had a love of things like Bigfoot, and was given a book for Christmas that held stories such as Spring Heeled Jack,  Tengu and The Loch Ness Monster. That book, unfortunately, has been lost to time. So, with this in mind, the sight of small rubbery minifigs based on such creatures was a instant want-need-must-have.  Recently (with thanks to Colin Duff), I have rediscovered my love of these guys, and have managed to rebuild a fairly large collection again for quite cheap. (Only four away from a complete series 1...Go me!)

What's your favorite media / toy / item from it?
There are many.  My favorites were easily the Hobgoblin, Gremlin, Wendigo, and Tengu at the top of the list. It's quite hard to explain how much I love that Tengu.  There's a tale involving that guy that involves me an my brother having a large falling out, but I'll save that.

How would you summerize the franchise?
Small monsters. That fit in your pocket. In beautiful 90's neon.
MIMP (as the cool kids call it) began in 1990, and ran through many changes over the years to come, ranging into 2-colour monsters, spiders, dinosaurs, wrestlers and aliens, (These later lines don't do as much for me as the original 2 series though). These changes were implemented after complaints of some of the subjct matter. (Kālī, Ganesha, Hanuman, and Yama, were all depicted as "monsters").
It is worth noting that MIMP's series are counted very differently betwen the US and the UK.


What's the wierdest part?
Tengu in the 1992 annual.  The annual (written by Dwayne McDuffie and illustrated by Gil Kane) itself is out and out strange, but Tengu thinking people say "Thank you" when they are, in fact saying his name...  Leads to very odd humour.

Adam "Gruffy" Nicol is the High Lord Protector of the Old Oilhouse, and has screamed at things not working right with it since the day it was born. His knowledge and love of 90's tat and pop culture borders on the worryingly psychotic....