Nostalgia Nuggets: Weird N' Wild Creatures

Today I want to reminisce on a trend that has probably died with Gen Z: mail subscriptions for kids. Maybe you had Zoobooks. Kids' National Geographic. Highlights. No matter what the specific magazine was, it all started with your parents getting mailed a free sample issue with a discount for a one-year subscription.

You took the bait, line and sinker. You begged your parents for that subscription. They eventually relented. And suddenly you became a miniature version of your dad. Except instead of reading the newspaper in the morning while taking a shit, you read about alligator facts while getting after-school diarrhea from dubious cafeteria food.

The most memorable mail-based subscription that I received has to have been Weird N' Wild Creatures. It was an educational card game based on creatures both living and extinct, real and fantastical, published from 2003 to 2010 by the Swedish company International Masters Publishers Inc. And today I want to yap about it.

The series grouped creatures into different archetypes: Monsters of the Past (dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals), Monsters of the Deep (marine life), Monsters of the Mind (mythological, literary, and cryptid figures), Tiny Terrors (insects and arachnids), Toxic Terrors (self-explanatory), Nightmares of Nature (the general animal category), and Strange Wonders (creatures that are more bizarre than scary). Between all these categories, the series ended up featuring 910 different fellas.

Each month's delivery featured trading cards and knowledge cards. I didn't know anyone else who received the cards nor did I really have any interest in playing the game, so I mostly ignored the trading cards. Also, they weren't printed on particularly strong cardstock. They feel pretty flimsy in comparison to, say, Pokemon or Magic cards. Furthermore, looking back, the game does not strike me as extensively play tested. I suspect the creature side of Weird N' Wild Creatures was conceived long before the game side.

Any new subscriber to Weird N' Wild Creatures always received a starter set as their first paid delivery. It included a plastic organizer for the fact cards as well as dividers for each archetype. Nothing says a nerdy quite like being able to quickly file through your fact cards and immediately locate the one for the Box Jellyfish.

I am really happy that this was included, because I am convinced that the organizer was the only thing keeping kid and teenager me from losing the cards over the years. Sadly though, the lid broke off mine long, long ago (actually, it might have even been delivered with a broken lid). My neurotic adult heart wishes I could have it once more.

Despite my grievances with the trading cards though, they're still neat. I currently just have them stuck in the deck boxes that came with them. I should buy a binder to display them instead.

What I really enjoyed were the knowledge cards. Each creature was featured on a double-sided card containing information on its habitat (or country of cultural significance for Monsters of the Mind), lifestyle, survival skills, and other tidbits. It was a perfectly portioned amount of trivia for a kid to take in. Frankly, they were like black tar heroin for a library kid.

Although, the nature of some of the trivia may have been a bit much for nine year-old me to handle. After reading about the Brown Recluse Spider, I became paranoid that I would find myself with an ever-growing, rotting hole in my neck. There were a good few months of my childhood that I spent checking the collar of any shirt before I put it on out of fear that a Brown Recluse had decided to take a nap in there.

I was also crazy about swimming when I was younger. I spent many of my summer days in the pool and some in local lakes. However, I recall there being one summer that I really, really, REALLY, did not want to go in the lakes.

This was, of course, after reading about swimmers trudging out of the water with leeches in town.

Surprisingly though, the tapeworm card did not freak me out. I think that's because the old Nickelodeon cartoon Mr. Meaty beat Weird N' Wild Creatures to the punch in the tapeworm department. Its crazy how you can ask each generation of people where they first heard of tapeworms and most of them will say something like National Geographic, a foodborne illness outbreak, or that one Discovery Health show Monsters Inside Me. But then the Zillenials will start going on about this really weird claymation with two guys breaking every single food safety protocol every invented.

And of course, I would be remiss not to mention the art. It was..... Memorable. I have read some online discussions saying that it was ugly. And I can certainly understand where these opinions come from. Some color choices are very loud and aggressively saturated. Some angles are excessively, foreshortened. Sometimes the anatomy just flat out appears a little off.

Despite the art's flaws, however, I love it. It is filled with personality and passion. Every tooth and claw and scale seem to be drawn with such awe for each creature. The warm sweater of this fervorous enthusiasm is too soothing for me to take great issue with a few itchy spots.

I'd also argue that the "ugliness" is to the benefit of some of the Monsters of the Mind. Take the Tokoloshe and Nuckelavee, for example. These are easily the two mythical creatures that frightened me the most as a kid. The Tokoloshe has no eyes and a massive hole in the top of its head. Its stiff, awkward pose only adds to the

creepiness. And the Nuckelavee is a skinless man-horse hybrid. The overly massive forehand makes his skull extra noticeable.

There are also many artworks that are indisputably cool as hell. The art for most Monsters of the Past is very solid. And the head in the Headless Horseman is quite charming. Whimsical even.

Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to track down the artists responsible for these works. They are not credited on the trading cards nor the knowledge cards. I've done a lot of digging through Weird N' Wild Creatures forums and have come to the following conclusions:

Peter David Scott and Luis V Rey seem to be responsible for many Monsters of the Past. Meanwhile, a lot of Monsters of the Mind were illustrated by Jerry Lofaro. I was also seeing a Gerrie McCall and Chris McNab credited for other Monsters of the Mind.

However, upon further investigation, these two seem to be writers rather than illustrators. I can't find portfolios or websites for either of them. As for the rest of the categories, I wasn't able to find the primary contributors. It's a shame, because I would love to be able to see the rest of these unidentified artists' works.

Overall, I look back on Weird N' Wild Creatures very fondly. I think that it (along with Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh) is responsible for my love of monsters, demons, and mythologies as an adult. It is a shame that the business shut down and these types of mail-based subscriptions are, for the most part, dead.

I mean sure, most kids now have unlimited Internet access and are tech savvy enough to look up whatever facts and photos about Hammerhead Sharks and Poison Dart Frogs that they please. But these subscriptions weren't just about the information, of course. They were also about the presentation. The flair.

For Weird N' Wild Creatures in particular, the font used for each creature's name really hammers in the feral energy. The yellow coloring combined with the black speckling invoke poison and corrosion. If Zoobooks was the animal equivalent of Mario, then Weird N' Wild Creatures was the edgy Sonic. And no matter where your life goes or how things change, there is always something so delicious about being a little punk.

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You can view the portfolios of the Weird N' Wild Creatures artists at the following links:

Peter David Scott: https://www.facebook.com/WildlifeIllustrator/

Luis V Rey: Luis V. Rey Blog | Paleoart and more by Luis V Rey .

Jerry LoFaro: Jerry LoFaro - Official Website