The Dropbear: Real Or Fake?

Welcome to Myths From The Other Side. The segment where we examin the stories behind adifferent mythicals animal from across the globe. Today we are going down under to uncover the truth about the deadly dropbear. In Aussie folklore a dropbear is supposed to be a large, carnivorous almost vampric koala that "drops down" from the trees onto the heads of any victim that comes it's way. This is used as a tall tale that Australians used to scare, confuse or amuse tourists. We are quite facinated by this.

This is Killoala, one of the characters from our Creepy Critters range of Gremlins style plush animals. Killoala is a blue dropbear with a black stripes, a star on his forehead and a blood red marking on his stomach. In his "mutant" form he has fangs, devil horns, claws and black bat-like wings. Killoala has inspired by the Dropbear legend and the plush Werebears that the Hornby toy company made in the early 80's (the werebears were plush teddies that were reversible- you could turn their heads and paws inside out to "transform" them from cute to scary). The Creepy Critters range of plush toys were inspired by the 1980's horror comedy Gremlins.

This is Morlock the dropbear, one of the villains from our popular cartoon series Millitary Koalas. His voice is done by Tim Curry (who is known for his delightfully creepy, villainous but yet seductive voice). Morlock first appeared in the episode Rock N Load- which was a special musical episode done in the style of a rock opera. In it, Morlock (who was banished and sent to live down in the down Under Underworld by the Bunyip King) uses his special brand of dark magic to bring everyone's worst fears to life and turn the city into a city of nightmares. Morlock was "defeated" and was sent back to the down Underworld by the heroes. However he makes a return in Millitary Koalas: The Movie, and this time he's got something much bigger planned. Morlock's mustache and goatee is a nod to how some evil twins in tv and movies have a goatee like Spock's evil twin from that one episode of Star Trek and Buzz Lightyear's evil clone from an episode of Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command.

In April 5th, 1992 we produced a short horror flick called Killer Koalas From Another World. It was filmed in Australia and was inspired by the dropbear myths. We created animatronic dropbears especially for the movie. We entered the film in the local film festival, it won the following awards: Best Soundtrack, Best Score, Best FX, Best Short Film, and Best Horror Film. The animatronic dropbears used for the movie can be viewed in our museum of props from our films. The movie is very good and is also available on dvd- however it is quite hard to obtain.

The dropbear is indeed an interesting creature. The story behind it is also interesting. The dropbear:

If you wish to find out about more about the Dropbear- see this link:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/animals/comments/19/

Need info on the Werebear toys? Click this link:

http://www.redhotscott.co.uk/werebear/