Monsters of D&D

 https://www.enworld.org/threads/monsters-in-the-miniatures-handbook.672774/

has a good writeup.

I like the part about dinosaurs being rare on tabletop b/c too strong for lowbies but no special abilities to deal with high level characters. 

Skeletal Equicephs, love the look. We have two of the rubbery ones, and they are a favorite at our house... so distinct and cool looking.  

"Other monsters were meant to give DMs the minis they needed, as well as game-friendly stats. For example, DMs need ghost minis, so we made the cursed spirit. The miniature was a generic spook, so it’s usable as a ghost, wraith, specter, or any sort of apparition. In a pinch, it could be a beggar. In the randomized retail box of miniatures, the cursed spirit was a common so that DMs could get plenty of them. The simple color scheme was easy to paint in the factory, and that means the minis were cheap to produce in quantity. In terms of stats, it was relatively weak, not a level-drainer like old-school incorporeal undead.

The displacer snake was another utility monster. What DM doesn’t want snake minis? This was a low-level common figure that was cheap to paint. It was also a chance for low-level characters to fight a displacing monster. Also, the snake’s displacement power made it play differently but didn’t make it look any different, so the mini worked for a mundane snake, too.

The protectar was a low-level outsider that looked basically like an angel, another popular type of figure. The catfolk miniature was designed to appeal to all the fans that like cat people. The bright naga had the simplest possible spellcasting ability, useful for the skirmish game and in D&D. Higher-level spellcasting nagas were a real challenge for the DM to run.

In addition to the displacer serpent, a couple other monsters were there for the notable effects that they brought to the game table, especially at low to modest levels. The spark lasher, for example, is a CR 2 monster with a touch attack that dealt electrical damage. It was a pain for the heavily armored fighter but not that bad for the nimble, dodging rogue. Any spellcaster that could grant resistance to electricity also had a moment to shine. The classic rust monster is like the spark lasher in that the leather-armored rogue will fight it where the fighter in plate doesn’t want to. The rust monster, however, goes too far, and the spark lasher dials it back.

The Monster Manual had both basilisks and medusas, each with save-or-die gazes. The nothic (CR 3) introduced a gaze effect that dealt 1d6 damage (Will save negates). It’s often worth risking the damage in order to look at the monster straight and enjoy normal odds to hit it. The idea here is that averting your gaze was a plausible option, not a crap shoot with death. The nothic is an example of Andrew Finch influencing D&D design behind the scenes, but that story deserves its own telling.

Just as low-level D&D monsters have often had too few interesting abilities, the high-level ones have traditionally had too many. Demons, devils, and dragons had abilities like spells, teleportation, invisibility, flying, and massive area-effect attacks. In the MH, the shadow beasts were three bestial outsiders at CRs 7, 8, and 9, and they mostly hit you really hard, as well as paralyzing, grabbing, or stunning enemies.

Some miniatures had a strong visual component. More than most people, perhaps, I like weird-looking monsters. The one-eyed, spider-like mad slasher is a clear rip-off of a walking eyeball from Jonny Quest. The weirdly proportioned nothic with its one massive eyeball reflects the psychedelic art that my older brother introduced me to at a young age.

The horse-headed equiceph was basically back story for a cool skeletal mini. The skirmish game needed a large skeletal soldier, and all the giants and trolls look a lot alike once they’re skeletized. We invented the skeletal equiceph miniature to walk a fine line between weird and familiar. Horse-headed skeletons are rare in fantasy art, but everyone gets animal-headed people and animated skeletons.

[[[note to self-blog, D&D chainmail had a metal mini also, and the 1st backstory is cool. Wikipedia has: 

"The equicephs were one of the Old Races that used to dominate Western Oerik. [...] they were a peaceful people. Rampaging Abyssal armies wiped them out during the Demon War, and no living equiceph has been seen since. Clerics of Nerull, always fond of plundering battlefields, found the remains of a tribe of equicephs. Now the Skeletal Equiceph walks the world again, brought back to unlife by forbidden magic and denied peace even in death."^[2]

]]]

There’s a lot to love in the Miniatures Handbook. My best friend Rob Heinsoo was a co-designer on the project, and some of this material ended up in 4E, where he was the lead designer. It’s often overlooked when people talk about the development history of D&D."

Metal one painted by fan artist, Ben Wermers.