An owlbear (also owl bear) is a fictional creature originally created for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. An owlbear is depicted as a cross between a bear and an owl, which "hugs" like a bear and attacks with its beak. Inspired by a plastic toy made in Hong Kong, Gary Gygax created the owlbear and introduced the creature to the game in the 1975 Greyhawk supplement; the creature has since appeared in every subsequent edition of the game. Owlbears, or similar beasts, also appear in several other fantasy role-playing games, video games and other media. Creation In the early 1970s, Gary Gygax was playing Chainmail, a wargame that bore some precursors of Dungeons & Dragons. In order to give his players as many different challenges as possible, Gygax was always on the look-out for new monsters. Although he was able to draw on pulp fiction and sword and sorcery stories for many of them, he also looked through dime stores for figurines that could be used in battle. On one of those occasions, he came across a bag of small plastic toys euphemistically labeled "prehistoric animals". Made in Hong Kong, the set included monsters from Japanese "Kaiju" films such as Ultraman and the Godzilla franchise. Several of these were odd enough to catch his eye, and he used them to represent several new monsters, including the owlbear, the bulette and the rust monster. Concept The owlbear is depicted as an eight to ten foot (2.5–3 meter) tall cross between a bear and an owl. According to descriptions in Dungeons & Dragons source books, owlbears are carnivorous creatures, famed for their aggression and ferocity; they live in mated pairs in caves and hunt any creature bigger than a mouse. They use a "hug" and their beak to attack. In the game's third edition, it was categorized as a "magical beast". The actual in-game origin of the owlbear has never been definitively revealed, but the various Monster Manual editions indicate that it is probably the product of a wizard's experiments. Within the franchise's mythology, the lich Thessalar claims to have created them, but his insanity and egomania put the accuracy of this claim in doubt. In the 5th edition, some elves claim that owlbears have existed for millennia and older fey say that they have always existed in the Feywild. Within the Dungeons & Dragons system and in other role-playing