Gremlins

Gremlins
Information
Type	Sentient Magical Humanoids
Homeland	Various
Behind the Scenes
First seen	1943
In	The Gremlins
Index	Gremlins stories

The Gremlins are a race of sentient humanoid beings.

Description

The Gremlins are a people of sentient humanoid beings. Adult male Gremlins are simply called Gremlins, adult female Gremlins are called Fifinellas, male children are called Widgets, and female children are called Flibbertigibbets. There is also a related race or subspecies known as the Spandules. Gremlins possess the ability to fly and to teleport at will, and eat used postage stamps. 

The Gremlins once lived in the beautiful forests of England, until World War II, when the British government cut several of them them down for war supplies. In revenge, the Gremlins began to sabotage airplanes in the factories and military airports that had been built over their old homes, causing them to crash. Fortunately, a British pilot named Gus convinced them that they should join forces to fight against a common enemy, the Nazis. The Gremlins agreed, and each of the Gremlins joined with a pilot, taking on the pilot's name after "Gremlin". The leader of the Gremlins partnered with Gus, becoming Gremlin Gus. During the war, a British flight lieutenant and (then-amateur) writer named Roald Dahl found out about them, and published a The Gremlins|book about their story.

After the war, the Gremlins took the sorcerer Yen Sid's offer to move to Wasteland, realizing that even with all the goodwill in the world, the modern world was simply no longer for them. There, they settled in Gremlin Village and became an essential part of Wasteland's society, putting their engineering abilities to good use. Gremlin Gus even became a close friend of King Oswald. The Gremlins fought valiantly in the Blot Wars, matching the Mad Doctor's mechanical creations blow for blow, which prompted the Doctor to create Gremlin Cages which blocked their teleporting abilities. Though many Gremlins were so captured, others always managed to free them in the end.

After 2012, when safe passage was reopened between Wasteland and the real world, a group of Gremlins, led once more by Gremlin Gus, elected to give it another shot. They returned to England and contacted the now-elderly Pilot Gus, who promised to find them a new forest to live in, and, in the meantime, hid them on his personal property and in his house (concealing their presence with rumors of a haunted house). Unfortunately for the Gremlins, Pilot Gus died not longer after, but was succeeded as the Gremlins' human confident by his grandson Young Gus.

Behind the scenes

The Gremlins first appeared in The Gremlins, a children's book by Roald Dahl and published in 1943.

It was Dahl's first children's book, and was written for Walt Disney Productions, as a promotional device for a feature-length animated film that was never made. With Dahl's assistance, a series of gremlin characters were developed, and while pre-production had begun, the film project was eventually abandoned, in part because the studio could not establish the precise rights of the "gremlin" story, and in part because the British Air Ministry was heavily involved in the production because Dahl, who was on leave from his wartime Washington posting, insisted on final approval of script and production. Although the movie was never made, the Gremlins endured in comic-form and in World War II propaganda.