Lamia is monster #104 from Super Scary Series 4. The figure portrays a woman with a monstrous, fanged face, holding eyes in her hands. The figure was available in three colour schemes: neon red with green hair and a yellow face (pictured), neon yellow with green hair and a red face, and a rarer monocolour neon yellow variant that was released as a cereal premium. Lamia has a points value of ninety, and was named Bloodsucker in the later UK relrelease of Series 4.
Legends of Lamia[]
In Greek myth, Lamia was originally a beautiful queen of Libya who became transformed into a monster. The daughter, or possibly granddaughter, of Poseidon, and daughter of Hecate, she had an affair with her (grand)uncle, Zeus, and bore him children. Zeus' wife, Hera, became angry and jealous, and killed her children. Stories then vary as to what happened to Lamia - in some, she killed and devoured other children, mad with grief, and this slowly tranformed her into a monster. In others, she was transformed into a monster by Hera as part of her punishment, much like Medusa. Later versions of the myth also state that Zeus gave her the ability to remove her eyes, which gave her the gift of prophecy.
The nature of Lamia's monstrous appearance are unclear; in at least some tellings, she had the face and upper body of a woman, and the lower body of a snake. This may be a mixing of her story with that of Echidna. Her story has also been mixed with other Greek female monsters, including Ceto and the dragon Sybaris.
As a monster that ate children, Lamia was used as a kind of bogeyman to threaten and scare children into good behaviour. Later developments made her into a sort of vampiress, a drinker of blood. In time, the myth developed to present an entire race of lamiae.
Mediaeval European developments of the myth transformed the Lamia into a succubus, a demonic seducer of men. Christian demonology considered lamiae a risk to male chasitity and to marriages. These versions of the myth retained her vampiric qualities, as she drew the strength and/or blood from her victims. The serpentine image remained; Renaissance iconography used Lamia as a representation of hypocrisy, in the guise of a serpent with the face and breasts of a woman, while later artwork portrayed her as a beautiful woman with shed skin of a snake. Scholars linked the tale of Lamia with that of Lilith, a figure from Hebrew mythology.
Modern versions of the myth retain the vampric qualities, but bring back the habits of devouring children. In modern Greek folklore, Lamia is a kind of ogress, a filthy, slovenly creature with magical abilities, that eats human flesh, particularly children. In these tales, she is very much like Baba Yaga from Russian folklore. Greek, Bulgarian and Basque legends also describe lamiae as haunting caves and other dark, dank places.
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.jpg "314px-Lamia by Herbert James Draper (1909).jpg (42 KB)")