Gremlins

A gremlin is an English folkloric creature, commonly depicted as mischievous and mechanically oriented, with a specific interest in aircraft.

The word "gremlin" originated in Royal Air Force (RAF) aviators' slang in Malta, the Middle East and India, with the earliest recorded printed use being in a poem published in the journal Aeroplane, in Malta on April 10, 1929.

The concept of gremlins responsible for sabotaging aircraft was popularised during World War II among airmen of the UK's RAF, in particular the men of the high-altitude Photographic Reconnaissance Units. The creatures were responsible for otherwise inexplicable accidents which sometimes occurred during their flights.

Gremlins were also thought at one point to have enemy sympathies, but investigations revealed that enemy planes had similar and equally inexplicable mechanical problems. As such, gremlins were portrayed as being equal opportunity tricksters, taking no sides in the conflict, and acting out their mischief from their own self-interests.

In reality, the gremlins were a form of "buck passing" or deflecting blame. This led the folklorist John Hazen to note, "Heretofore, the gremlin has been looked on as new phenomenon, a product of the machine age — the age of air."

Author Roald Dahl is credited with getting the gremlins known outside of the air force. In January, 1942 he was transferred to Washington, D.C. as Assistant Air attaché. There he eventually authored his novel The Gremlins, in which he described male gremlins as "widgets" and females as "fifinellas". Dahl showed the finished manuscript to Sidney Bernstein, the head of the British Information Service. Sidney reportedly came up with the idea to send it to Walt Disney.

Thanks mainly to Disney, the story had its share of publicity which helped in introducing the concept to a wider audience.

A famous example of the more modern gremlins is the 1984 movie Gremlins and its 1990 sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. The gremlins in these movies had nothing obvious to do with aircraft in particular, although they were portrayed as adept at subverting or sabotaging mechanical systems; more explicit connections between the films' Gremlins and those of folklore were drawn in the novelizations however.

Strangely, the gremlins in these movies look nothing like the ones of folkloric mythology as they appear as monsters with large ears that are similar to a bat's, sharp teeth and claws, red eyes, and dark reptilian skin; however they are very mischievous.