LOS ANGELES • Has Ozzy Osbourne gone batty, releasing a toy?

But fans must give credit to the rocker's business instincts, for the first batch of the 0.3m-tall plush bat has sold out, at US$40 (S$54) a pop.

The item celebrates the 37th anniversary of Osbourne biting the head off a bat at a concert in 1982.

Long before he became reality-show fodder, he terrified parents as the frontman of Black Sabbath.

The rock band's music was loud, its album covers were decorated with monsters and Osbourne was nicknamed Prince of Darkness.

In 1979, the band fired him due to his erratic behaviour, and he decided to go it alone.

At the concert in Iowa, he picked up a bat which he thought was a rubber one thrown on stage by a fan.

He put it in his mouth and chomped down.

"Immediately, though, something felt wrong. Very wrong.

"For a start, my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid, with the worst after-taste you could ever imagine," he wrote in his memoir I Am Ozzy (2009).

"I could feel it staining my teeth and running down my chin.

"Then, the head in my mouth twitched... I didn't just go and eat a bat, did I?"

WASHINGTON POST