Christmas Gift Oddities Part 3: Crystal Falls (1986)

Sometimes when we revisit the past we discover odd things about ourselves. Until I started writing about Christmas and trying to remember what I got each year, this little embarrassment had completely faded from my memory. But I might as well get it out now: When I was very little, I loved She-Ra. I liked He-Man too, but the show had been off the air for some time; meanwhile She-Ra the Princess of Power was still churning out all new episodes for my enjoyment. Even at age four, I thought She-Ra was pretty hot, and saw no reason why I shouldn’t be a huge fan. For my fifth Christmas, I sincerely wanted the She-Ra Crystal Falls playset. Instead of freaking out and sending me to football camp, my parents went to the opposite extreme: They actually bought me the thing.
I don’t remember much about it, but judging from the commercials and box art, it was even less masculine than I recall. Apparently one of the accessories was a towel rack. He-Man came with swords and shields, She-Ra came with a towel rack. But I had fun with it. I loved (and still love) assembling giant plastic toys, and since this one had a pump action, three story waterfall it was especially complicated to put together. Once it was assembled, I suppose I used it to give the She-Ra figures baths, though I’d like to think I had the villains attack it at least once. In my defense, I also got the Fright Zone that Christmas, a much more masculine He-Man playset, and I ended up playing with that at least as much as Crystal Falls. My family didn’t seem to mind that I was playing with a pink clamshell girly toy, but suspiciously enough Crystal Falls is the one Mattel He-Man/She-Ra toy I remember that didn’t survive to collect dust in my parent’s giant basement back east.

I make no apologies or excuses. I played with this, owned She-Ra dolls, watched She-Ra, and own The Best of She-Ra on DVD. I have to hand it to my four year old self: I didn’t have a thought about what I should or shouldn’t be doing, or whether it would be weird to own what was effectively a bath for dolls, or what anyone else would think of it. I was as proud of my Princess of Power Crystal Falls playset as I was of the Fright Zone or any other gift I got that year. Maybe it was because I didn’t have a shred of shame playing with something so frilly that my parents never worried about me: confidence has a way of spreading like that.

At age four, I couldn’t even conceive of being embarrassed of something that genuinely interested me, and I turned out just fine (as fine as any of us turn out.) Today, especially in the process of trying to be a professional writer, I put an awful lot of weight on what people might think of me and my work. Instead of being embarrassed that I wanted Crystal Falls at age four, my four year old self should probably be embarrassed of me. I could learn a lot from a little boy who proudly asked Santa for a “refreshing water wonderland for She-Ra and her friends.”