Gift: Eternia Playset (1988)

This was the big one. The mother of all action figure playsets. When I was six years old, Eternia was only a few inches shorter than I was, and there was nothing cooler on the face of the earth. If bigger meant better, Eternia was the best thing ever made. It had a battery operated monorail track, a giant lion/door that could eat action figures, five floors, about fifty accessories and a dozen things to keep your He-Man figures occupied—trap doors, prisons, laser canons, computer terminals; so much that I can’t begin to remember it all. It had everything you could possibly want out of an action figure playset, and not a single towel rack.

I never gave up on Eternia. I wanted it for three Christmases in a row before I finally got it, after He-Man had long faded from the public eye. Three Christmases is an eternity (whoa, I just got that) for a kid to want the same thing, but I was persistent. Mall Santa after mall Santa had no idea what I was talking about when I asked for it, and even my helpful crayon illustrations failed to get the message across. But that didn’t stop me from asking for it again and again and again. Nevermind that in actual He-Man lore “Eternia” was the name of the planet the characters inhabited, and the creation of the three towered “Eternia” was simply an excuse to release a giant playset. There was nothing on earth I wanted more.

By Christmas of 1988, I was close to losing all hope. I was still a fan of He-Man and She-Ra, but both shows were now off the air, only occasionally shown in reruns on USA. The products were gradually disappearing from stores as Mattel turned its focus back to Matchbox Cars and Barbie. Eternia was always hard to find, but by 1988 it was well on its way to becoming the collector’s item it is today. In 1986 there were plenty of other He-Man toys to occupy me, light the Fright Zone and the Slime Pit and…sigh…Crystal Falls. In 1987 I had Fireball Island, and no one would dare complain about that. But in 1988 the idea of Christmas without Eternia seemed bleak indeed.

Then fortune smiled on me. My grandmother, who back then did all of her Christmas shopping about 8 months ahead of time, had managed to find one. At a reduced price, no less! I don’t remember if she took credit for it or assigned it to “Santa.” I think the fact that I have absolutely zero memory of where it came from only emphasizes how excited I finally was to open up that giant box and see the familiar He-Man and Mattel logos. After four consecutive He-Man related Christmases, this would be the last time I would ever open one of those boxes.
But back then I didn’t have such a nostalgic mind. I ripped the box open as soon as I could and got to work assembling the thing in my room downstairs—I think I actually put it all together without much help from my dad, a big achievement for me at the time. It took hours, and I can still remember the smell of the new plastic, the way the rough edges felt on each small piece as I ripped them from their plastic frame, and struggling to perfectly press the “sticker flags” together. Like all of my action figure playsets, I had as much fun putting it together as I did playing with it, quite possibly more.

Once it was assembled, it took up an entire wall of my room (when you attached it to the Snake Mountain and Castle Greyskull playsets, of course, but what He-Man fan in their right mind wouldn’t do that? I’d had both of those since Christmas of 1985, and that year they enjoyed a well deserved revival.) I don’t know if I actually played with it all that much once I got it assembled, like I said, the He-Man phenomenon was definitely waning by that point. I mainly enjoyed getting out all of my figures, posing them around the three towers in action battle poses, sneaking away my parent’s camera from its hiding spot in the cabinet upstairs, and taking about a dozen pictures. Later on, the Eternia tower would be re-purposed as a miniature for movies I shot on my dad’s VHS camcorder, doubling for locations as diverse as the Empire State Building and Princess Zelda’s castle.

Owing to my increasing fussiness and pack-rat tendencies, any of my toys that survived, say, 1992, are still in pristine condition and stored in boxes in my parent’s house. Most of Eternia has survived to this day, though much of the monorail track and some of the smaller accessories are long gone. Even collecting dust in a forgotten corner of the basement, the giant lion faced tower still commands awe and respect. It’s not in anywhere near good enough shape to fetch the $800 a mint condition version can get on ebay, but I like it the way it is, a picturesque ruin that inspires memories of a lost age.

After wanting it for three years you’d think maybe I found Eternia a little disappointing, but if anything it was better than I hoped. Ever since the Star Wars prequels it’s become almost gospel that most big things are just big let downs. Not so Eternia. It was marketed as the coolest playest of all time, and it was. Some kids had their Death Star or their Ghostbusters Firehouse or their G.I. Joe Air Craft Carrier. Those were all awesome playsets, but nothing could ever compare to Eternia. Best. Toy. Ever.

(Dang. All this He-Man/She-Ra reminiscing has dredged up a lot of memories. Looks like I’ll be revisiting that topic in 2010. Stay tuned.)

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.”