VOICES OF ETERNIA: My Dioramas – Building the World of Eternia

The following piece is by Ryan Wimmer (aka “Dinosaur Park and such” on YouTube where he can be found HERE.)

Before I share pictures of my Masters of the Universe dioramas, I’ll give some very brief background.  I remember the very first MOTU commercials and wanted the toys from the beginning.  I was four years old.  My cousin showed up with a Mer-Man and that same day my mom bought me and one or two other siblings a He-Man.  I watched the first day Filmation aired.  I was fan prior to Kindergarten all the way until 3^rd or 4^th grade before I began to move on to other things…like Rambo toys. 

As and adult I vaguely recall the 200x toy line, didn’t pay much attention to it.  Around 2010 I found out about the classics line and began to buy several of those.  A divorce through me off track for several years buying classics.  When origins came out in 2020 it sparked an intense interest in me and I decided I still wanted to finish out what I wanted in classics.  Little did I know Matty Collector wasn’t a thing anymore and ebay is where I spent a lot of money, sometimes irresponsibly, to get what I wanted.  Once I had mostly what I wanted I got an idea to create dioramas.  The inspiration for creating dioramas came from my boys making a dinosaur park in my backyard, it is cool and you can see what they did on a small youtube channel they made to share with friend’s and family “dinosaur park and such”. 

My He-Man diorama display started big and became bigger and bigger.  Because I am single and live in my own house with a 14- and 11-year-old I can do whatever I want with my house.  Currently my diorama display takes up over two regular sized bedrooms and still growing.  As I made the displays my son kept asking me what the time line is between classics Grayskull, Classics Snake Mountain, and Origins Grayskull.  I said there is no time line, it is just a display.  One night during my craze back in 2020 I told my kids, and even recorded it, a He-Man story that I made up as I went.  I was then sold on making a sort of timeline with the display based on my own created story and lore that I had pulled from the many different versions of He-Man. 

As a side note, I had done the display and came up with a lot of my story prior to Revelation on Netflix but made adjustments after it came out.  Unfortunately, I waited about a month or two watch Revelation because of all the negative reactions I had heard, I can’t believe I deprived myself for a month due to the influence of all the “clown fish’s” out there, who are in fact complete clowns.  Anyhow I recreated several scenes from Revelation in my diorama display.  In the following pics, with some commentary, I will refrain from telling my own invented He-Man story accept where it is relevant to understand what I am depicting.  But let’s get started with the pics.

Below is an overall picture of what I created first with some close ups of my “Evergreen Forest” and the animals that live there.

Next are pics of the battle for Grayskull, my final battle.  My story is bloody as you can tell from seeing some of the casualties.  Top of Grayskull is the spirit of King Grayskull coming out the top as a throwback to original mini comics and Skelegod depicting the end of episode 5 of Revelation.  Take note of the bridge, pillars, and dragons on top of the pillars because you will see mini reproductions of this in other Grayskull scenes.  The bottom pics I pay tribute to the halves of the sword joined together to act as the key to Grayskull.  I also wanted to note I have Orko fighting Scareglow, inspired by Revelation.

On the far side of Grayskull’s battlefield is a portal to Etheria where She-ra and her team are fighting Hordak and the Evil Horde.  Notice the vintage snake from Snake Mountain replacing the dragon from the original Fright Zone.  The top of the Slime Pit skull was broken in the battle, or simply lost over the years, lol.

The inside of the Classics Grayskull, a lot of dead bodies.

Zodac flying though space on vintage Grayskull throne like in Filmation. 

The other scene is currently the first scene depicted in my own story (until and if the origins Eternia playset comes).  Notice the void where the Snake Men become imprisoned.  Zodac’s presence in this battle with the Snake Men is inspired by 200x story and I worked in Sun Man into the story.  The inspiration behind Vikor fighting the Snake Men is because Vikor looks like Conan the Barbarian.  It is fitting for him to fight snake men just as Conan did in the 1982 film.  Tulsa Doom even became a snake!!

The small crystal castle puzzle is my “Hall of Wisdom”.  I have ideas to make a bigger version so I can place figures around it, we will see. 

The next scene is from my own story of Zodac presenting the power orb to the Teela’Na (Sorceress), Sharella (Green Goddess), and Eldor.  Then the Horde invades under Horde Prime, not Hordak.  The action figures here from the CGI Netflix show are just guards in this story.  It was my way to still collect them but finding somewhere to display them.

In this story Eldor builds the power sword.  Notice he has an anvil and fire place to build it, making this was really fun.  I read the movie script from Justin Marks Grayskull: The Masters of the Universe where and ancient blacksmith forged the sword of power and when I first saw the classics action figure of Eldor I immediately thought of that not really knowing who Eldor was at the time, I therefore worked that into my own story. 

King Grayskull, dragons, and He-Ro fight the Horde and Horde Prime in front of a piece of what is left of my vintage Castle Grayskull I received for Christmas in either 1982 or 1983 (Can’t quit remember).  Notice the mini bridge to Grayskull and the pillars like in the larger scale version.  No dragons on the pillars yet like in the full-scale version in the pictures above.  My story has those dragon statues built afterwards…because I didn’t want to buy another set of them, lol. 

The power changes people’s appearances when they call on it and that is why King Grayskull has both white and dark skin in this depiction.    King Grayskull Splits the power sword.  You will also notice a 200x version of He-Man in this scene, but in my story he isn’t He-Man, he is just a nice guy helping fight the Horde.

King Randor and Duncan fight Keldor and Kronis. 

You can see Kronis arm is cut off and Duncan is smashing him to the jaw.  Keldor has the vat of acid in right hand and becomes Skeletor similar to 200x.  With face burned Keldor crawls across the sands of time to the dark hemisphere where Hordak finds him.  This is Eternia so you can see the transition from white sand to purple sand in the dark hemisphere.

Here is my Royal Palace, created from a modified Imaginex castle.  Dirt road passes in front with several citizens of Eternos walking down the road.

This diorama needs some explanation since it isn’t just a display, it is specific to my invented story I told my kids.  Prince Adam was allegedly killed by Skeletor in the Mystic Mountains and the green goddess took “Oo-Larr” (the Classics name for the original He-Man concept) to give him the weapons we will see below.  Now the inspiration behind Adam allegedly dying was not Revelation, I invented this prior to it’s release, but I got it from the version of Robin Hood with Russel Crowe where the traditional name of Robin Hood, Robert Loxley or Robin Locksley actually dies and Robin Longstride impersonates Loxley to get back into England.  My original story I invented was similar, but I decided to not have Adam die forever but to rather have Zodak save him and train him which was inspired by the Marks movie script mentioned above, if you read that script the version of Zodak was clearly the 200x version as you see here.

I made my “Mystic Mountains” from model kits from Hobby Lobby along with small multi colored Christmas trees and painted green rocks.  I’ve considered using more kits to improve the look but havn’t the ambition yet, it’s a lot of work. 

The green meadow with unicorns was also made from items from Hobby Lobby and simple Walmart Christmas trees.  This scene here is of course taken from the original minicomic where the green goddess gives He-Man his weapons, harness, and the Battle Ram. 

I then have Jitsu in the Roton his first battle

In my story Zodak asks that our heroes take a “stranger” with them as depicted here by the Classics Disguised Preternia He-Man here fighting New Eternia Beast Man.  I sort of show fight progression between Viking He-Man and Barbarian Skeletor.  Each have a half of the sword, I’ve considered painting Skeletor’s sword purple but havn’t yet.  The fight progressed to the helmets falling off, I replaced a Savage He-Man head on the Viking He-Man for reasons seen below in other pictures  Skeletor get’s both halves and becomes Skelegod.

When I was a kid I always had Skeletor get the two halves of the power sword combined and He-Man always cut the sword back into two halves with his axe.  I decided to depict that here.  In my invented story a blast from the sword blew the suit and boots off Oo-Larr He-Man and in a last effort before dying he uses the axe to split the sword.  I chose to do this with Savage He-Man because now this scene can also represent the battle in Revelation between Savage He-Man and Skelegod.  Anyhow in my story the hood comes off the disguised stranger in the bottom left of the picture, I did a head swap here with another Classics disguised He-Man, revealing it is Prince Adam still alive.  He gets the power sword halves, puts them together and becomes He-Man for the remainder of my story.  I am not a fan of the secret identity between He-Man and Adam so I scrapped it in my own story here.  That was one of my favorite things about Revelation was that it scrapped the secret identity in the first episode. 

Here is my Origins Grayskull fight scene inside and out.  Notice I again made a mini bridge to Grayskull similar to my full scale in the Classics Grayskull scene as depicted in the first pics.  I also added the pillars and the same dragon statues on top to designate it is the same place, continuity is important in my dioramas!!!  Inside the castle with He-Man using a long axe to not fall down the trap door is inspired from a very early comic book of Masters of the Universe, I want to say it was in one of the early DC Masters of the Universe comics from the 1980s but I cannot quite remember.

Making my Classics Snake Mountain display was a lot of fun.  I made it as though there is a thin layer above where the lava from Snake Mountain flows with holes in the ground revealing the lava below.  I used red Christmas lights inside to light it.  Anyhow it came out pretty good I think.  If you look close at some of the pics you will see a vintage Hurricane Hordak and King Hiss, both missing legs.  I decided to use my broken original figures depicting that Skeletor killed them both.

These are scenes I am depicting from Revelation.  I actually have plans to depict some more scenes from Revelation but have not made them yet.  These scenes do not really fit my own story but that is ok, I loved Revelation.

Well I hope any and all readers enjoyed my pics and explanation for my dioramas. I had a lot of fun sharing these pictures as well a small glimpse into my own personal He-Man story that I have had a lot of fun creating with my boys.  My older son created a soundtrack for our story and depicted scenes.  He pulled from many different types of music from He-Man shows and the movie as well as music from Gladiator, Conan the Barbarian and Rambo movies.  He loves to tell the story and play the music he thinks goes with the different scents, it is really cute.  Anyhow to steal a line from AJ himself, Let the Power Return.

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