These Monstrous Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain Models Have to Be Seen to Be Believed

Any child of the 80s remembers the thrill of opening Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain among their Christmas presents, and the adventures they could conjure up while playing with the playsets from the Masters of the Universe toy line. Whlie those fortresses seemed to be huge to little hands, they are nothing compared to two replicas made by customizer and YouTuber SkeleVader. Playsets for many popular cartoons had to walk a fine line between capturing the essence of the show they came from, being impressive enough to entertain the children receiving them, and keep in mind that parents had limited space to store them and needed to be able to afford them. There are no such constraints when someone is making their own version, which is why these two giant models dwarf the ones that you may still have hiding away in the attic.

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Ranking among the biggest dioramas ever made, both the Grayskull and Snake Mountain sets are not the kind of thing to be sat in the corner of a child’s bedroom. Snake Mountain measures eight feet across, five feet deep, and stands over five feet tall with Castle Grayskull standing around the same height, and only slightly smaller in depth. The recreations of these two iconic locations are nothing short of breathtaking and the scale of them becomes even more impressive when some classic action figures are positioned around and inside the strongholds. As shown in the post above, the two sets are on display at this year’s PowerCon MOTUFEST event, a convention about all things He-Man which has previously had similar fan displays as well as guest appearances from franchise stars such as Dolph Lundgren. As impressive as they look in the video, seeing them first hand would be worth it for anyone able to attend the event this weekend.

A Masters of the Universe Labor of Love

One thing about these models is that there is no way of denying how much work went into making them. On SkeleVader’s YouTube channel, the building was documented across a series of videos that takes fans on a journey as epic as anything in the TV series. From the raw materials, through a lengthy construction, every moment is captured and preserved until the final reveal of the two completed structures. These were clearly passion projects, and that is why there is no better place for them to find an audience than at MOTUFEST. There are some things that just evoke memories of the past, and for anyone who continues to be a fan of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, these are probably the best and most lovingly crafted pieces linked to the show you will ever see.

Decades after Masters of the Universe exploded onto TVs and toy shelves, the fandom of the franchise continues to be strong, especially following the recent revival with the first live-action movie to actually attempt to put the cartoon with all it’s crazy characters on the big screen. While the movie did not make a huge impact in theaters, the response to its streaming debut on Prime Video proved that He-Man still has the power. More than six weeks after it arrived, the movie is still in the platform’s global Top 10 chart, which has given fans hope of seeing a sequel come to fruition in the next few years. In the meantime, this weekend’s PowerCon event is sure to have plenty of moments for He-Man fans to enjoy, with some being shared online along the way.

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