Enter the Forest of Doom! This is a playset for the 1981 Dragonriders of the Styx toy line from Dimensions for Children. If you’ve been following my feed for a while, you know there is a special place in my heart for this line of toys, partly because they are awesome in their own right, partly because they blatantly ripped off early Dungeons & Dragons art for some of their toy designs.

Inside is a vinyl terrain map, a pile of figures, a castle door (it affixes to the box, which is printed with a stone design, so not exactly a real castle) and some gnarly evil cardboard trees surrounding a giant burning skull/dungeon entrance? The evil trees are pretty great, but the real star is the box cover. Just look at that painting. Divine. And the feature list! Lifelike Giant Dragon!

I only photographed the figures that haven’t yet appeared on the feed, with the exception of the purple ogre – I’ve only ever seen this dude in grey plastic, so he is a bit of a novelty. The box says it contains both demons and gargoyles – I’m guessing the black ones are gargoyles and the red ones are demons (erm…balrogs?). If the wizard looks familiar to you, that’s because he’s a pretty close, but not exact, copy of the old TSR logo. And the dragonrider dude, he’s not supposed to be included in the box, but he was inside when I got it, and it is nice to finally have one that doesn’t have broken reins.