Probably what introduced me to the art of diorama building were a series of levels.. starting with Lego and their space sets, then Star Wars 3/34" with the various Kenner playsets, then to Joes, model rail roads (HO scale then N scale), then to scale model building, then back to Joes with the skills learned from the scale model building.

During my early years I had to rely on my friend's who seem to collect more toys than I could. One friend in particular collected just about anything he was into. Lego had playsets with a space theme. We made Lego bases that grew pretty large.

Kenner came out with a number of playsets for the Star Wars line. The smaller figures meant it would be more realistically doable to sell larger, more complex playsets. The Death Star set was the first that really jumpstarted the diorama scene for me at the 3/34" scale. Other playsets from Kenner at the time included cardboard backgrond scenes. The earliest I remember was the escape pod where the droids landed. But the first one that was durable to move outdoors was the Death Star.

Outdoors we used bricks, flowerbeds, and everything we could to make a stronghold. Bricks were used to expand the Death Star set. The Empire had a base on some planet rising out of the ruins of some other civilization.

Then came the Joes, and the dios just grew from an outset of the Star Wars thing--bricks were used to build Joe bases. The same idea but now switched to the more advanced figures.. the Joes.

Model Rail Roads came into play after a while. Totally different and more fragile, but it introduced some skills on making a set more realistic.

From there I got into scale model building of Japanese WWII ships in the 1/5000 scale. Had them on an acrylic sheet with epoxy shaped waves. It was a small fleet. Other things were 1/100 scale WWI and WWII aircraft. These got me into more advanced levels of painting, weathering, and building my own parts for a more accurate model. Scale models develop a lot of skill which I then applied to the Joes.

Then comes the modern Joes, which got me back into collecting them. But I get no thrill from just seeing numbers of Joes on a shelf. Especially not with the memories of them being outdoors all muddy, exposed to the elements. But I'm not a kid anymore. Ahhh! But what about combining 1/18 scale Joes to diorama's, just like I did with scale model building and HO/N scale model Rail Roads? Now there's something a grown man won't feel guilty about.

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