The creature’s long-lashed, amber-flecked eyes peer out from the storage unit.

Its massive white, plush head is positioned next to a shelf of odds and ends and a tall stack of boxes.

But this is no dusty relic.

Because Falkor from “The NeverEnding Story” has stayed alive in the imaginations of grown-up children since the movie hit theaters 39 years ago this summer.

The 1984 movie tells tale of a mystical land called Fantasia that a young boy named Bastian (Barret Oliver) discovers in a storybook. Falkor, a wise, trusty luck dragon (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer), helps him save the day in the fantasy realm and the real world.

“Rumor has it that Falkor needed a break from Hollywood,” Michele Iervolino said in a May 19 Instagram post, sharing a photo of the figure, a static interpretation of the animatronic puppet head from the film.

She tagged the nostalgia bomb right where he sat — her storage unit in cozy High Bridge, New Jersey.

It wasn’t long before thousands of people, including celebrities, responded to the post.

“Khloe Kardashian liked it and Diplo,” Iervolino tells NJ Advance Media. “It was, like, insane.”

There was just something about seeing this cherished childhood favorite, a force for good, staring from within the storage space, as if beckoning everyone to go on another adventure — another quest to vanquish The Nothing.

And it wasn’t just a fleeting fancy. The viral moment had an effect on our real world, too.

Iervolino planned to bring the luck dragon out of the shadows to celebrate the first anniversary of her store, Rascal Salvage Vintage, in High Bridge.

In her photo, he shares the storage unit with a green broom and heaps of vintage clothing.

Protagonist Bastian and young warrior Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) ride on Falkor’s back in the movie, but the talking dragon, a guardian figure, is dog-like in appearance — more cuddly shih tzu than “Game of Thrones” fire-breather. The Jersey Falkor head is all big eyes, pink snout and white fluff.

When Iervolino and her fiance, Robert Schorr, hosted the two-day celebration in late May for their vintage shop, which sells retro clothing, toys, decor and other collectibles, as many as 250 people showed up to see Falkor, some traveling as long as four hours to get to the Hunterdon County store.

“He really is such a magical creature,” she says. “What we didn’t realize was that so many people would drive so far to come ... We were really touched and grateful and blown away.”

Even without the rest of his body, the luck dragon head is pretty sizable — more than 6 1/2 feet from his nose to the back of his head, about 5 1/2 feet tall 8 feet long — so they wheeled him down the borough’s quaint Main Street on a dolly (it was a community effort, Iervolino says).

They set Falkor in front of the store so people could take photos with him and pretend that they, too, were flying across Fantasia.

Iervolino and Schorr also put a step stool behind the head so visitors could “ride” Falkor. They even supplied a luck dragon-sized toothbrush so people could give his chompers a scrub.

“All day long, people just drove by and honked the horn and yelled his name,” Iervolino says.

The legacy of Fantasia

Not everyone carries a torch for Falkor.

Gen-Zers stopped by to see him last month, but rather than document the event for TikTok, some teens looked askance at the giant furry head.

It was their parents who were pumped to get a picture with the wise old dog-dragon.

Like Iervolino, 44, and Schorr, 50, they grew up with the film, helmed by Oscar-nominated director Wolfgang Petersen (”Das Boot”) and based on the 1979 book “The Neverending Story” by German author Michael Ende.

“I saw the movie in the theater and definitely loved it,” Schorr says. “Falkor always sticks out as being this great shining beacon.”

He hadn’t watched the film in many years, but the Falkor head sparked flashbacks.

“A lot of people were definitely touched by that movie in different ways,” Schorr says. “Some aspects of it are a little bit dark (raise your hand if you were traumatized by Atreyu’s horse Artax sinking into the Swamp of Sadness). But we just saw how much it (affected) people’s childhood and how much they hold it in their hearts.”

The fantasy film, which was a West German production, was followed by sequels “The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter” (1990), directed by George Miller and starring Jonathan Brandis, and the lesser-seen “The Neverending Story III: Escape From Fantasia” (1994), starring Jason James Richter and Jack Black.

The fantasy film maintains an enduring appeal. In 2016, the first movie headed back to theaters for Fathom Events screenings. A California metalcore band, Atreyu, is named for the movie’s child warrior.

A new home for Falkor

Iervolino and Schorr seem perfectly cast for the role of Falkor’s caretakers.

“We love nostalgia and ’80s,” says Iervolino, a former visual merchandiser for retail stores. “And so we’re always looking and hunting for the weirdest and the coolest stuff.”

Their store, Rascal Salvage Vintage, and its associated Etsy shop, is stuffed with nostalgia, from color-blocked ’80s sweaters to a talking E.T. toy and Super Mario Bros. stickers.

Iervolino, who also works on social media for New Jersey state tourism, and Schorr, who is also a librarian, are getting married in two weeks.

“Everyone wants Falkor to come, but he is not allowed,” Iervolino says with a chuckle.

The couple started their relationship hunting for treasures in thrift stores and record shops.

“When I started dating Rob, he had the male version of my apartment,” Iervolino recalls. “Secondhand things and weird and eccentric ... we both had stacks of board games or old video games and found objects.”

They still delight in the hunt for nostalgia finds with their dog Gravy, a cavapoo (who also got a “ride” on Falkor).

“We scour thrift stores, flea markets, estate sales, garage sales,” Schorr says.

“Sketchy (Facebook) Marketplace meet-ups,” Iervolino chimes in.

So when she received a text from a friend with a screenshot of the Falkor head, she was all about it.

Elizabeth Lieb, who runs Maker Junction, a membership-based work space for artists in Fairfield, is the Jersey Falkor’s original owner. She didn’t want to sell him, but she was looking to give him a new home.

Lieb joked about listing the noble dragon on Petfinder.

Iervolino and Schorr got wind of him after Lieb posted about him on Facebook, in the Montclair/Glen Ridge Buy Nothing group.

“He’s a beast,” Lieb warned, noting his size.

There would be no quick flights across the land for this Falkor. Iervolino and Schorr drove him to High Bridge in a U-Haul box truck.

They placed him in the storage unit since he couldn’t comfortably fit inside their shop.

“If we put him in there, that would be the whole store,” Iervolino says.

Luck dragon of her dreams

Lieb dreamed up her Falkor with one goal in mind:

Joy.

After taking over Maker Junction with her husband, Graham Clarke, and moving the space from Totowa to Fairfield in 2020, she set her sights on the movie-inspired mission.

Lieb and Clarke, who met at Burning Man in Nevada, are regulars there and at like-minded “burn” festivals.

She wanted to create a Falkor and bring him to the Love Burn festival in Miami. Lieb thought the event, poised to greet people as they emerged from the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, could benefit from a “joy-producing” object. Something that “made adults feel like kids again,” she tells NJ Advance Media.

Falkor proved “wildly popular” both in Miami — “someone cried when they saw him,” she says — and in Jersey after Iervolino’s viral post.

“It’s been absolutely amazing, it’s all I ever wanted from the project,” says Lieb, 43, who is also a real estate developer.

“Her photo kind of tapped into that childhood whimsy that we remember,” she says — the juxtaposition of this fantasy character with its very ordinary surroundings next to a broom and pile of boxes.

“It’s definitely just that joy of discovery, it immediately takes you back ... seeing him in the storage unit is just so funny.”

Clarke and Lieb worked on Falkor with their friend, artist Urbano Maher.

“Urbano’s always game for a crazy idea and it really worked,” Lieb says.

Falkor’s neck was constructed from a 55-gallon steel drum. The head, which is made of insulation and upholstery foams, PVC sheeting and “fur,” is actually one of three Falkors they made. The first one is in Iervolino and Schorr’s storage unit, another is in storage in Nevada, and a third lives at the Maker space in Fairfield.

When transporting one of the other Falkors on the back of a truck, people followed Lieb on the highway, enchanted by the luck dragon of their youth.

“It’s kind of more of a sculpture of nostalgia itself than of Falkor,” says Maher, 33, a Paterson native who lives in Clifton.

The idea wasn’t to make an exact movie replica, but to create a Falkor that represented the benevolent, big-hearted character that resided in people’s memories.

“I was in love with that film when I was a kid,” Maher says.

Each Falkor has a slightly different look since he made improvements with each version. There’s more fur and fluff than scales, which the original Falkor had all over his long dragon body. The Jersey Falkor’s head was also enlarged so people would feel smaller.

“We wanted you to feel like you were a little kid again,” Maher says.

The approach seems to have worked. People have stopped by Maker Junction just to see the second Falkor. Other asked if they could rent a Falkor, and someone inquired if they would ship him to France.

“We’ve had multiple requests to buy one,” Lieb says. “It’s wild.”

The wife of one of the German producers of “The NeverEnding Story” even reached out to thank them for keeping the spirit of the film alive.

A never-ending journey

Somewhere along the viral pipeline, the contents of Iervolino’s Falkor post were repurposed and changed.

In less than a month, the Garden State luck dragon appeared to have conjured its own mythology. Or maybe it was just a classic game of telephone.

People somehow got the notion that Falkor was not in New Jersey but Alabama or Missouri, Maher says.

“We had it in the front of our shop for so long,” he says of the Maker space. However, his creation was never as visible as when the photo went viral.

Iervolino and Schorr plan to wheel Falkor out again for his adoring public this summer.

He’ll make an appearance at an outdoor screening of “The NeverEnding Story” Saturday, August 5 in conjunction with Scout’s Coffee Bar (follow the Rascal Salvage Vintage Instagram page for updates) in High Bridge.

As Iervolino says, it’s all about “paying it Falkor.” To that end, the luck dragon will soon move to another suitably nostalgic location.

His big furry head will reside in an upcoming indoor mini-golf attraction called TeeVeeLand in Long Island.

The retro place is the vision of Ricky TeeVee, an artist who crafts his own takes on ’80s favorites, like Chairry from “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”

“He’s going to then create the rest of the body,” Iervolino says of the traveling Falkor, slated to become a permanent installation.

But who knows if that’s really the end of the road for this luck dragon.

After all, it is the “NeverEnding Story.”

For more information on the August 5 “NeverEnding Story” screening with Falkor, visit instagram.com/rascalsalvagevintage.

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.