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| Man, I love Machine Wars packaging. |
I was thinking earlier today. The exact reasoning that I started this blog/site/whatever (I feel weird calling it a blog) comes directly from me wanting to create a series of zines focusing on more forgotten/looked over series of Transformers. It was going to start with Machine Wars, then McDonald's Beast Wars, onto the Walmart Dinobots, the Mutants, and so on. I literally had been sitting on this idea for over a decade. I've mentioned before there was a pre-cursor to Zone Base in the form of a short lived Tumblr. I did it at an odd point and it didn't really last long. Not long enough to work that forgotten series into it. So at some point I decided to make Zone Base. Which I made and promptly sat on forever. In between self doubt if anyone would actually read it and general life keeping me busy, Zone Base sat empty for awhile and at some point I made a "I promise there will be something here at some point" post. Then more time passed and I finally decided to get off my butt and do something with it, I mean what's the actual worse that could come from it?
So I decided the most appropriate time to launch Zone Base officially (even though I didn't buy an actual url until a few days later, so it was blogger.com/zonebase) was during BotCon 2016. It was the last BotCon, and say what you will about Fun Publications years on the convention, it was around long before them and meant a whole lot to us Transformers fans. I really wish I could have gone, but at that point I was just priced out. Though, they seemingly had an exclusive just for me. I mean, I know they didn't make it with me in mind, but let's just say they accidentally did. They had an Under 3 homage toy (I got Kilby to grab me one at the con).
McDonald's Beast Wars is a big deal to me and that toy was just that last special BotCon thing, just for me. Earlier in the evening, I said goodbye to BotCon (though I had done that originally before the Fun Pub version, it was a different con with the same name really) and did a soft launch of Zone Base on Instagram. It was a picture of a Big Mac and a Combiner Wars Shockwave. I had grabbed a Big Mac meal just for the occasion as I always ate a Big Mac at least once at BotCon (pre Fun Pub, though I did eat one at Charticon, because that was a return to those old BotCons to me). I've said before and I'll say it again: I've always associated McDonald's with Transformers and occasionally I guess it'll make sense to people.
But that Instagram post had a little blurb about Big Macs and BotCon and that was that. It was generally well received on social media (man, I share everything) as most folks who saw it got it. The next thing I posted was a little later that night, and that was the introductory Zone Base post. Fortunately Zone Base has been really well received and I've really enjoyed making it. Though, I gave that little insight to why I created this site/blog/thing to explain what's ironic.
I was thinking today that I still haven't made anything with that zine idea. *shrug* I guess I'll get to it eventually.
