[Egon’s_Contraption]

Hi gang. I know there's an introduction forum, but I figured I'd expand this into a broader question/topic.

I'll pose my question up front. What keeps you coming back to GB Fans, and what special place or role does it occupy in your life?

Allow me to re-introduce myself. The name's Justin. I was once a big participant in the online community...back when GBProps.com and Proptopia were the go-to venues for talking all things GB. That was back when props/costumes were seemingly the center piece of fandom and before GB had a popular resurgence. Hell, it was before 80s nostoalgia, "nerd culture," and even YouTube were remotely what they are today. I had a Ghostbusters themed Myspace page!

I'm a career US Army officer and was enlisted (serving in Iraq) when I joined the community. For any of the OGs still around, I was one of the folks stuck in the middle of the HotshotDraw/Hotshot...shall we say 'affair.' Later, I offered (maybe "threatened" is a better word) to send Ernie Hudson one of my Hotshot packs, which got the ball rolling on the group building one for him. I'll call that my one [unintentional and indirect] contribution to GB fandom...lolz.

Anyway, I'm back after a decade and a half. I've come to the GB Fans news page almost every day since its inception, but life's kept me from participating in discussions. Usually, I scroll the main page for about 30 seconds and get on with life. However, with all the negativity going around these days (especially on social media), I figured: why not join the forum again? I need a place to go occasionally, discuss frivolous stuff, and have fun. Work limits my time for outside social interaction, and I need an escape. I'm trying to stay off other forms of social media for numerous reasons. However, thinking and talking about things I fondly remember from my childhood has a therapeutic effect, and again...I need to get away from online politics.

So again, I ask the group: What brings YOU here? What do you find most valuable about being in this community? What do you find fulfilling or enjoyable about being a GB Fan? It's been a very long time since I've actively engaged, and I'm interested to know what motivates the group.

[Kingpin]

There's a name I recognise.

What brings me back? (Beyond the day-to-day Mod stuff)

The new merchandise... Not everything's particularly remarkable or well-made, but there's some amazing collectable stuff out there that we could only dream of back in those windswept days of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

There'll be the new movies, which speak for themselves.

And there's the prop/production discoveries we've made and the mysteries that've been resolved... Identification of the bumper label, the abandoned plan to have the Trap pedal lock into place on top of the Trap, the resolution of what colour the dark GBII suits really were, the identification of some of the Containment Unit components, and the tour of the old L. A. Firehouse from a number of years back.

[Egon’s_Contraption]

I'm surprised it let me use the same user name. I don't think I even use the email address associated with old account anymore.

I find it pretty wild how the online fan community went from being a bunch of cosplayers (still talking about whether Ghostbusters in Hell was going to happen) to being about weekly or daily ghostbusters news. Merchandize and nostalgia bait for dayz. Merchandizing! Merchandizing! Merchandizing! Ghostbusters the lunch box. Ghostbusters the breakfast cereal. Ghostbusters the flame thrower!

[RichardLess]

Hi gang. I know there's an introduction forum, but I figured I'd expand this into a broader question/topic.

I'll pose my question up front. What keeps you coming back to GB Fans, and what special place or role does it occupy in your life?

Allow me to re-introduce myself. The name's Justin. I was once a big participant in the online community...back when GBProps.com and Proptopia were the go-to venues for talking all things GB. That was back when props/costumes were seemingly the center piece of fandom and before GB had a popular resurgence. Hell, it was before 80s nostoalgia, "nerd culture," and even YouTube were remotely what they are today. I had a Ghostbusters themed Myspace page!

I'm a career US Army officer and was enlisted (serving in Iraq) when I joined the community. For any of the OGs still around, I was one of the folks stuck in the middle of the HotshotDraw/Hotshot...shall we say 'affair.' Later, I offered (maybe "threatened" is a better word) to send Ernie Hudson one of my Hotshot packs, which got the ball rolling on the group building one for him. I'll call that my one [unintentional and indirect] contribution to GB fandom...lolz.

Anyway, I'm back after a decade and a half. I've come to the GB Fans news page almost every day since its inception, but life's kept me from participating in discussions. Usually, I scroll the main page for about 30 seconds and get on with life. However, with all the negativity going around these days (especially on social media), I figured: why not join the forum again? I need a place to go occasionally, discuss frivolous stuff, and have fun. Work limits my time for outside social interaction, and I need an escape. I'm trying to stay off other forms of social media for numerous reasons. However, thinking and talking about things I fondly remember from my childhood has a therapeutic effect, and again...I need to get away from online politics.

So again, I ask the group: What brings YOU here? What do you find most valuable about being in this community? What do you find fulfilling or enjoyable about being a GB Fan? It's been a very long time since I've actively engaged, and I'm interested to know what motivates the group.

What’s brings me back?

The fans. The people. The discussions.

Nothing satisfies my nerd itch like talking deep nitty gritty Ghostbusters stuff with fellow fans. Trivia, behind the scenes, theories, debates, deleted scenes. Oh my!

I find it endlessly fascinating that a franchise like Ghostbusters can have so many fans with so many different opinions. Some love the movies, others the cartoons, others the props and merch. Ask a 100 ghostbusters fans what they love about ghostbusters and you’ll get 100 different answers. The comedy? The horror? The characters? The tech?

For along time I was just obsessed with the 3RD movie and then Harold passed away and we got…what we got and then I noticed I started coming less for the sequels and newer movies and more for other reasons.

[Kingpin]

I'm surprised it let me use the same user name. I don't think I even use the email address associated with old account anymore.

My guess is because your old username was all in lowercase (egon's_contraption), it was different enough that if there are any "user name is already taken" protocols in the forum software, it didn't trip them. Even the style of apostrophe in the two names may make a mountain of difference... They're certainly considered different entities in my word processing program:

' ’

[Mat]

I remember when this site was gbprops.com! As to why I periodically pop in the people are friendly (not to mention super helpful and influential back when I built my pack. I like seeing the builds (especially in progress pictures) not to mention one of these days I want to build a trap!

[One time]

Identification of the bumper label

This was identified?

What brings me back is fleshing out the franchise more and more. And just look at the Hasbro Proton Pack. It's incredible.

I loved GB since 84 and quit after 89. There was literally nothing until GBTVG came out in 2009 (out of literally nothing) and the Matty trap and figures came out. The GB resurgence since then has been riding a wave. Now with the new movie it is the best time to be a GB fans since 1989. Imagine that? 34 years.

No other fans has waited that long.

For me it's the discoveries that are made to this day, about GB1 in 1984. Including Stephen Dane's concept drawings, etc. and how their meaning is transferred to mass market props like the Matty and Hasbro wands and the Hasbro Proton Pack.

[tobycj]

Identification of the bumper label

This was identified?

Forum user Prodestrian / Chris Rossi managed to ID it last spring! It was from the Terminal Data Corporation in California. He then followed it up with the yellow filler plug label not long after as well. AJ has done a version of the bumper label in the store too.

[pmcbryde]

I remember you!
I'm here every day but post maybe once a year; still have old reference photos watermarked GBPropArchive

[Egon’s_Contraption]

Seems like forever and a day ago…and like it was yesterday.

[Astantax]

A little bit of a necrobump, but -

As a microscopic amount of you may or may not know, I've been around this fan community from the prehistoric days of Bill Embow (spelling that wrong probably)'s ghostbusters site and Norm Gagnon, circa 1997 (27 years ago!!? gosh I'm getting old...), when the internet was a newborn and being into it/ghostbusters was something that could have gotten you beat up in school.

When I found out that there were plans out there to actually make a proton pack, that it was possible to build one at home with readily available parts, I was instantly hooked. At the time, I made one of the first websites devoted exclusively to ghostbusters props - "The Proton Lab", the name of which came from a quote from Bill's original site ("if done right, the pack should emerge from your proton lab looking something like this", iirc). However, I was beat to the punch by literally one day - by "Eraser99", who enjoyed greater popularity as a result. Thus, even though I still maintain my site was better, nobody seems to remember it!

The best part about building this stuff back then was the fact that the proton pack on the whole was unsolved in terms of dimension and construction- all we had to go on were screenshots from the films. So there was a lot of discussion and trial and error. Almost every proton pack had major liberties taken and "screen accuracy" hadn't even entered the picture. Such fun, those halcyon days.

Life, as it tends to do, took wing, and as my interest broadened, my involvement waned. However, at the moment, I'm actively working on what will likely be the last proton pack I'll ever make - fully accurate, aluminum parts, yadda yadda, so I found myself browsing the forums again and just being a fan, and enjoying what I'm sure will be remembered as a Ghostbusters Renaissance. A far cry from the early days, when finding a ghostbusters Nokia face plate at Hot Topic was a major development.

It's been amazing, watching what was a niche, ultra nerdy, obscure interest blossom into what it is today. I went to buy a set of proton pack-specific pieces on ebay and my eyes popped out when I saw how many hundreds of them had been sold. Truly incredible.

I may not really be active these days, but I'm still here, and I you all.

Except videobob.

[Arch27]

So again, I ask the group: What brings YOU here? What do you find most valuable about being in this community? What do you find fulfilling or enjoyable about being a GB Fan? It's been a very long time since I've actively engaged, and I'm interested to know what motivates the group.

I've been a GB fan since 1984, but haven't taken it to costume/equipment level until very recently. Thing is - I was in the 501st Legion (since 2010) and unfortunately it became a toxic experience. I stepped away from them for a while, re-ignited my interest in GB and joined the forum.

I come back to research builds (even the older stuff is interesting), research communities (I'm hoping to start a group where I am because established groups are all hours away), and check out all the other stuff people are talking about. I was fortunate to be into it all when the HasLab proton pack was announced. I was already planning to either get a kit or 3D print my equipment (which I'm still going to do) but that was a great thing to have come up. In the meantime waiting for that I acquired a Spirit Halloween pack, which I immediately set to upgrading. New lights/sound kit, some 3d printed upgrades... It'll ultimately go to my daughter for use when we do events together...

But anyway I found all the info here! And my kids are interested in GB (and the stuff behind building costumes/props).

I'm coming back every couple of days because I work a job that allows me to be online/keep myself busy.

[deadderek]

Hi gang. I know there's an introduction forum, but I figured I'd expand this into a broader question/topic.

I'll pose my question up front. What keeps you coming back to GB Fans, and what special place or role does it occupy in your life?

What keeps me coming back? I love the slower pace of a forum instead of social media. You can leave GBFans for a few days and come back to a great topic and answer at your leisure. Or even...years later. Or a decade later. Or longer.

Let's say I have a question that was answered on this forum 5 years ago. I can quickly and easily use the search bar to pull up an old post with all the comments intact. Someone leaves GBFans and never posts again? Okay. But all their posts are still visible and you can read a coherent thread/conversation. Not on FB. Someone deletes their profile and their "old" comments are nuked rendering some "old" posts incoherent to anyone reading. I absolutely love being able to go back and quickly refer to topics and threads, which you can't really do in the same way on FB, Instagram, etc.

Social media? You can easily miss out on discussion just because of the overwhelming amount of newer posts at any given moment than can bury a topic you would have been interested in. GBFans doesn't have an algorithm pushing specific threads up and/or down. I guess you could say that's more of an annoyance with social media when it comes to group conversation.

Also I love that GBFans has been a stable presence in my life. Even as busy as my life gets for the past 20ish or so years I can always pop in here and talk Ghostbusters with fellow fans.