We have stuff!

And a new face!

'Merch' is such an unpleasant word, don't you think?

It's not that the 'eeuurgh' sound you emit when throwing up your breakfast is given greater emphasis in the shortening of 'merchandise', but that the word has come to mean any physical item with a logo on it. The insistence being, of course, that said item has come into existence to promote whatever brand the logo represents, rather than for its own joyous sake.

Which makes me do a sick in my mouth when announcing that you can now get PC Zone meeuurghch! And right now, until October 26th, there’s a 25% discount on everything!

The reason for offering PC Zone ‘stuff’ (ah, much nicer) isn’t because anyone has asked for it, or because research has been commissioned into what you secretly desire, or even because I need the cash. It came about because after the 30th Anniversary party in the summer, I wanted to thank my co-organisers, Jamie and Will, for their considerable support in ensuring we had a great venue for the evening and for reaching out to enough people to ensure we could fill it on the night.

I settled on getting a couple of mugs made up and tried a couple of merch sites to see how expensive it would be and, as it turned out, for single items it was a tiny bit cheaper and a hell of a lot easier to just to set up an online store.

I then thought I’d get myself a couple of t-shirts made up, because, why not? They actually turned out ok. Here’s one of them after a fifth wash – just before the heavens opened up to offer a sixth:

Right now there’s not the greatest selection of stuff, admittedly, but it’s authentically PC Zone and in the absence of anyone else offering anything better, I figured I’d keep the store open and see if anyone is interested in acquiring anything. If enough people are, maybe I’ll put in a bit more effort and get some professional designs made up. In the meantime, if there’s anything you’d like to see changed or added, let me know in the comments below and I’ll see what can be done.

Of course, being a store, we (“PCZ Team”) are credited a small amount on each item sold. Around £1 for a mug and £4-5 for a t-shirt. It would be nice if we could put that lolly (£12.75 currently) towards rewarding contributors for their efforts, but we’ll see how it goes.

Speaking of contributors, there’s a new name to add to the roster: Rik. (Yes, just Rik.) Rik is one half of the A Force For Good team (the other being Stoo), a site that we might lazily call a retro PC gaming blog, but is in actual fact a carefully curated hub of new reviews of old games that in many cases have long fallen into undeserved obscurity.

Some readers may recall it was Force For Good that provided the most complete and objective history of PC Zone ever committed to the internet. If you’ve not read the eight-part series before, you absolutely should.

Rik’s first piece for PC Zone Lives will be up soon. If at some point in the future his article disappears, the site goes dead, and you hear categorically untrue reports that I’ve been spotted in the Cayman Islands, you can take it to mean the store has been doing a lot better than initially anticipated.