Mask of Destiny officially turned 23 years old on the 5th of July last month, though I was not able to make a post on the day as I originally intended. I decided it might better to save this for our site’s busiest day of the year (810NICLE Day), when my words of appreciation would reach more of the community.

I give thanks to Mask of Destiny’s staff and affiliates who have contributed to the site across it’s many years. The site’s redesign and continued operations would also not be possible without the people we have now, and your work has made the site and it’s community stronger than it has ever been. They’ve been hard at work all year with their own projects, as well as preparing for today’s events.

I also give thanks to our readers, and the BIONICLE Community as a whole. It has been about 9 years since the last official set was released, if you exclude the promotional Brick Built Tahu(s) and Takua. Your combined efforts still produce new content daily across the internet. New MOCs, artwork, stories, videos, and other forms of creativity you’ve applied to the theme, show up in every place where I can find user created content.

I was displaying at BrickUniverse back in June, where the public frequently mistakes Bionicle MOCs for other things. It has been a running gag among AFOLs in my area that the theme is actually “Transformers”. This time around though, I was surprised that the majority of the public said “BIONICLE!” when approaching my display. Many of these were children who can’t even have been old enough to remember G2 on store shelves, so they discovered it somewhere else. I can only imagine they discovered it from the sheer amount of fan-made content the community has been producing in recent years.

I thank you all for what you do, and for continuing to be apart of Mask of Destiny.