This is a guest post from Hyper Berry sharing her My Place in Poptropica story, which is all about one’s Poptropica journey. Enjoy!
Thanks to the PHB staff for the warm welcome! Anyway, to set the stage, here’s a quick lightning round of My Place in Poptropica!
Hiya, fellow Poptropicans! The name’s Hyper Berry, and I’ve been a Poptropica fan for as long as I can remember (and long before I could speak full sentences!). Throughout my childhood, Pop was one of the few online games I frequently came back to, despite not knowing how to fully complete an island quest (I was a naïve kid when it came to understanding Poptropica). Fast forward to early 2025, when I replayed it on Flashpoint, just to relive nostalgia from years past.
Little did I know, that playing for nostalgic reasons would make me hyperfixated on Poptropica, and throughout 2025 and this year, I’ve bought many Pop merch items, such as various books, one of the Jazwares plushies (Cool Boy to be exact!), and custom plushes of Oliver Hartman (from the graphic novels and comics), Ned Noodlehead, and Director D (these are just a few of the Pop merch I own, I have lots more!)
Some Poptropica-related facts about me are that my favorite islands are Night Watch Island and Back Lot Island, and my favorite Poptropican is Oliver Hartman (I relate to both his comic and graphic novel counterparts), and if we’re talking about in-game Poptropicans, it’s Ned Noodlehead (I know Ned is hated, but I still like him anyways).
Let’s get the elephant (or Poptropican) out of the room, and move on to the meat of this post!
Here’s an early version of the first strip of the Poptropica comic strip by Paul Gilligan and Kory Merritt, where Oliver and Jorge get teleported into an island inhabited by monkey people. It looks just like the final strip, but there’s one visual difference.
Jorge has his orange hair here! As shown here, and in the concept art of the scrapped animated series. I’m not sure why they changed his hair color to black, but I assume it’s to avoid clashing with Oliver’s hair color (which is somewhat similar enough from Jorge’s original hair color).
And to answer the question y’all have been thinking while reading this, how did I come across this early version of the first strip?
Well, the answer is quite straightforward. A few months ago, I was looking for obscure info/images of Oliver Hartman (and the graphic novels in general) online, and came across former Poptropica web developer Paul Chapman’s now-deleted website directory for the promotional site for Mystery of the Map, some miscellaneous ads for Pop in the mid-2010s, and a handful of the comic strips. As I dug deeper into the comics section, I found this piece of Poptropica lost media, and as a lost media enthusiast myself, I genuinely felt enthralled finding a piece of media that probably hasn’t been seen since 2014.
Poptropica as a whole means a lot to me. On top of that, I was at Hot Topic a month ago (to buy spiked cuffs) and when I went to checkout, the cashier noticed the plush keychain (basically a tiny shaped pillow) of Ned Noodlehead that I had hanging on my bag, and the cashier immediately said “IS THAT A POPTROPICA KEYCHAIN?!” out of excitement, and soon after, we started chatting about what our favorite islands were (her favorite was Poptropolis Games). She quickly called over one of her coworkers to look at my Ned keychain, and we all said “POPTROPICA IN 2026?!”. During those moments, I lit up like a bunch of holiday lights, and it also adds to why Pop means a lot to me.
Anyways, this concludes the post. Until my next guest post (if that happens sometime in the future), toodles, folks!
Hope you enjoyed this “My Place in Poptropica” story! If you did, you’ll probably enjoy our other MPIP stories here on the PHB.
If you haven’t already shared your story, we invite you to send in your own. Interested in writing for the PHB under a different Pop-topic? Take a look at our Write for the PHB page for ideas, guidelines, and more!
