Helloooo, Poptropicansss… are you ready for this year’s top scarers? Of the many spooktacular costumes who dared enter the PHB’s 6th annual Halloween competition, the party of fabulous October fashionistas has been narrowed down to a list of fourteen winners – in celebration of the PHB’s recent milestone of 14 million hits. And without further ado, here they are:
‘Chucky from “Child’s Play”‘ by Scary Plug
‘Crazy Killer Clown’ by Purple Stomper
‘Cyborg Gremlin’ by perfectgamer115 (braveshadow148)
‘Death Doll’ by docwho9099
‘Demon Time of Death’ by Cool Octopus
‘Evil Dark Cloak’ by Mighty Thunder
‘Failed Experiment’ by Straw ✿ (mint2803)
‘Ghostly Admiral’ (originally untitled) by Striped Grape
‘Hypno Hunter’ by MrKeith1234
‘Psychotic Clown’ by Smart Sky
‘Psychotic Ghost Girl’ by Spotted Dragon
‘Shogun Demon’ by jotham yacob
‘Summoning Devil with Terrifying Hair’ by Lone Flame
‘Witch’ by Ghastly (*Ghostgirl*)
[BONUS] Slanted Fish (PHB owner)
These costumes are listed in alphabetical order by title, and have also permanently earned their place on the PHB’s Costumes page! Just to complete the collection, I put my own (Slanted Fish) Halloween outfit in the mix, which was also recently featured on the Creators’ Blog. 🙂
Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to all the winners – enjoy the honor of having your Costumes featured! Whether or not your costume is listed, we hope you enjoyed creating your costume and looking at this creepy collection. Heh, heh, heh…
Hey Poptropicans! The Best of Land: Obstacle Courses have been announced on the Creators’ Blog, and without further ado, here they are (click to enlarge and view captions):
From Comical Ant, here’s an ant farm maze. Mr. Silva from Shrink Ray Island would feel at home here!
From Dangerous Fox, a very spelunky obstacle course.
From Fast Lizard, it looks like Myron Van Buren has another devious challenge in store for his, er, houseguests.
From Prickly Fish, this one packs a lot of gameplay into a small space.
Serious Bird’s Village won the readers’ poll. He’s still climbing the ladders of success.
From Shifty Bubbles, this one takes you up, down, and underwater.
From Shy Paw, this intricate course will take you to every corner of the screen!
From Silly Whale, it’s nice to see someone who just wants players to have a bouncin’ good time.
From Silver Lightning (another repeat Land challenge champ), this multi-screen course is truly a-maze-ing!
From Silver Sun, we would have liked this no matter what, but the sword-wielding statue certainly made its point.
Cast a vote for your favorite on the poll in the sidebar of the Creators’ Blog! As of now, Silver Lightning’s maze in the lead by a fair bit. These are the current results:
Comical Ant (14%)
Dangerous Fox (2%)
Fast Lizard (7%)
Prickly Fish (4%)
Serious Bird (5%)
Shifty Bubbles (6%)
Shy Paw (5%)
Silly Whale (8%)
Silver Lightning (37%)
Silver Sun (7%)
Also, congrats to Serious Bird, who was not only featured among the best Obstacle Courses above, but was also the readers’ poll winner for his fast food Village! Delicious.
“From Serious Bird, you don’t have to go far for a bite to eat in this town. Does the building on the right shake in an earthquake?”
The next and final Land challenge is the theme of Haunted House, and the Creators will be featuring the best ones on Halloween (Friday, Oct 31)! Remember, the Land public preview itself ends on the 30th, so if you’re a non-member, be sure to make the most of this cool feature while you can. 🙂
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Poptropica has continued to tweet behind-the-scenes pics, and fresh from this pile are these monkey ruins, with no further explanation. Just speculating here: perhaps these are related to the monkey sneak peeks we saw earlier, which may mean an island based on the Poptropica comics with Jorge and Oliver. We’ll have to wait and see! 😛
Here’s another behind-the-scenes look at something called Racer Island. As cool as this sounds, though, it was an island concept that has been abandoned (much like WaterThrill Island). 😦
In other news, don’t forget to enter (if you dare, that is) the PHB’s 6th annual Halloween costume contest! Fourteen winners will be announced this Friday in time for Halloween, and if you win, your costume will be featured on the PHB! Pop to the top, Poptropicans.
What isn’t happening in the world of Poptropica? Prepare to have your mind blown with all the new things happening in the Poptropica universe! 😀
Poptropica Help Group on Steam
If you’re looking for a way to connect and play games with other Poptropica lovers, then look no further – we’ve recently started a group on Steam entitled the Poptropica Help Steam Group, in which we’ll post announcements, hold contests, and host events for playing some fun games! If you have a Steam account, then pop on over to the PHG by clicking here.
Do note that you will need a Steam account to join our Poptropica Steam community – it’s an incredible service, so if you don’t have one already, it won’t hurt to get one. 🙂
And by the way, Poptropica – step up your game (quite literally) and get Poptropica on Steam! That would be awesome! 😛
Zomberry SUI & Creator discovered
The next island to be an SUI, after Shrink Ray, might just be Zomberry Island – the reason being that Tania Lynne, a programmer for Poptropica I recently discovered online, posted a screenshot of Zomberry in SUI (sound-updated island) format on her portfolio site.
Tania Lynne apparently has been working for Poptropica since 2010 to present, which is pretty impressive – she’s worked on tons of islands including Cryptids, Mystery Train, and Monster Carnival. Do you think she has an alias? Could she be the Black Widow, for example? Tell me what you think in the comments. 😀
Over-tweeting?
Twitter has been becoming one of the main outlets for the Poptropica Creators to release behind the scenes shtuff – back in the early PCB days, similar activities were pretty common. We’ve gotten some pretty epic unused art from islands, release schedules, and Land creations from their Twitter – but there seems to be one thing wrong: they retweet almost everything tweeted at them.
Why is that a bad thing? For one thing, Poptropica is a kids’ game and some of the things being retweeted are not so kid-friendly… posts with hashtags including some innap words have been seen on the profile, including hashtags such as “#fthepolice” or “bad***”, or the phrase “h*ll yeah”. Another tweet also linked to a different site where a post made by a player used some questionable language.
To be fair, their Twitter is aimed at those 13 or older, but whether this type of language should be tossed around to the (even older) Poptropica audience is debatable.
Educational Videos
A video was released over a year ago by the Phaebus Media Group entitled “Poptropica by PhaebusMediaGroup“. It was 30 seconds long and consisted of two Poptropicans on a beach.
One Poptropican has a kite, which he shows to his friend – and there’s a parrot named Pippin, for some reason. That’s the plot of the video, and while it’s pretty kiddish, you can’t deny that the animation quality isn’t half bad. Someone didn’t just make this for fun – as you’ll see if you check the video description:
Poptropica is an online animation resource for children. Phaebus Media Group created this animation as part of a pitch process.
While I’m not so sure about the online animation resource part, I do want to mention the “as part of a pitch” part. The video ends quite abruptly, just as the boy points out that there are two big triangles and two little triangles on his kite.
Obviously, it’s intended to be an educational video, which suggests that Poptropica was working on an educational video series at some point last year. Whether it happens anytime in the future or not is a mystery, but now we do have some foresight for a possible future project.
Hey guys! There are a lot of recent tweets and posts to cover, so let’s get started! First off, I want to emphasize this new video that has been added to the Creator’s “Inside Poptropica” YouTube playlist:
…Does this mean that Balloon Boy, who has been floating aimlessly since the release of Counterfeit Island, may be returning soon? Part of me is thrilled and part of me is sad that we may not be able to look in the sky and find him there any longer. Here is what has been said on the subject:
As you can see, Balloon Boy may soon become a Balloon Man…
In other news, Poptropica is still buzzing about Tumblr! The awesomeness has even spread to classrooms, and look, even the PHB’s 1D costumes are in the mix! (Click to view full images!)
Ugh, I hate it when I’m stuck on the loading page with a ton of vines across my screen. 😛
Plus, some more concept art has been released! The first two shown in the gallery are for the current Monster High: Freaky Fusion ad(see below). There’s also a just-for-fun sketch captioned “tongue tied” where a Poptropica artist experiments with crazy tongues on characters, and another of a boy Poptropican shooting hoops on the moon (and here they link to the Lunar Colony trailer).
For girls only, a Monster High: Freaky Fusion ad is available on Night Watch Island (there’s even an icon on the Map you can use to get there). Inside, along with a quiz game and the promo posters, there’s a freaky portal on the right – it doesn’t have a purpose, but it does look cool.
You’ll find two prizes on the top floor: Sirena Follower and Fusion Power (see below for images – thanks to Scary Plug of PWSP for the pics and insight!).
The Poptropica mobile app has gotten a couple of updates: first, Survival: Escape! (episode 5) is now available for 99 cents. (Although, of course, you can just play it for free online! Plus, if you need help, check out our Survival Island Guide.) Also, 3 free Halloween costume packs have been added to the Shop on your home island, and the app icon has even gotten a Halloween makeover! Cute.
“From Cool Sponge, an old-fashioned village that looks like the perfect place to hold the inaugural constitutional convention. (Cool Sponge also made it into Monday’s Dream Homes!)”
“From Creepy Goose, how clever is this? She zoomed way out for a blimp’s-eye view of her village.”
“From Friendly Heart, imagine waking up to that giant shrubbery every morning. It wouldn’t be terrifying at all.”
“From Ice Age, an intricate desert setting. Unfortunately, Ice Age wasn’t a registered user so we can’t share their avatar with you! Always a good idea to save your game.”
“From Mad Comet, here’s a medieval village that seems to be struggling with a dragon problem. (Mad Comet, too, was featured on Monday!)”
“From Neat Tiger, we can see why they needed to build this village above the flood plain. Looks like they’ve got everything up there!”
“From Popular Shadow, it’s another dragon! Let’s hope this one is a protector. If not, we know exactly what to do (Red Dragon Island reference).”
“From Serious Bird, you don’t have to go far for a bite to eat in this town. Does the building on the right shake in an earthquake?”
“From Silver Lightning, another underwater-themed world! We’ll take the raft, thank you very much.”
“From White Flyer, it looks like a Poptropica Main Street! Even without the blimp it’s a dead ringer. Well done.”
The next theme in the contest, which runs from October 24 to 26, is Obstacle Course. Check out our Poptropica Labs (Land) walkthrough for help. Good luck everyone!
As for The Best of the Land: Dream Houses, Zany Clown’s treehouse ended up as the best of the best according to readers’ votes. Congrats, Zany Clown! 😀
From Zany Crown, this is a treehouse that stays true to its roots. Just beautiful.
Whether you’re a member battling cards or a non-member throwing smoke bombs, we recommend our PoptropiCon walkthrough (click here!), or our Arabian Nights walkthrough (click here!)! Either way, you’re in for a treat. 😀 If video guides are your cup of tea, check out both islands’ PHB trivia pages.
And yes, there are some spoilers in PoptropiCon Episode 2, possibly Legendary – you’ll just have to find out for yourself! Anyway, when you’ve finished either episode, be sure to check your rank on the World Champions Map: click here for PoptropiCon, episode 2 or here for Arabian Nights, episode 1.
🦄 Ponytropica 🦄 