Hey Poptropicans! Have you ever wondered what Poptropica was like in its earliest stages? You’re about to find out.
Over the next few weeks, here on the Poptropica Help Blog, we’ll be bringing you our Rewind series for years past, culminating into a full Poptropica Yearbook. We thought it would be fun to take a nostalgic look at where we’ve come from, and where Poptropica has taken us, so get ready for a blast into the past! Our first stop: the year 2007.
Poptropica was officially launched to the public in September 2007, although the exact date has been forgotten in the sands of time. From what we’ve heard, even the yellow blimp hadn’t arrived yet — with Early Poptropica being the only island around, you simply fell into a hole to begin your adventures.
While no Poptropica blogs had yet sprung up to document these beginnings, an old YouTube video uploaded by Codien, an old friend/former staffer on the PHB, gives us a glimpse into what Poptropica was like back in the day.
Notice the ‘BETA’ beside the Poptropica logo at the top (and ignore the recording software watermark). Apparently, the game was still considered to be in a beta testing stage back then — look at those primitive icons for the Items and Map!
Here’s some more fun stuff. The Poptropica Creators shared these images of some prototype designs of what Poptropican characters might’ve looked like, as well as concepts for how Poptropica gameplay might’ve turned out.
And one final tidbit: did you know that Poptropica was almost named Poptropolis? In that same post about concepts, the Creators shared, “If a competitor didn’t come up with a similar-sounding name, we never would’ve had the islands of Poptropica.”
That competitor, by the way, was Nicktropolis, a virtual world by Nickelodeon that, unlike Pop, didn’t last. As former Creator Mitch Krpata confirms in an interview years later, it’s because of the “tropic” part of the name that they came up with the idea of separate island adventures.
Anyway, that concludes the 2007 page of the Poptropica Yearbook! Stay tuned for the next pages… we’ll be traveling from 2008 to 2013. (From 2014 onwards, we started our end-of-year Rewind series, which pretty much covers the same thing!) In fact, you’ll be able to view the complete series on a new page in our Pop Plus collection, titled The Poptropica Yearbook.
While you’re here, sign the yearbook by commenting? ✏️
🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺 
Remember when you had to run back and forth just to get that right color balloon from that balloon stand before the colorizor?
Good times. :’)
Poptropica has surely gone through a lot of changes, too.
I started playing Poptropica from 2015. It has changed tremendously since then. I think that after 2020 it will become a 3d high graphics PC game.
I assure you, it’s not 3D in 2021!😂
I remember when I first created my main outfit. And I remembered that was after my outfit before that, which was when I was doing Super Villian Island. I desided to go for that long hair from that Vampire Curse costume, keep the metal plate I had and go for the shades that are probably the best of the best.
That ring master cape and that coat were my last adjustments… too bad that I can’t access my magic mirors gold card.
RIP Magic Mirrors
To this day I still don’t know how to play Soup Words or that number thing.
It’s not there anymore right? Those games I mean.
Maybe soup words is still there. You an play the number thing on your own on non-SUIs if you check your inventory.
Then again, all those games may still be playable on non-SUIs, but I haven’t interacted anyone there for months let alone seen anybody there.
By number thing, do you mean sudoku?
Soup words isn’t in the arcade, unless it’s somewhere else, I never really checked the non-SUI islands yet. I’ll check it out later
I think,that name does sound familier.
You can still go to games on non-SUI. I tried it, works fine. There’s even the wizard game from Wimpy Wonderland there. (Twisted Wizard, correct?) You can find the games tab in the islands section of the dropdown menu.
I remember when there was more players in chat rooms :(.
The common rooms?
WOW
Wow, here come memories of sitting in my first grade computer lab in 2007, discovering Poptropica with my class. Good times….
stop I’m actually gonna cry (I started playing in 2009, Poptropica is literally my childhood)
Same. Thankful for this game and this community!