This post is part of our Poptropica Yearbook series. If you missed the intro, check it out on the 2007 Rewind and view the follow-up 2008 Rewind.
It’s a fine time to check out 2009! With both the Poptropica Creators’ Blog and Poptropica Help Blog in full swing, the online Poptropica community was growing exponentially, even inspiring new fan sites.
The year kicked off with Big Nate Island in February, after months of Big Nate comics shared on the Creators’ Blog.
While sneak peeks for upcoming islands from the Creators were wildly popular, the PHB took a step further and started a series known as PHB Sneak Peeks. These were glances at things even the Creators hadn’t revealed:
Over on the PHB, we were up to lots of shenanigans as well. In April, for example, we had great success with our “Club Penguin Help Blog” prank that fooled even the Poptropica Creators — if only for a little while.
Before our blog was even a year old, we reached one million site views, so we celebrated by giving away some of those rare and coveted “Monster Carnival leaks.” These were the early days of Poptropica glitching and trading!
That summer, the Poptropica community grew to include a Poptropica Help Forum (the PHF was created by Coderkid, who later became PHB staff) and Poptropica Help Chat (PHC) (which was hosted on Xat). Both brought good times, but only the PHC remains to this day, and we’re on Discord now.
We also began a monthly Poptropica magazine, and PHB readers voted on the name The Poptropican’s 911, for all your Poptropica emergencies. The first issue was published in June, and the series ran for a year. Also in June, the long-awaited Astro-Knights Island was released!
Another big thing that happened in Poptropica in 2009 was the launch of the store. (Can you even imagine a Poptropica without the store??) A hundred credits were given for each island completed, and players happily bought cool new items like the Colorizer, Electrify, and more. Credits could also be bought with real money. The store looked a little different back then, too.
On July 26, the PHB celebrated its first birthday – and by then had reached 1.5 million site views. A few days later, the Multiverse feature was released, and that became the staple way of partying it up on Poptropica. (Too bad it’s no longer around… but we do still have common rooms and clubhouses.)
To wrap up the year, Counterfeit Island finally came out (in its early access period, and after half a year of waiting!) in late December, bringing the map total up to ten islands. (Counterfeit and Astro-Knights were the only islands with early access tickets.)
That concludes the 2009 page of the Poptropica Yearbook! Stay tuned for the next pages, and soon 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 Poptropica was going to have noses? Heh, I’ve seen weirder times…
*Looks back at that creepy guy in underwear whenever I don’t save and quit my game*😰
Are you referring to Poptropica’s 2012 April Fool’s joke? That one smelled suspicious… 👃
Yes I do! 😉
It’d be even funnier if they said that the Poptropicans were going to be replaced with penguins, be a overhead game, and we’re going to get fluffy round pets called narfs…
wait, that doesn’t seem right.
Remember when Reality TV was going to come out before Counterfeit?
Yup! The delay of the original Reality TV Island is mentioned in the next page of the yearbook… 🙂
There was this Tron ad once a while back. After I did the mini-game though, the suit that I was wearing during the mini-game was still on me and when I tried to take it off……. holey heck what happened?? I turned into that creepy underwear guy except that I was a girl. Fortunately I could use the randimizer cheat code and gender swap back.. but some of that creepy underwear girl still briefly comes up whenever I opened up the old friends page.
Now this just sounds like some sort of creepy pasta.
This was the year I joined Poptropica! Jeez, these old screenshots take me way back. I remember the release of Counterfeit Island like it was yesterday….
By the way, when did they get rid of the Multiverse? Such a good feature… sad it’s gone.
Multiverse officially went away with the update to the friends profile that came in January this year, but you can still access the Multiverse through a glitching trick: this link from idk brings you to the old friends page, which has a Multiverse tab.
We do not speak of creepy underwear guy in this household.
Funny enough, that was the main reason why I haven’t logged back into that game in probably a year or two. Thankfully I got back in and learned my lesson. But holey heck has there been a lot that I’ve missed! (that time when the island map in Poptropica was ginormous)
Ah yes, also known as the “afro guy glitch” back in the day.
Theres too much great features that are gone. Whats the point of removing everything? The friends page is practically a members lounge, store items SUCK, multiverse is gone… ;(
If you want money, then freaking stop making the little USELESS features for members only. The ad scenes on islands were fun, because a majority of them gave you prizes AND Poptropica got money. Just add advertisements on SUI islands!
At least the glitching community keeps things interesting for me.
Many features are being removed/replaced presumably because of old technology. However, I agree that the execution could be greatly improved.