Author: Gentle Dolphin

Hello, everyone! My name is Gentle Dolphin, and I have been a long-time fan of Poptropica. I like drawing, baking, and being an overall dork. In real life, I'm pretty much the same except for the fact that my hair is brown instead of pink. You can befriend me on Poptropica if you'd like. My username is "magicalyre".
Contests

👻 The PHB’s 16th Halloween Costume Contest: Ghosts vs Hunters 🏹

Gentle Dolphin

🎃 Submissions are now closed. Check out our winners here! 🎃

🎵Night falls on a spooky scene, Pop fans dressing up for Halloween! In a spooky fog, on the Pop Help Blog… For our contest, there’s a ghostly theme!🎵

Welcome, everyone, to the Poptropica Help Blog. It’s time for the 16th PHB Halloween Costume Contest! Inspired by how Poptropica ghosted the fandom and the game, we’re returning to an older format for this year’s theme: Ghosts vs Hunters! 👻🏹

For every ghost wandering the earth, there is a hunter searching for it. For this year’s costume contest, we’re on the hunt for the spookiest specters and the coolest catchers. You may stand firmly for either Team Ghosts or Team Hunters, but you always have the option to play both sides. 😉

To get in the spirit of things (pun fully intended 😜), the PHB split between the two teams and made some costumes to inspire everyone!

“The Pale Impaler” by Slanted Fish
“Magic the Friendly Ghost” by Magic Kid
“The Lucky Specter” by Lucky Joker
“Spectral Bride” by Smart Bubbles
“Gentle Gravedigger” by Gentle Dolphin
“Vampiric Vanguard” by Purple Paw
“Sporty Boo-a Bowman” by Sporty Boa

👻Rules👻

  1. 🕵️Create your costumes on Poptropica! You may enter as many costumes as you’d like for either or both categories, and you may create them on any version of Poptropica (desktop, Steam, Flashpoint, and such). However, each person is eligible to win just once per category.
  2. 📸Take a screenshot! We recommend that you take your screenshot on either the character customizer screen or the Costumizer window on PoptropiCon. Here’s how to take a screenshot. Please crop the image to show just your character.
  3. 💻Upload your picture to the internet! Upload your picture to image-sharing websites like Imgur, Instagram, Twitter, and Discord. Once you’ve uploaded your picture, comment on this post with an image link so we can see it! Also, let us know which category you’re entering and any additional information like the costume’s name.

🪦Tips for Creating Your Costumes🪦

🏆Prizes🏆

  • 📆You may submit your costumes until Monday, October 27 @11:59 p.m. EST.
  • 🎃On Halloween (October 31), we’ll post our favorite costumes from each category on the front page of the PHB for all to enjoy.
  • 🥇A grand prize winner will be selected for each category. Each grand prize winner will win a copy of Poptropica on Steam or a Poptropica merch item of their choice from Zazzle (up to US$20) as well as a portrait of their Poptropican from a PHB author of their choice!
  • 🤵Winning costumes will be immortalized in our Look Book, but we’ll also have honorable mentions for just the post, not page.

Special thanks to Magic Kid for drawing the banner and PHB header for this year’s costume contest! 👩‍🎨

Good luck to all of you ghoulish ghosts and hardy hunters in Poptropica! We can’t wait to see your boo-tiful costumes! Now log in and slay! 💘

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

PHB Specials

The PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collage 🎂🎭🖼️

Gentle Dolphin

Gather ’round, Poptropicans! After twenty-nine days of drawing and posting, the PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collab comes to a close. Now, on the final day of Poptropica’s 18th anniversary month, we begin this masquerade with paper faces on parade! 🎭

We present to you… the PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collage! 🎂🖼️

A round of applause to all 32 artists who contributed to this year’s birthday collage! These internet illustrators accepted our invitation and filled the Poptropica Help Ballroom with 54 masked characters. Let us admire the attendees’ fashion and pay tribute to their talented designers. 👨‍🎨👗🧥

Before we end this celebration, let us show our gratitude to the Poptropica Creators for bringing this game to life and to Coolmath Games for keeping it alive on their website. Throughout its life, Poptropica soared to great heights and plummeted to devastating lows. Despite everything, the Creators put their all into the game while the fans showed their support. Here’s to 18 years of Poptropica! We may hide our faces tonight, but we will never hide our love for this game! 🎭🖥️

Thank you all for coming to our party, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

PHB Specials

You Are Cordially Invited to the PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collab 🎂🎭

Gentle Dolphin

Submissions are now closed. Stay tuned for the birthday collage!

Greetings, everyone! We have celebrated Poptropica’s 16th and 17th birthdays with community art collabs, and this year will be no different! Now that Poptropica is old enough to be a legal adult, this year’s art collab will have a classy theme…

🎭 Masquerade Ball 💃

Masquerade parties inspire mystery, intrigue, and creativity. Dress to the nines with your favorite mask and have a grand time at the finest birthday party this side of the internet! All you have to do is follow three simple steps:

1. Draw a character wearing a mask. They can be a canon Pop character, a popsona, or even a character from another piece of media. Please save your drawing as a ✨transparent .png file✨; doing this makes it easier for us to add your art to the collage. Here are two examples drawn by me and Magic Kid:

2. Upload your picture to the internet. Post your drawing to a website that supports transparent images such as Imgur, Discord, DeviantArt, and Twitter/X. You may send us a maximum of three images.

3. Comment on this post with a link to your drawing. Copy and paste your image link to a comment on this very post so we can see it. Along with the link, please add your Poptropican name and/or one social media username that you want listed in the artist credits.

We will be accepting submissions for this collab until Monday, September 29th @ 11:59 pm EST. Just like our previous birthday collabs, we will gather everyone’s drawings and edit them into one big birthday collage. Let’s make Poptropica’s 18th birthday a magical one! 🎉✨

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

YouTubers

Poptropica is a Fan-Favorite MMO? It’s Not Just a Theory! 💙🎮🏆

Gentle Dolphin

Hello, Poptropicans! Welcome to the Poptropica Help Blog, the blog where childhood game nostalgia is 24/7!

Back in June, we covered a post by Team Theorist that features Poptropica in a carousel of classic virtual worlds. Now, Team Theorist has referenced Poptropica again, this time on the YouTube channel that started it all: The Game Theorists! 🎮💚

This community poll which gained 100K+ votes asks viewers, “From these options, which of these childhood MMOs were your FAVORITE growing up?” Club Penguin is the obvious winner here on Massively Multiplayer Online games, but our beloved Poptropica firmly stands in second place, beating Webkinz and Neopets. Way to go, Pop!!! 💙🎉

Some people in the post’s comment section have shared their fond memories of Poptropica, and a couple of these comments were liked the The Game Theorists themselves! Here are some of our favorites:

It’s true that Poptropica is a classic in the kids virtual world scene, but does it deserve to be called a true MMO? On our Discord server, the PHC, BlueShade pointed out how Pop is grouped with other browser MMOs despite not primarily being an MMO. Sure, common rooms and friend pages are part of the game, but Pop is better known for its story-rich islands than its multiplayer features. 🤔

On that note, great stories inspire great theories! (You see where I’m going with this?)

Dear Team Theorist, we would love to see an official Game Theory episode about Poptropica! We believe that a Poptropica Game Theory episode would be a fun nostalgia trip for fans as well as a great way to revive discussion surrounding the game. Matpat already covered the Coolmath Games ARG, so please give Tom a chance to cover another game hosted on CMG. Plus, like FNAF and Hangman, Poptropica has its own Balloon Boy! 🎈👦

There are plenty of interesting topics to cover in an episode such as hidden lore, character motivations, islands disappearing and reappearing, and even Poptropican anatomy. We in the Pop community have made our fair share of conspiracy theories, and we’d love to have you throw your hat in the ring! Please consider making a Poptropica theory because it would be a fascinatingly pop-tastic trip down memory lane. But hey, that’s just a theory… a PHB theory!

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

Poppies

Poppies 2025: The Nominating 🏆✍️

Gentle Dolphin

The nomination round is now over. Stay tuned for the voting round on Thursday, July 10th!

Stand up and cheer because Poppies season is here! 👏🏆

The Poppies is our annual Poptropica community awards event held in honor of the PHB’s birthday on July 26th. Throughout the month of July, readers get to nominate and vote for their favorites to win all sorts of fun fan awards. This is our eleventh Poppies, so let’s waste no time getting ready for the celebration!

Let’s kick things off with the nomination round, which starts now and ends on Tuesday, July 8th! Please give us your suggestions for who and what should be nominated for the following twelve categories:

Poptropica Awards

Club Strength: Robots own the night.

🌄 Best Character Arc: Several characters throughout Poptropica’s history have changed over the course of their stories. Which character do you think had the greatest transformation, for better or worse?

🤖 Best Robot: Many robots have graced Poptropica over the years. Such examples include Mordred’s mechanical animals, the Steamworks Island automatons, the Mega Fighting Bots, and most of Game Show Island‘s cast. So many to choose, but which bot is the best?

😋 Tastiest Food: Poptropica has featured foods ranging from a simple slice of cake to a feast fit for a Viking. Which of these digital delectables looks the most delicious?

🏠 Best Island to Reside In: If you were a citizen of Poptropica, which island would you call home? Would you pick the tropical Shark Tooth Island, the fantastical Fairy Tale Island, or the aptly-named Home Island?

😡🔚 Worst Ending: Unresolved plot threads, anti-climatic bosses, and unearned achievements are a few ways an ending can fail miserably. Which ending is the most egregious in your eyes?

😄🔚 Best Ending: Let’s end this section on a positive note. A good ending doesn’t necessarily have to be happy; it just needs to be satisfying to the player (or reader, if you’re a fan of the books). Which ending was wrapped with the neatest little bow?

Community Awards

🎨 Best Fan Art of the Year: Fans contribute so much amazing art to the Pop community, but which piece should be declared this year’s finest? You can find potential candidates on social media, the PHC Discord server‘s pop-art channel ,  and our DeviantArt group. (Anything published on/after July 2024 is eligible.)

🎥 Best Fan Video of the Year: There are many types of Poptropica fan videos like Let’s Plays, funny memes, nostalgic retrospectives, and more. Which video is the most deserving of this award? (Anything published on/after July 2024 is eligible.)

✍️ Best Guest Post of the Year: The PHB has featured hundreds of guests posts from fans all over the internet, and everyone is welcome to share their ideas! Which guest post from this past year did you enjoy the most? (Anything published on/after July 2024 is eligible.)

😍 Cutest OC: This year, we decided to highlight some of the community’s Original Characters! This particular category will focus on our little cutie patooties. Which Poptropica OC do you think is the most adorable face in the fandom?

😎 Coolest OC: Continuing on the OC train, this category will focus on all things awesome. Many of our original characters tell epic tales of adventure or just look pretty rad. There are so many cool Poptropica OCs, but which one is 20% cooler than the rest?

👕 Best Cosplay: IRL Poptropica cosplays may not be common, but they are a nice treat when they appear. These can be full-on character costumes or normal outfits inspired by Pop (aka “bounding”). Who’s the best-dressed fan in this regard? You can find cosplays on social media, and we’ve featured a few on Community Creations a few years ago!

💃 Poppies Parade 🕺

Check out these awesome fits from the PHB team! Plus, check out our previous Poppies attire in our Look Book for more inspo.

Purple Paw
Gentle Dolphin
Slanted Fish
LJ
Magic Kid
Sporty Boa
Smart Bubbles
2025 Poppies banner and illustration by Magic Kid

Special thanks to Magic Kid for drawing this year’s Poppies art! 🪄🥽

Now it’s up to you, the readers, to determine this year’s nominees! You may nominate up to three picks per category in the comments below. You don’t have to nominate for every category, but it’s highly encouraged. The nomination round ends on Tuesday, July 8th.

The most popular suggestions will move on to the voting round! Stay tuned for that, along with info for the Poppies party! 🎉👀

⬇️ Nominate in the comments! ⬇️

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬