Author: Slanted Fish

Hello! I'm Slanted Fish, the editor-in-chief and creator of the Poptropica Help Blog (PHB). I'm a writer, Hong Kong native, and Christ follower. My Poptropica username is slantedfish 🐠 Don't forget to be awesome!
Guest Posts, Social Media

Join us for a month of Poptropica videos! 📽

Slanted Fish

The following event is not run by the PHB. Hear it from Isaac, one half of the YouTube channel Dimension Bros, which makes videos about Poptropica and other fandoms.

Hey everyone! I’m Isaac, and along with my best friend Theo, we’re Dimension Bros on YouTube. For the past few weeks, Theo and I have been thinking of what we should do to celebrate Poptropica’s 13th birthday coming up this September. And so Poptropica Month was born! Watch and read more below:

The idea for a Poptropica Month collab came after we started bouncing ideas back and forth about what videos we would make to celebrate Pop’s birthday and decided that our usual 8 videos a month schedule simply would not be enough of a celebration for such a great game. We wanted to make more than 8 videos, but with school coming up for us, that seemed out of the realm of possibility. Enter… the rest of the Poptropica fandom!

We invite all video creators/enthusiasts/YouTubers to join us during the month of September in uploading Poptropica videos. Whether you’re new to sharing on YouTube or you’ve already got a channel with other content, you’re welcome to join this collab! If you’ve been considering starting up a YouTube channel, maybe make a Poptropica Month video as your first video to get off to a good start—after all, there’s a community already here to support you.

Isaac (left) and Theo (right), the Dimension Bros on YouTube.

How can you get started? After watching the video above, take the next step by clicking the link in the video description, which will guide you through joining the Poptropica Month Discord server, sharing the link to your channel with us, and sharing your Pop Month video(s) with us on the Discord server. We’ll include all the Pop Month videos in this master playlist for all to enjoy.

Any kind of video goes, as long as it relates to Poptropica. This could be a simple let’s-play or walkthrough, a top ten list (or a Pop 5, per PHB tradition), a theory about your favorite island, a Poptropica-based song or speedpaint… anything you can imagine! Like to cook? Bake a Poptropica cake! Comedy skits? Maybe you could do a sketch about the Poptropica Creators and their never-ending secrecy of when we’ll be getting the old islands back. Make as few or as many videos as you like—you don’t have to stress about uploading non-stop Pop content like we’ll be doing on Dimension Bros.

Also, you don’t need super fancy equipment to make a decent video! Most Dimension Bros videos are filmed on our phones and edited with iMovie. (There’s free editing software for Windows, too.) It’s more about the creativity than the tools, so don’t be afraid to try with what you’ve got! Just take a look at my setup for videos—yes, my laptop is on a cardboard box.

Behind the scenes of a Dimension Bros video.

Even if you don’t participate in uploading any videos, Poptropica Month is for everyone to enjoy. So when September arrives in just over a week, be sure to go support all the videos posted to the master playlist.

Looking forward to seeing what types of videos you guys will upload for Poptropica Month! Also, NANOBOTS FOR THE WIN!! WHOOOOO!!!

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Isaac from Dimension Bros. If you did, be sure to check out our feature post for Dimension Bros as well as our other Poptropica YouTuber spotlights for more video ideas!

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB, and share blog posts on the PHC.

📰 If you have an idea for a PHB post, send it in! ✨

App, Paradise Island, Sneak Peeks, Social Media

Airways and Animal Jam ✈️🦊

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! In a stunning turn of events, Poptropica has suddenly, somehow managed to do the unexpected: shared actual sneak peek images of something they’re working on, and post a controversial tweet.

Let’s fly into the first thing: sneak peeks! Over on the Creators’ Blog, they shared a post teasing “new stuff” they’re working on. As is the case with their communications these days, the writing is sparse, leaving much to the imagination. But whatever Poptropica Airways is, it’s about to make a landing.

Could planes be the new blimps? That might explain the recent disappearance of the beloved, Poppies-award-winning blimp decor in clubhouses, even while blimps continue to be our Poptropicans’ mode of inter-island travel. But if that’s the case—even conceding that planes might be a more modern form of travel—Poptropica would certainly be losing a very iconic part of its identity! Even the Creators’ Blog uses the blimp in their branding.

And what to make of the blimp photo on the clerk’s desk? Is it a tribute to a soon-to-be past, or will blimps be relegated to being the beat-up rafts to the Phoenix Warbirds of the air? (That’s a Skullduggery Island metaphor, btw.)

Or is this part of a new island adventure? The post does also say they’re working on converting islands, with Time Tangled and Mythology in progress right now—which seems to leave little room for the planning and developing of an entirely new island. But who knows?

Now onto the next juicy news: yes, for the second time in 2020, Poptropica managed to tweet something controversial. (In case you missed it, Poptropica briefly endorsed Joe Biden for US president on Twitter.)

It all started when the Poptropica app reached #1 somewhere in Apple’s App Store, knocking out Fortnite for the top spot. Of course, this called for a celebratory post (and story) on Instagram that started innocently enough, mentioning how they’d outlasted games like Club Penguin and Animal Jam.

But Poptropica’s tone was a little more over-the-top with the gloating on Twitter. In addition to a similar post sharing the same news, Poptropica also responded to a Twitter thread from Animal Jam co-founder Clark Stacey by saying, “First #clubpenguin and now #animaljam too? It’s lonely at the top. #poptropicaforever.” Poptropica’s tweet was pulled in less than a day, but we saved some pics, plus Mr. Stacey’s unamused response, which remains.

Mr. Stacey’s original Twitter commentary had been about the struggles of kids’ game developers being incentivised to create their games for a general audience rather than specifically for the kids category of game lists, as well as Apple’s ambiguity about why they were rejecting game updates to Animal Jam and other kids’ games. And instead of offering sympathy from a fellow kids’ game developer, Poptropica decided to gloat.

The Animal Jam co-founder swiftly called them out for being “childish” and “sloppyheaded,” adding that “the Poptropica I know was above this sort of thing.” Which brings us to the question, what’s up with Poptropica’s lackluster communications to players lately? Since Skinny Moon left in 2017, the years of general silence (with occasional vague updates) that followed were unimpressive enough, but this year’s (albeit deleted) Twitter blunders are bewildering. We sure do miss the days when Poptropica had a dedicated social media manager who took the time of day to respond to players’ questions!

By the way, Fortnite’s fall from the top spot is likely related to the game recently being pulled from both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store for trying to circumvent the stores’ 30% “tax” on in-app purchases by offering a direct-payment option away from the app stores.

In-app purchases give a cut of the cost to the app stores.

But Poptropica does the exact same thing: even though you can buy a Pop membership through an in-app purchase (which gives a cut of the costs to the app store), you can also buy a membership directly on Poptropica’s website, which would allow Pop to keep 100% of the earnings. No matter where you buy the membership, it gets applied to your account on the app (as well as on the computer). So perhaps some sympathy for the predicaments of games like Fortnite is in order. After all, Poptropica could very well be at the same risk.

You can buy a membership on the app and directly from Poptropica’s website.

That wraps up these peculiar updates! What do you think Poptropica Airways will be? Thoughts on Poptropica’s Twitter habits? Hoorays for the app’s achievement? Sound off in the comments below!

~Slanted Fish 🐠

Clubhouse

Pearly white sights for your hideout

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans—it’s remodelling time, and this season’s color, apparently, is pearly white. From knit wall pieces to shiny bikes, there’s plenty to choose from in the latest update to the clubhouse store!

While new players got a set of special housewarming gifts a couple weeks ago (and old players were left out 😢), this update (on both Flash and Haxe) is for everyone—though a little under half of the items (including the “POP”-branded transistor radio) are for members only.

I took the liberty of going on a little shopping spree to showcase some of these slick new furniture items in my crib (including the intriguing head of the mythical jackalope!). Anyway, it turns out the (free) white wallpaper really goes well with a lot of this stuff…

In other news, there haven’t been any new items to the regular store since last week (despite the Home Island billboard’s promises of weekly updates), though some of the items did get shuffled around. But hey, I guess if we’re counting the clubhouse store, then we got some pretty sweet stuff.

If you’re in the mood for some home decorating, consider entering your clubhouse into our Tribal Tournament! Any Poptropica-related works of art, including costumes and clubhouses, can count for points towards your tribe. Plus, don’t miss out on this week’s round of Genius Games! 🧠🏅

That’s all for this post, but plenty more is happening with our ongoing tournament, especially on the PHC. Keep up the flame of the Games! 🔥

~Slanted Fish 🐠
(if I may be biased for a sec, go Nightcrawlers! 🐛)

Guest Posts, Pop Petitions

Pop Petition: Gear the game toward older kids

Slanted Fish

This is a guest post by Tiff on why Poptropica should focus more on their older players. The following is the writer’s opinion only. Enjoy!

Hi, I’m Tiff, and I want to talk about a few things—but most importantly, the idea that Poptropica should gear the game toward older kids.

Despite the fact that Poptropica bills itself as a children’s game, fewer and fewer young kids are interested in Poptropica these days. In fact, if you look at the PHB’s surveys, you’ll find that the majority of players are 13 and up (at least, the majority of who read this fan site are teens and young adults).

If the Creators want to keep Pop going, they’ll need to create content suitable for the audience they have and expand on that, rather than holding onto the past ideal of being suited for kids. They need to grow with their fanbase, so that they’re not left behind by their competitors.

After all, Poptropica is my favorite game, and I really want it to stay. Plus, with an evolving games market, and a growing trend for augmented or virtual reality, I wonder if they can explore that avenue further.

And as we know, Poptropica has been putting a little too much emphasis on Membership. I know they’ve been working on the Islands, and bringing the old ones back, but they really should be available to all players, not just members. This post isn’t necessarily about the paywall, but more on the fact that the Creators seem to only orient their game for a subset of players that they find more valuable—whether that’s members or younger kids—rather than focusing on the majority of who’s already here: the non-members and the older players. I’m here to say, Creators, focus on who your players are now, not who they used to be, and expand from there.

Creators: grow with the game, and grow with the times. We are not kids anymore, we’re teens and young adults. Poptropica’s demographic has changed, so let’s change the game with it. It’s supply and demand: the demand is the older demographic, the little kids who aren’t so little anymore, who’ve grown up with Poptropica and have stuck around for the fun and nostalgia. And the supply is Poptropica, which needs to adapt for this crowd which seems to make up the majority of our community these days.

Let’s be a little less forceful in trying to promote our game to a younger audience, who seem to have already moved on to other things—after all, there’s not much a new player can do on Poptropica these days as they’re locked into a Haxe account with few islands—and perhaps, with careful consideration for the older demographic (and particularly our desire for islands with deep storytelling), Poptropica’s demand may rise again.

Hope you enjoyed this Pop Petition guest post by Tiff! If you did, be sure to check out our other Pop Petition posts on the PHB, as well as our series on the topic of Poptropica and Age.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB, and share blog posts on the PHC.

📰 If you have an idea for a PHB post, send it in! ✨

PHB Parties, Poppies

Recap: Poppies 2020 awards and party 🥳🏆

Slanted Fish

Lights? Check. Internet connection? Check. Dr. Beev—wait, come again?

This weekend, we hosted the Poppies, our annual fan-directed Poptropica awards event, in celebration with the PHB’s 12th birthday. And what an event!

Despite the lack of Multiverse rooms (that feature disappeared a while back), just a few classic head-to-head mini-games to play (only Balloons, Sky Dive, and Star Link remain), and our decision to forego the traditional livestream in favor of concentrating our energy on announcing Poppies winners via our PHC Discord chat server, we had fun in the presence of emojis of all kinds (including the beloved Dr. Beev, the Dr. Hare/beaver parody from Mocktropica Island) and hit up the Party Time Tower on Time Tangled and Midas Gym on Mythology to shake the floors with our stellar outfits and groovy dance moves.

But enough about that, right? You want to know who won, and we’re here to bring you the highlights. Our winners for the 2020 Poppies are…

🏆 Gameplay Awards

  • OG Island We’ll Miss Most: Astro-Knights Island (runner-up: Mystery Train)
  • Best Pet Accessory: Buccaneer Hat (runner-up: Flower Headband)
  • Best Clubhouse Decor: Poptropica blimp (runner-up: Fox)
  • Best Home Island Makeover: Halloween (runner-up: Wizardry)
  • Best Quippy: 24 Carrot (runner-up: Escape From Pelican Rock)
  • Best Default Character: Old School (runners-up: Love Star and Girl Power)
  • Worst Paywall Offender of the Year: Classic islands return for members only (runner-up: Store items that used to be for all return as members only)

🏆 Community Awards

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2020 Poppies!! 🏆 And if you’re interested in knowing the rankings of each nominee, head on over to the PHC and check out the pinned messages to scroll up in the chat. We’ll leave the pins for some time, but not forever, so check them out while you can.

As an added bonus, here’s a quick thank-you video from Theo of Dimension Bros, whose channel won Best Fan Video (you may recall the PHB’s spotlight post for them last month). Thanks for celebrating with us! 🥳

🎨 “Best Fan Art of the Year” Nominee Gallery

We’re always impressed by what this fandom produces. To celebrate that, we’re showcasing our top nominees for this year’s “Best Fan Art” award:

Thanks to all of you who nominated, voted, came out for the Poppies awards show—and most of all, for being part of the Poptropica community in ways big and small. 💙 Also, happy birthday to the PHB! 🥳 We’re grateful to you, dear reader, for your part in making these 12 years so special.

A minute of beauty onstage is years of work offstage. Now let’s pick up those Dr. Beev emojis littered all over the blue carpet and get it rolled back up!

—🌟 the Poppies Help Blog 🌟 —