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!
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Magic Kid. Enjoy!
And we’re back (probably sooner than you thought)! Back with the fifteenth episode of Zombies, Zombies, ALWAYS ZOMBIES!
If you missed it, you can catch the previous episode here, or if you would like to start from the beginning, click here. Please enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed writing it. 😈
Character doodles by Magic Kid
ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES, ALWAYS ZOMBIES!
A Zomberry Series
Episode Fifteen: I Spy
The three friends were in that hot air balloon and had been scanning the ocean for hours. As there wasn’t much to do other than occasionally steering the ship, they had settled for a game of I Spy, which was still very boring.
Icy Stone
I spy with my little eye something… blue.
Jazzy Hawk (semi-gloomily)
Water.
Icy Stone(sarcastically)
Wow? How could you have guessed?
Truth be told, all they could see WAS water. The ocean stretched to all the corners of the horizon, leaving almost nothing but a blue expanse, speckled with a handful of islands. None of the islands they passed looked like it had anything similar to the helicopter they had seen on it. Every island was full of zombies, little purple dots from the view on the hot air balloon, and they served as a reminder on how much damage the apocalypse had done. On how much they had to save.
Clumsy Bird was looking through binoculars through the horizon, keeping an eye out for any upcoming islands.
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Invisible Ring. Enjoy!
Monochrome: These colors don’t run.
Hey there, Poptropica fans! Hope things are going well for you all. (You’ll probably tell me they aren’t though, with the complicated alarms of Poptropica’s end and everything, but I had to say it anyway.)
I’m Invisible Ring, and I’m here to share with you something that should’ve shown up as a guest post on the Poptropica Creators’ Blog many months ago. It’s not my (still upcoming) pirate movie, but a retro movie I found long ago while I made my first movie. Introducing one of my all-time favorite fan productions: Poptropica: the Movie!
In this by-fan, for-fan production, from the vault of “Production Poptropica”: A normal kid (Spotted Bubbles, aka Graham Burrell), whose favorite thing in the world is Poptropica, is called on a special quest in the Great Beyond, where his Poptropican adventuring skills are put to the test. Loaded with action and laughs, this movie is not just about the world of Poptropica, but also the real world from which it came.
…You see, it was just around this time of year when I found this movie (from 2011!) and watched it. And although it wasn’t a holiday program, it gave me great cheer for the cold dark winter, and I hope it’ll give all of you great cheer, too. I bet we all could use it right about now.
Hope you enjoy the movie, and stay tuned for more Invisible Ring guest posts like this one that never got to go on the Poptropica Creators’ Blog!
Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Invisible Ring. If you did, you might also enjoy her interview for her first fan movie production, Battle Morale.
The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. Interested in writing for the PHB? We’d love to hear from you!
As we approach the end of 2023, here’s a look back on Poptropica’s quietest year yet. Without a Pop drop, you could hear a pin drop.
Vandals: Just trash the place, why don’t you.
(You might be interested in taking a look back on Poptropica’s previous years, too. We’ve got just the thing over on our Yearbook page!) 📖
2023 kicked off with the monthly costume contest in January, a tradition going back to May 2021. But something was different about this one: we never heard back about the winners, and no further costume contests have been announced since. And not just that…
Without the new costumes meant to be offered on the Red Baron’s airship, the Baron’s ship never made another appearance on Home Island. After all the drama that unfolded the previous year, we’ve been left hanging as to what’s going on with the ship and its constituents.
The silence continues throughout the year — the first year we’ve had no new islands nor mini-quests. Poptropica is quiet with their comms too, with no blog updates since February, and no updates to their most active social media platform, Instagram, since September, after months of memes. They also closed off commenting on their blog in August. 🤐
We’ve also shared some nostalgic blog posts as players reckon with the fact that Poptropica’s better days are now behind us. Here’s a selection, with more good reads available in our Greatest PHB Posts collection:
Throughout the year, Poptropica continued trudging along with its routine shop rotations and monthly member gifts — until, in December, even membership was removed with no explanation. 😬 On the bright side, previously paywalled content became free for all and Poptropicans showed their support for the game amidst worries about its future, including a shutdown scare ignited by a false rumor.
The strange turn of events puts an end to the PHB’s membership giveaways that started in 2021. We also said goodbye to another one of our series — Community Creations — in July, after six inspiring years. 🥺
With the lack of communications and updates to the game, the future of Poptropica seems thrown into a free-fall. But whatever happens, we at the Poptropica Help Blog will be here for the ride.
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Magic Kid. Enjoy!
Hi there! I’m back with the zombies, the drama, and the adventure! Are they too late to save Toothpick? We’ll have to find out…
(I apologize in advance for the events that take place in this episode. Also, Merry Christmas!) (Catch the last episode here, or first episode here.)
Traffic Jam: Looks like we took a wrong turn.
ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES, ALWAYS ZOMBIES!
A Zomberry Series
Episode Fourteen: So About What Happened to Toothpick…
Let’s rewind a few days previously to Party Time Tower, right after unsuccessfully trying to change the past. The flying pirate ship is soaring away, engine sputtering dangerously. Toothpick was left alone. Alone, in the middle of a vast hoard of zombies.
He instantly felt as though something had dunked him in ice cold water. Oh, the fear!
Toothpick didn’t know if this made the situation better or worse, but a black helicopter was on his way towards him.
The zombies had fallen back a bit when the pirate ship had lowered down, but they were now regaining the height at a very quick pace.
The helicopter was now right above Toothpick. A rope ladder unrolled right by him.
Pilot
GET IN!
Either Toothpick is captured by zombies, or he gets on that helicopter.
Short answer: No. But it’s a bit more complicated than that…
Over the past couple of days, a message has been circulating that Poptropica would be shutting down by the end of the month. To address the concerns, Poptropica has put out official posts on Twitter (aka X) and Instagram to assure players that the game is sticking around.
Poptropica puts a positive spin on the rumor, adding that the game is now free to play for everyone, as memberships have disappeared.
The rumor began with a message posted on our Discord server, the PHC, from an account previously thought to represent Poptropica. It claimed that Poptropica would be discontinued after December 29. However, as Poptropica’s social media posts show, this turned out to be a hoax.
This message has been debunked.
The PHB regrets its part in lending legitimacy to the fake account, which had been given a ‘Poptropica Creator’ role label on our server since their first appearance over a year ago at our 2022 Poppies event. Though we acknowledged then that it was only a hunch, there were reasons to believe in its legitimacy.
Before this incident, the account only made occasionalannouncements related to the game, which had been documented on the PHB. At no point before this month did Poptropica come out to say that the Discord account was not theirs. The real Poptropica even liked our Poppies 2022 post on Instagram, where we had mentioned “a surprise visit from @poptropicacreators.” More recently, they had announced a Cyber Monday sale that turned out to be true, albeit predictable regardless.
Still, the account has since revealed itself to be an impostor through some out-of-character messages. Again, the PHB apologizes for our lack of due diligence in verifying the account’s status.
Prior to getting debunked, though, the message gained traction all over the internet, including a tweet from popular account DiscussingFilm (later deleted), plus “Poptropica” was trending on Twitter (again!).
Popular X account DiscussingFilm announced the shutdown but the post was later deleted.“Poptropica” trending on X/TwitterThanks to Austin on the PHC for sharing these screenshots.
A few news sites even got in on the action: some like Delisted Games rectified their posts, while others such as ABC10 in California highlighted the shutdown scare after the story was debunked.
News mentions of the shutdown rumorPoptropica denouncing the Discord message
The fake news came right on the heels of a major update that had Poptropicans panicking about a potential shutdown: the removal of membership in early December. As with many of Poptropica’s updates lately, there was no official comms around this news, leaving fans to speculate. Though on social media Pop has since spun this as a holiday gift to all, the game’s own messaging that memberships are “no longer offered” doesn’t ring the same. And why wait two weeks to announce it?
Before the fake news had dropped, Poptropica fan Sleepy Biker reached out to Shan Eisenberg, Chief Commercial Officer at Sandbox, Poptropica’s parent company, to ask about what the membership removal meant for Poptropica’s future. Shan had replied back that he “got feedback from [his] colleagues at Poptropica that they are going to communicate shortly” — only the fraud had beaten them to it.
Meanwhile, the PHB’s Gentle Dolphin also reached out to another Pop Creator, Jon Pitcher, to ask about the game’s current situation. Jon’s response was to redirect back to the official Poptropica Twitter account. Though their individual responses are understandable, it’s a little concerning that Poptropica isn’t speaking much to fans’ worries.
Shan Eisenberg responding to Sleepy BikerGentle Dolphin’s messages with Jon Pitcher
Looking back on Poptropica’s social media posts announcing that they are sticking around, their wording doesn’t firmly push back on the idea of their shutdown — only that it isn’t as soon as we thought. On Twitter they say they are here “on December 31st,” while on Instagram they say they’re not shutting down “at the end of the year.”
Maybe we’re reading too much into it, but the lack of official comms (their last social media updates were in September, and their blog hasn’t been updated since February, almost a year ago) and the removal of membership have definitely rung warning bells in the minds of many. At the very least, we hope that this whole situation reminds Poptropica to keep us more closely updated on their official channels!
Another concerning development is the fact that many pages on Poptropica’s website are not currently accessible, resulting in a 502 error. This includes the Creators’ Blog, Parents Overview, and Help pages. The game is still playable, though players reported getting this error message at the height of the shutdown rumor, so perhaps it may just be an issue of server overload from too many trying to access it.
(UPDATE, Dec 26, 2023: The aforementioned webpages are now back online.)
🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺 