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!
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Animacation ad with 3 games and crazy prizes!

Slanted Fish

Disney XD Animacation

Hey Poptropicans! Are you ready to get sucked into a swirling colorful portal, search for dwarves, and color the world around you? All that and more awaits within the Disney XD: Animacation ad building (which is also a common room) – but this ad, it seems, is only available for younger players (to see if you’re eligible, check the dropdown menu in your inventory and see whether there’s one for “XD Animacation”, which should be in green). (Update: Poptropica has confirmed it’s only for ages 6-11.)

Anyway, after resigning myself to making a new account just for this purpose, I found the ad on Main Street of Cryptids and Monster Carnival. Upon entering, you’ll get to watch yourself transported in a swirl of cartoon characters… and inside, you’ll get to play 3 games and win some cool prizes!

tacos

To the left, you’ll find Mabel’s Water Race. All you have to do is pick a character, then keep your mouse aimed at the center of your character’s the dartboard while the character you picked races some other creatures at the top of the screen. If you win, you’ll get the Animacation Power, which colors other characters in your area either purple, blue, or yellow!

water race

On your right is the Fun House: here, you’ll have a time limit to jump, run, and bounce your way through fun house mirrors, falling watermelons, moving snake platforms, and more. If you make it, you’ll win the Steve the Llama Follower – and he’s half a head taller than your Poptropican!

fun house

Back in the Animacation common room, if you jump up to the “XD” sign, you’ll be able to reach the 7D Mines. Your task here is simply to get through the mines and click on all the dwarves along the way (check the bottom of your screen to see what they look like). Pretty easy to spot – although Bashful was bashfully hiding behind a rock. When you catch ’em all, you’ll win a Dwarf Costume, which actually comes in 3 variations, and they all have awesome hats!

7dwarves mine

If you win all three games, you’ll be awarded the Ultimate Prize: a Steve the Llama Bling Necklace! When you use this, your game screen will sparkle and be tinted yellow/blue/purple for a moment, then a black wave will wash over the screen and replace it with another one of those three colors, and then again until it’s back to normal. It’s all rather surreal.

bling necklace

Hope you made it through that bizarre world with your vision intact, and enjoy your prizes! 😀

*disappears through a swirling portal of greens, blues, purples, and yellows*

Merchandise, Social Media

1000+ Poptropica stickers in a book: coming soon!

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! The Pop Creators have just announced that a new book, the Poptropica Ultimate Sticker Collection, will be coming soon – releasing in the US starting July 21 and currently available for pre-order on Amazon for US$11.69. Here’s a preview of the cover and an inside page:

Though if you’ve been following the PHB, you may remember that HPuterpop discovered the sticker book’s cover back in April – and not only that, he discovered that the graphic was already used somewhere before. (You can read more about it in his post.) Whether it was for the sticker book or not, we don’t know, but half of what’s now the book cover design has been around for quite some time! 😛

TimeTravelStickerBook

Anyway, this ultimate sticker book boasts an impressive offer of over 1,000 re-usable full-color stickers, and as we can see from the preview “24 Carrot” page, some info about each sticker graphic as well. There’s even some new information that doesn’t appear in-game: the mayor’s name is McTeague and the waitress is called Flo. I wonder what else will be new in this book?

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Also, check out the latest tweet on Poptropica’s official Twitter: it’s an image from this very site, the Poptropica Help Blog, which means they’ve been visiting us! 😀 And there’s my Poptropican! 🙂 It’s from about five months ago, taken from Blake’s post back in January about Cosmoe from the Funbrain graphic novel Galactic Hot Dogs appearing in a common room.

cosmoe tweet

Cool, eh? Stay popping, Poptropicans. 😉

Comics

Cynopsis nomination for live maps & comic creators revealed!

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! You may know about Poptropica’s World Champions live player maps, which were introduced last year with the release of Virus Hunter Island, and which you can use to check your rank for finishing an island in comparison to players across the globe…

Well, the Creators recently announced that this feature has gotten them a nomination for the Cynopsis Kids !magination Award, which is pretty cool! The awards program is “judged by a panel of industry experts” – let’s hope Poptropica finishes first! 😀

By the way, if you have not yet checked your ranks for Survival, there’s a different map per episode: click here for Episode 1, here for Episode 2, and here for Episode 3. Also, if you’re experiencing some glitches in Episode 3, click here for HP’s post, which may offer some solutions.

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If you’ve been keeping up with the “Poptropica” comics on the Daily Pop or Creators’ Blog, you’ll know the series is now on week 6 – but if you’ve checked out the PHB’s Comics page, you’ll know you can read up to week 8! Plus, Funbrain stores some Pop comic strips as well.

Anyway, Poptropica’s official comic series is now being published on a website called GoComics as well – and they’ve credited the comic’s creators, who we now know are Paul Gilligan and Kory Meritt!

poptropica gocomics

As it turns out, both of them are already published comic creators on GoComics! Paul Gilligan does a series called Pooch Cafe, while Kory Merritt heads a comic called Lost Side of Suburbia, which also has a place on Funbrain.

PaulGilligan-KoryMerritt

Interestingly, GoComics’s page for Poptropica includes some links to Poptropica on the web, including the official Facebook page! There’s also a little blurb about the comic series as well as intros for the main characters, Oliver and Jorge. Enjoy the comics! 😀

Advertisements, Back Lot Island

Dork Diaries 7 ad: Back Lot bonuses?

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! If you like the Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renee Russell, check out the new ad for book 7 (Tales From a Not-So-Glam TV Star) on Main Street of Poptropolis Games. 😀

dork diaries 7

Inside, you can add Nikki Maxwell as your friend (her username is npc:nikkimaxwell), as well as Costumize her or chat with her (she’ll then advertise the Fab TV Star costume you can pick up on the top floor). You can also click to read an excerpt from the book, play a quiz game, watch a video, Costumize two other girls, and find allusions to “Nikki” kissing “Brandon” (er… awkward).

UPDATE: As Super Nicey noted in the comments, the Fab TV Star costume is not only different between genders, but both versions contain a handheld item from Back Lot Island that was originally for members only! For girls, it’s the Clapboard, and for boys, it’s the Movie Camera from the bonus quest.

dorkdiaries7 costumes

UPDATE #2: The NPC (non-player character) for Nikki Maxwell can also be found in common rooms such as the Soda Pop Shop on Early Poptropica! (Thanks to KeithSammut for the picture.)

nikkimaxwell

Anyway, enjoy the ad! Also, if you’re a member, be sure to play the newly-released Survival: Episode 3 this weekend, and if you’re a non-member, Survival: Episode 2 just came out as well. If you need help, check out the PHB’s walkthrough. Have fun! 😀

Web Development

Poptropica’s official Facebook page – resurfaced!

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans – did you know Poptropica has an official Facebook page? It seems to have been around for about for a month now, since their current cover photo was uploaded on April 24th of this year. You can find it at facebook.com/OfficialPoptropica, and as of now, this is what it looks like:

popfb page

Seems like most people aren’t aware of this, as there were only about 70 likes when I checked, and it’s never been announced on Poptropica’s website! In fact, I’d only found out about it recently from Poptropica’s official Twitter (which also has never been announced officially either)–

tweet popfb

According to the ‘about’ description, the page is only for the older audience—

Welcome! This official Poptropica® Facebook page is for fans ages 13 and up. Younger fans can find out what’s new at blog.poptropica.com.

The Poptropica Creators have also made use of Facebook’s ‘Timeline‘ feature to mark the launches of all their islands to date, each with its own graphic. They’ve also been linking to all Creators’ Blog posts starting from May 15, 2014.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Poptropica has tried to run its own page on Facebook. Back in 2010, they used to own facebook.com/Poptropica (now defunct), where they’d show unseen sneak peeks that even the Creators’ Blog didn’t post (this was before the Daily Pop) – including this cool sketch of a temple for Mythology Island:

KingPalace

They had some trouble regarding personal information, since fans wouldn’t change their profile icons to their Poptropicans when asked, and since people use their real names on Facebook. A few months later, they closed the page. I’m not sure if that’ll still be a problem with the new page they’re opening 4 years later, but then again, no one has commented on anything thus far, and the list of people who have liked the page is hidden, so no personal info there, at least.

Anyway, if you’re a Poptropican who’s 13 or older and has a Facebook account, be sure to give the Poptropica Creators a like so you can get updates on your news feed! 🙂