Guest Posts, Popspiracy Theories

Popspiracy: Mystery of the Mini Blimps

Hey Poptropicans, this is aย guest postย by Invisible Ring. Enjoy!

For years, Iโ€™ve wondered who shrunk the yellow blimp I was riding on, and I have returned once again to share my air-headed thoughts on such a small mystery.

For example, the first mini-blimp like this was on Shrink Ray Island, which leads me to believe that the culprit was armed with a shrink ray. After all, those ray-guns certainly flooded the market back in the dayโ€ฆ

โ€ฆBut if this is true, then who put those shrink rays to such a devious use?ย Some may automatically blame the classic ray-gun villains, like Dr. Hare or Director D. But I think that the most likely suspect would be Dr. Blandston, zapper of blimps! After all, I saw the doctor from Goofball Island with my own eyes; firing that blandston-ray at my blimp. Whoโ€™s to say they didnโ€™t fire a shrink ray too?

However, the blimp mystery may not be as simple as all that. For back on Home Island, I found not one, but TWO mini-blimps!ย  Almost as if someone used โ€œTwin Powerโ€ on them!

โ€ฆEither that, OR somebody mightโ€™ve found a way to split a large classic blimp into two smaller blimps! That doesnโ€™t explain where the โ€œPoptropicaโ€ logo disappeared to, though. (Unless those blimp vandals took the logo off first!)

But this isnโ€™t too much of a problem, because there are still plenty of classic blimps to go around, thanks to the Monkey Wrench Island monkeys.

โ€ฆAlthough, there are a few islands that donโ€™t have blimps at all! And those islands are the episodic adventures. Survival Island: Episode 1 is surely to blame for that. After that blimp destruction, thereโ€™s no blimp on that island, nor on any OTHER episodic adventure!ย 

Thank goodness for the Monkey Wrench monkeys, to have built us new blimps for the islands that came after those multi-part islands, like this one on Pelican Rock!

Of course, we canโ€™t forget the most common blimp Popspiracy out there: The mini-blimps are only on the newest islands, from 2021-now. Fairytale, Goofball, Jade Scarab, and the newest Home Island have the small blimps, and the rest of the islands have classic blimps.

Maybe Glowbhax shrunk the blimps! โ€ฆhaha, just kidding! Iโ€™m sure you all would rather say that the 2021 mini-blimp is just a modern design that’s only big enough for stuffed bunniesโ€ฆ but what if that modern design was ALSO done by the monkeys? Perhaps the Monkey Wrench monkeys were trying to keep up with the times, so they made big blimps for the old islands and small blimps for the new ones!

But one small catch… What if you travel from old islands to new islands, or vice-versa?

โ€ฆWell, THAT answer is probably as wild and crazy as all the Poptropica storms we fly through! Imagine crossing over a modern island like Fairytale, when a shrink ray hits you and turns your classic blimp miniature!ย Then when you fly on outta there and exit that atmospheric layer of shrink ray waves, your blimp turns back to normal! โ€ฆEither that, or Rumplestiltskinโ€™s magic is at hand. Who knows?

One thing I do know is that it’s lots of fun to formulate all these deductions like a detective from Mystery Train Island. The sky is literally the limit!ย  But regardless of whether youโ€™re on a train, in a blimp, on foot, or in the real world, my advice to you is to keep on adventuring, and keep your eyes to the skies. And keep asking questions and making guesses, too, because that is exactly how we all learn!

(This Popspiracyโ€”Poptropica conspiracyโ€”was brought to you by my early Blimpy Trance posts from Pop Fan Kids.)


Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Invisible Ring. If you did, you might also enjoy watching her full-length Poptropica fan movie, 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? Weโ€™d love to hear from you!

Creators

The End of Poptropica?

In Ruins: Honestly, not so bad.

BREAKING NEWS: It seems Poptropica is officially shutting down.

The news comes from a LinkedIn post by ex-Pop Creator, Lauren Kamb, who writes that “I’m announcing the closure of… Poptropica Ltd.”

According to her profile, Lauren served as Digital Advertising Account Manager at Poptropica from 2019โ€“2022, then as Director of Partner Relations at Suit Up Games, Poptropica’s spin-off Roblox studio, from 2022 to now. So it seems safe to say she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to announcing the closure of both companies.

What’s odd is that, as of now, Lauren’s post is the only place breaking such big news. The announcement of Poptropica’s closure hasn’t yet appeared on Coolmath Games, where Poptropica is currently hosted, nor on any of its socials (nor Poptropica’s socials, for that matter).

Deplane: It’s going down for real.

But to back up the claim of closure further, Lauren’s post was ‘liked’ and reposted by many in her network, including some with connections to Poptropica and Suit Up Games. (Thanks to jeeperpretzel for the tip!)

And Lauren is not the only recent staff departure from Poptropica and Suit Up Games. Within the past month, according to their LinkedIn posts and profiles, departures were announced by Jonathan Pitcher, art director; Lance Fry, another artist whose Poptropica Portfolio we’ve featured; Justin Kelly, software developer; and Rick Hocker, director of development (side note: Rick’s profile also mentions being responsible for managing Poptropica’s big move from Flash to HTML5 and mobile).

While Jon Pitcher was working on both Poptropica and Suit Up Games, the rest of those mentioned are ex-Poptropica staff, having migrated to Suit Up Games in 2022 when the studio was founded.

With all of them sharing that they are now looking for work, the departures seem to be layoffs, comparable to the layoffs in 2018 of several senior Pop Creators. We’re certainly sorry to see them goโ€”and anxious for confirmation on what this means for Poptropica. ๐Ÿฅฒ

Monkey Business: Our beach vacation is in ruins.

Meanwhile for Suit Up Games, we’re seeing some questionable content that may back up Lauren’s claim of its closure. On their website, the calendar which was previously offered to schedule meetings with them is now unavailable, while the staff’s name is still there. However, according to his LinkedIn profile, Joshua Mixon was Head of Product at Suit Up Games until May 2024. Plus, their job application site is down.

Also on their website, it appears that Suit Up Games is using AI-generated artwork. Taking a closer look at the image alongside their “strategic, data-driven approach” message reveals some wonky-looking numbers and charts that are characteristic of AI art not getting details quite right. This is particularly questionable considering they’ve just let go of actual artists on their team, but if the whole company is going down anyway, perhaps it’s just a minor detail.


While we haven’t yet seen an official announcement of closure from Poptropica as an entity, or any of its related companies, we did come across official documents filed by Pop to the Companies House of the UK government, where Poptropica Limited is registered.

The most recent filing comes just around the time of the latest staff departures, dated 20 August 2024. The document is an “audit exemption statement of guarantee by parent company for period ending 31/12/23”, stating that Poptropica’s parent company Sandbox International Holdings Limited would “guarantee all liabilities of its subsidiary.” In other words, Sandbox is claiming responsibility for all of Poptropica’s financial obligations. But this filing may just be a formality, since Pop was already under Sandbox. (Previously it was under another Sandbox-related parent company, Aspen Newco 1 Ltd.)

Digging further into the previous audit exemptionโ€”the “audit exemption subsidiary accounts made up to 31 December 2022″โ€”we find a more detailed document that includes Poptropica’s older (but latest published) financial statements. While page 2 shows a loss of $154,952 in 2022, the previous year still held a profit with $86,537 in 2021. But by page 12 we can see that the cash generated from operations in 2022 was $630,857, so perhaps things were still doing alright then.

Since Sandbox International Holdings Limited has swallowed up the reporting of Poptropica’s finances, we took a peek at their docs, too. On page 35 of the document “Group of companies’ accounts made up to 31 December 2022”, we find Poptropica listed as just one of many subsidiaries held by Sandbox. Then on page 38, we find various losses noted among the company cash from operations. Disclaimer, though: we’re no experts at reading these lengthy accounting statements, so this may not necessarily spell the end for all we know.

All this to say, it’s not super clear right now how Poptropica is doing financially, since their last financial statement reflects the year 2022, and Sandbox has lumped in Poptropica’s finances with their other subsidiaries. But perhaps things will become clearer with the next statement, or with any announcement from Poptropica. We’ll see!

Fireside Chat: Pull up a chair.
Uncategorized, YouTubers

Funktropica – Poptropica Mod for Friday Night Funkin’ โฌ†๏ธ๐ŸŽตโฌ‡๏ธ

Hey Poptropicans! Any rhythm game players in the house?

Discover Funktropica โ€” a Poptropica mod for the popular musical rhythm game Friday Night Funkin’ (FnF)! Check out the gameplay:

In Friday Night Funkin’ (download here), you use the arrow keys to hit the right keys as they come up on screen. A similar game mechanism has even been seen in some of Poptropica’s ad games. With FnF, the goal is for the main character, Boyfriend, to impress the ex-rockstar dad of his love interest by proving his power in music.

The Funktropica mod puts a Poptropica twist to FnF, giving Boyfriend a Poptropica makeover and facing him off against iconic Pop characters and backdrops: Betty Jetty in the sky, Dr. Hare in the carrot factory, Greg Heffley at the boardwalk, Binary Bard in his castle โ€” plus a few unknown Poptropicans, including a blank template one in Mocktropica.

Funktropica was developed by Eozchar, who writes in the mod description, “I’ve been doing this every summer since 2021, and honestly this skill I’ve learned has helped me greatly.” The first version, ‘Vs Poptropican’, launched in 2021, with yearly updates since, including the recent ‘Funktropica’ version released just this month.

The game’s music consists of several original electronic beats, including a remix of the Poptropica Overture soundtrack in the game menu. There’s even an impressive overworld with an island map taking you to the various scenes in Funktropica!

To play, you’ll need to download FnF first. Once you have FnF, you can then download Funktropica for some Poptropica rhythm jams. Enjoy!

~๐Ÿ 

Uncategorized

No access to Poptropica accounts โš ๏ธ

UPDATE #3 โ€“ Aug 22: Poptropica accounts are back again.

UPDATE #2 โ€“ Aug 21: Poptropica accounts are down again.

UPDATE #1 โ€“ Aug 21: Poptropica accounts are BACK, one week after the issue first appeared! ๐Ÿ™Œ But saving outfits still does not work, which has been the case for some time now. The original news post is below.


GAME-BREAKING NEWS: Poptropica accounts are down.

Earlier this week, players across the Poptropica fandom, including on our Discord server, the PHC, began reporting that they could not log into their game accounts, hosted on Coolmath Games on both desktop and mobile. Attempts to log in only result an endless loading screen.

The loading screen players are stuck on when attempting to log in โ€” ironically reminding players to log in daily.

From this Reddit post, there are also reports of the paid Poptropica Steam bundle not loading. Fortunately, the would-be players were able to get refunded by Steam, but it’s still a massive loss for Pop playability.

You can still play Poptropica by selecting a new character, activating the usual Home Island quest. However, attempts to save the new account will only result in error, no matter what untaken username you try.

It’s been several days with this issue not resolving, with no sign of acknowledgement from Coolmath Games on socials, so it remains unclear if they are even aware or planning to address the situation.

As of now, besides starting afresh with an account that can’t be saved, it seems the only way to truly access Poptropica is through the unofficial Flashpoint curation. Find out more in our Old Islands Guide here!

There is a small hope for the fate of our accounts: according to a Reddit post from Pop player lexly1234, you can revive the old Avatar Studio with Ruffle, a Flash emulator, to check that your account still exists in the depths of Poptropica’s files. But while they may exist, we can’t login. ๐Ÿ˜”

Here’s hoping for an eventual fix. ๐Ÿคž But for now, if you’re looking for some Poptropica fun, check out our PHB Tribal Tournament (Poptropica Olympics!) going on throughout August. ๐Ÿ‹๏ธโ€โ™€๏ธ

And of course, continue to enjoy the game through Flashpoint!

~ ๐Ÿ 

Blast from the Past, PHB Series, Poppies

10 Years of Poppies: Looking Back ๐Ÿ‘€๐Ÿ†

Hello, Poppie-tropicans! ๐ŸŒŸ

If you’ve been around for a while, you may know about this beloved tradition here on the Poptropica Help Blog: the Poppies, our annual Poptropica fan awards. Since 2015, we’ve been inviting the community to vote for their top Pop picks every July, marking the PHB’s birthday as well. Time flies, and we’ve now celebrated 10 Poppies! ๐Ÿฅณ๐Ÿ”Ÿโœจ

So we thought we’d take a look back at the past decade of Poppies shenanigans… starting with the Poptropica parties! ๐ŸŽ‰๐ŸŽˆAt the end of each awards season, we’d always go out with a bang by coming dressed to impress in multiplayer rooms on Poptropica and hanging out on our Discord server, the PHC. Check out the recap photos from over the years!


But there’s more to the picture-perfect memories! Every year, the PHB team would dress up for the Poppies, and one of our team members would create artwork that would serve as the event’s visual for that year. ๐Ÿ–Œ๏ธ๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ Enjoy our many designs from the decade! (Click to enlarge.)


Next, taking the Pop art to a whole new level are all the top pieces voted as winners of the annual Best Fan Art award category. ๐ŸŽจ๐Ÿ† Feast your eyes on the talent that lies within our fandom โ€” they’re truly incredible!


And now for some special highlights! โœจ๐Ÿ† Below is a selection of some of our favorite award categories from over the years, and the winners. You can click on the years to check out the yearly recaps to find more award categories, watch the awards shows, and more! ๐Ÿ‘€

Just for fun, here are a few more iconic moments from the past decade of Poppies. Good times! Thank you, truly, for being part of the ride. ๐ŸŽˆ


That’s a wrap for our recap on 10 Years of Poppies! How many of them did you join in on? What are some of your favorite Poppies memories? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. ๐Ÿฉต

Thanks for joining us on the blue carpet, and keep on poppin’ on! โœจ