Category: Contests

Contests, Poppies

Welcome to the Poppies!

Slanted Fish

poppies nominations

UPDATE: Hey guys, thanks for nominating your favorites! The nomination round is now officially closed. The voting round has begun, so cast your votes now! 🙂

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Poppies. That’s the Poptropica Community Awards, hosted by the Poptropica Help Network (PHN), which includes this blog (the PHB).

This popping, stellar event is the first of its kind, and will include a week for nominations (starting now!), followed by a week for voting (check back next week for the polls!), and finally, we’ll be announcing the winners as we celebrate the PHB’s upcoming 7th birthday on July 26th, 2015.

First up is the nomination round. How this works is we’ll announce each award category, followed by a brief description (see below). Then, in the comments section, you let us know who or what you feel is worth that award! You can nominate for as many or as little awards as you like.

Without further ado, the awards up for grabs are:

  1. Best Creator: Who’s your favorite Poptropica Creator? Is it the nommable Captain Crawfish, or perhaps the lost-to-time Shark Boy? Check the PHB’s Creators Database for a list.
  2. Best Dialogue: What is the all-time best, wittiest line of dialogue ever spoken by any Poptropica character?
  3. Best Dressed NPC (male): Who’s the handsomest of Poptropican characters? This category is for the guys. (NPC stands for non-player character, so please do not nominate your friends.)
  4. Best Dressed NPC (female): Who’s the prettiest of Poptropican characters? This category is for the girls. (Again, this category is not for players!)
  5. Best Island (overall): What’s the greatest island of all time, from plot to characters, artwork to soundtrack (if applicable), and everything in between?
  6. Best Poptropican Name: What Poptropican name combination sounds the best? For a list of possible Poptropica names, click here.
  7. Best Soundtrack: Which music soundtrack from any of the SUIs (sound-updated islands) tickles your fancy? For some possible nominations, you can listen to and get the names of soundtracks on composer Jeff Heim’s soundcloud.
  8. Best Storyline in an Island: Of all the islands, which one has the greatest plot? Which storyline did you most enjoy?
  9. Best Villain: Who’s your favorite Poptropica villain?

In addition to Poptropica-specific awards, there are also categories for those in the Poptropica community/fandom that you know and love!

  1. Best Current PHB Author: We’ve got a host of staff members here who regularly deliver news and other improvements to the PHB, but everyone’s different, even down to their senses of humor. The current staff are Brave Tomato, Blake, HPuterpop, Samwow5, Spotted Dragon, Slanted Fish, Slippery Raptor, and Ultimate iPad Expert – and all of us are automatically nominated!
  2. Best Fan Art: Poptropican artists the world over have created many pieces of fan art, but which pieces have you seen that might deserve the title of ‘best’? The PHB magazines are a good place to start scouting for fan art!
  3. Best Fansite (outside of the PHN): The Poptropica Help Network includes this blog, the PHC (chat), our Twitter, videos, and wiki, but outside of our network lies a realm of other Poptropica fan sites as well. Nominate your favorites – just to be clear, this is for sites that aren’t included in the list mentioned in the previous sentence.
  4. Best PHB April Fools’ Prank: We’ve done a lot of April fools’ pranks over the years, but which one got you good? Was it the ‘Club Penguin Help Blog’ of 2009? Sending in Agent Chicken Wing in 2010? Reverting to Scary Tomato’s old header in 2011? Gamer Guy’s Mega Fighting Bots, Poptropica-bashing fan site in 2014? Or perhaps this year’s Omegon takeover?
  5. Best The POPCORN Magazine Issue: Which PHB magazine issue had all the best stories, fan art, and so on? Read them on our Magazines page and nominate your faves.
  6. Best Wiki Article: Over on the Poptropica Wiki (part of the PHN), we’ve got over 800 articles for islands, scenes, items, characters, and so on. But which article is the best?

Now for some undesirable awards! We’re not that mean, though, so we’ll only be giving a few, and it’s just for fun – no offence intended. 😉

  1. Worst Island: Poptropica is full of great islands, but not every island was a winner. Which, in your opinion, was the worst of them all (and why)?
  2. Worst Poptropican Name: There are plenty of decent Poptropica names out there, but not every name is created equal and there’s potentially some pretty disastrous combinations as well. Nominate as you see fit!
  3. Worst Poptropica Moment: What’s the worst thing that has happened in your Poptropica experience? Anything unfortunate is fair game, from glitches that made you restart an island to the time the Jersey Devil on Cryptids Island made you cower under your chair in fear.

And that brings us to 18 awards, in celebration of our recent milestone of 18 million hits (well, 18.4m now) – and also, of course, the upcoming 7th birthday of the PHB.

Nominations will take place starting now, so sound off in the comments who you think deserves the awards! Please limit your nominations to a maximum of three per award. To strengthen your nomination, you can also include a quick reason why you think they (or it) deserve(s) the award.

If no nominations for a certain award are made, the PHB authors will use their own judgment to come up with some options. Next week’s poll options will be based on the most popular nominations, so check back then for the next round and cast your votes then! Plus, stay tuned for the PHB for details on birthday parties and winner announcements. 😉 But for now…

Start nominating in the comments below!

Stay popping, Poptropicans, and pop in for the Poppies. 😀

Contests

Winners of the PHB’s 6th Halloween Costume Contest!

Slanted Fish

halloween2014 contest winners

Helloooo, Poptropicansss… are you ready for this year’s top scarers? Of the many spooktacular costumes who dared enter the PHB’s 6th annual Halloween competition, the party of fabulous October fashionistas has been narrowed down to a list of fourteen winners – in celebration of the PHB’s recent milestone of 14 million hits. And without further ado, here they are:

These costumes are listed in alphabetical order by title, and have also permanently earned their place on the PHB’s Costumes page! Just to complete the collection, I put my own (Slanted Fish) Halloween outfit in the mix, which was also recently featured on the Creators’ Blog. 🙂

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to all the winners – enjoy the honor of having your Costumes featured! Whether or not your costume is listed, we hope you enjoyed creating your costume and looking at this creepy collection. Heh, heh, heh… >:D

happy halloween from the PHB!

Contests

PHB’s 6th Annual Halloween Costume Contest – enter if you dare! (CLOSED)

Slanted Fish

Contest has ended – click here to view the winners!

halloween2014 contest

It’s that time of the year again: Halloween is approaching, and that means it’s time for the PHB’s annual Halloween costume competition! Now for the 6th year in a row, you can enter your best creepy costume and hope to win a spot on the PHB’s Costumes page (plus, they’ll be featured on the PHB’s front page when the winners are announced on Halloween (October 31, when the contest ends).

This year, because of our (upcoming) recently achieved milestone of 14 million blog hits (as of October 16), we’ll be showcasing fourteen of our favorites as winners! Sound awesome yet?

Before you rush out to put together your masterpiece, please keep these rules in mind:

  1. IDEAS: Be original! We like to see that you’ve put effort into creating something spooky yet fashionable for the season, so simply copying (as opposed to mixing and matching) will probably hurt your chances. There are some great costume parts at the ghoul gathering from the end of the Haunted House quest from the Store, as well as the collection of recently-made-free costumes in the Store, but be creative and search in other places too!
  2. DON’T CHANGE: Keep your costume intact until after the winners are announced. If you change your costume back, we may not get to see your spooktacular entry! If you don’t want to keep the costume on your main account, you can create a new one and post that instead.
  3. ENTERING: After you’ve created your costume, here’s how you should post your entry: go to the Avatar Studio, type in your username, click Load, click on the Link to highlight it, right-click and choose Copy, go to the comments section on this post, right-click and choose Paste, type in your comment and submit so we can view your costume by clicking the link! Name your costume and post the username if you want. If you are having problems with the Avatar Studio, just post the username so we can check it. You may submit as many different entries as you like, but you can only win a maximum of one time (out of the 14 winners to be chosen).

(Protip: For inspiration, past winners can be viewed on the Costumes page!)

have your scary face on? good, now enter if you dare…

heh heh

Contests

Winners of the PHB’s Land Construction Contest!

Blake

Land contest

What’s popping, Poptropicans! Blake here, with the long-awaited results of the Poptropica Help Blog’s Land Construction Contest! I got seven total entries, which was a little disappointing considering the PHB’s audience, but nonetheless, the results must be posted! The winner…

of the Land contest… *fumbles with envelope* …is… Why is it not opening..? *envelope opens* Aah, there it is. The winner of the Poptropica Land Construction Contest is… well, we had a lot of great entries, and I don’t want to offend anyone, but…

“QUIT STALLING!”

You guys have been at that door since I joined! GO HOME! “Okay..”

:: winner ::

Anyway, the winner, with no more stalling, is Silver Wolf with her Holes-based Land! Holes is a really good film and it’s based on the novel by the same name, written by Louis Sachar.

Not only was this build really well-crafted, it also really struck a chord with the judges: me, my two clones, and CaptainSpencer, avid PHB reader! Well done, SW! (As usual, click to enlarge all images.)

Congratulations to Silver Wolf for her impressive display of creativity! I’ll be getting to you shortly with the information of the rare account you’ve won!

:: runners-up ::

Now, for the remainders — the runners-up:

In 2nd place, we have Spotted Dragon with her Cloud Kingdom Land! This land was really well-built too, although it took me a bit to make it up to take pictures:

In 3rd place, we have Imagi Cat with her prison cell! Again, I was limited to only taking a screenshot of a small portion as the structure was built close to the ground — but this is pretty original!

Screenshot 2014-09-09 at 6.04.28 PM

In 4th place, we have Magic Fire with her self-portrait! Since the Creators can take way better pictures than I can, and they featured MF’s Land on their blog, I’ll just insert the same picture for you guys:

MagicFire

Coming up in 5th place, we have Nameless Undefined with her… well, I actually don’t know what it is, because my Chromebook decided it was too awesome to capture a picture of it for you guys. (Maybe she’ll supply us with a screenshot?)

Next, in 6th place, we have Davina N. with her bunker! This bunker has ELEVEN, count them, ELEVEN layers of apocalypse protection!

Screenshot 2014-09-09 at 6.27.46 PM

In 7th place, we have, by personal request, MrSomeRandomPerson with their bridge!

Screen Shot 2014-09-10 at 6.54.08 pm

Anyway, hope you enjoyed looking at all the cool Lands that PHB viewers have come up with! Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you for participating in this PHB event! 🙂

Contests, Reviews

CYDI winning entries: a personal review

Samwow5

Hey everyone! Now that the winner and top ten runner-ups of Poptropica’s CYDI (Create Your Own Dream Island) contest have been revealed, each with their own post on the Creators’ Blog as well as here on the PHB, I’d like to give my own personal review on each of the winning ideas.

CYDI review v2

In my opinion, there were some great island ideas, and some bad ones. Some I felt were too common or even plagiarized, but overall, I thought the ideas were pretty cool! So without further ado, here’s my list of the winning island ideas in order of (again, in my opinion) best to worst:

  1. House of Cards Island
  2. Symphony Island
  3. Space Bar Island
  4. Shakespeare Island
  5. Pharoah’s Fantasies Island
  6. Prehistoric Island
  7. Stormchaser Island
  8. Arabian Nights Island (winner of CYDI)
  9. Fashion Crisis Island
  10. Golden Mustache Island
  11. Bikers vs Boards Island

There’s my list, everyone! Now, I’m going to explain it in greater detail why I put them in that order, starting from the bottom…

CYDI review

#11: Bikers vs Boards Island: This island… was just plain plagiarized from Disney’s Teen Beach Movie. This was my least favorite island idea by FAR and I was actually mad the creators even considered this as the winner of the whole contest… and, well, I’m too mad to say any more. 😛

#10: Golden Mustache Island: I really don’t have anything against this island – I just thought the idea, plot, and name were very corny. I felt this island was way too childish for Poptropica. Before anyone gets mad at me for saying that, I know Poptropica is a kids’ game, but this island sounded like it was for 5 year olds – like, come on, Creators!

#9: Fashion Crisis Island: The idea here isn’t that bad! But being a sports guy, I’m just not really into fashion… I can’t really have fancy clothes or they will be torn when I play sports. xD

#8: Arabian Nights Island (WINNER): Now, this one… to tell the truth, I wanted to put this one 10th. This soon-to-be island sounds very lame; from the very little detail the Creators gave us about the island, it sounded like another Nabooti Island to me, and I wasn’t too fond of Nabooti. This should not have been the winner, in my opinion.

#7: Stormchaser Island: I was impressed by the quality of this idea, but I don’t know how Poptropica really could’ve made this into an island. It would’ve been a lot of work, and maybe confusing for younger players too.

#6: Prehistoric Island: When the Creators said “dinosaurs are coming into the 21st century. Poptropicans must reassemble the time portal and send them back” – I was hooked, but as I continued reading on, it sounded like any other entry about dinosaurs and their existence. So, I feel like the Creators shouldn’t have considered this as a winner because it doesn’t really stand out to me as a unique dinosaur story.

#5: Pharoah’s Fantasies Island: I have the same opinion of this island as the Prehistoric Island idea. When the Creators said “Poptropicans would enter the mind of King Tutankhaman, and defeat the gods of Egypt…” I was like, cool! But, like I said, many people must’ve sent in this kind of ancient Egypt/Pharoah idea…

#4: Shakespeare Island: It gets down to the tough ones – I could’ve easily put this second because this, I thought, was a great idea. (But Space Bar and Symphony were better – but let’s get back on topic.) The plot was that “Players help Shakespeare put on a Romeo and Juliet play. Players sign up to be an actor, backstage organizer, or costume designer. But during the show, another actor gets stage fright and players will have to dress up and sing the song.” When I read that, I immediately fell in love with this island idea. This was GOLD, I thought. If you didn’t know, I love poetry and Shakespeare so I would have loved to play this island. I wish I could pick my top 4 of these ideas to be made into islands, because I think this one was definitely one of the better ones.

#3: Space Bar Island: I loved this island from the start! A computer-based island would be so cool to play! The way Naomi used clever wordplay for the villain’s name (the Mother Board) blew me away! The plot was this: “On Space Bar Island, you’re trapped in the newest computer, the “Lap Life,” and you meet who’s really running the internet.” That sounded so cool to me! I would have loved to play this island too!

#2: Symphony Island: I love music, so this is probably why I love the island. 😛 In my opinion, the Creators saved the 2nd best island idea for last. I loved the plot: “Karl Notune hates music — and has an evil plan! It’s up to you to save the music before it’s too late!” Now, that sounds like a fun island idea! There’s more: “…be able to play many different instruments — including piano, saxophone, and drums — and gave us a funny villain in ‘Karl Notune’.” That’s a lot of the instruments I love! This island idea rocked! Great job, Erika!

#1: House of Cards Island: I don’t know where to start with this island idea! Before Joel sent me the in-depth look into his island idea that I published on the PHB (where Joel describes the suits and kingdoms), I already thought this island idea should’ve been first! The plot that the Creators showed us blew my mind so much that I had a dream about it. 😛 The in-depth look was just the icing on the cake for this island idea. Joel, I really appreciate that you sent me that in-depth look! This island should’ve won by far, in my opinion!

Anyway, that’s it everyone! I want to hear your opinion too and see your personal rankings of the CYDI contest winners! Comment below and let’s see if we agree or disagree on this! 🙂

~SW5~