Category: Contests

Advertisements, Contests, Creators' Blog Guest Posts, Tribes

Vivo la tribal, or at least an outline 🐊

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! In this post, we’ve got another ad game, another challenge, and another guest post. Poptropica’s certainly been busy!

Let’s start off with the big green tree base on Home Island promoting the upcoming Netflix animated film Vivo. Head inside and you’ll find it’s even prettier within! You can also talk to the animals to start a game.

The goal of the mini-game is to make your way through the Cuban rainforest to reach the Sand Dollars girlband before time runs out. Along the way, you’ll have to dodge flies, crocs, and even a giant snake.

You’ll win two prizes at the end: Gabi’s Stylin’ Outfit (with a drum animation) and a Head Rider of Vivo, a kinkajou (honey bear).

Between Vivo and Kamp Koral Island 2, it’s cool to see Poptropica pulling in their ad dollars in more creative ways again. Let’s hope we’re on our way to getting rid of those pesky sidebar ads—and while we’re wishing, how about the return of bigger game screens?

Vivo releases on Netflix in two weeks on August 6, with songs by the legendary Lin-Manuel Miranda (of Hamilton fame). Stay tuned!

Next up, another official artsy challenge! While the past few weeks and months have seen fan art, fan fic, and costume design contests, the new Coloring Creation Challenge asks Poptropicans to create their own Pop-themed coloring page! The idea is to create an outline drawing (with black or blue marker) on a white page that can be colored in, like so:

Previously released coloring pages from the Pop Creators

To enter the challenge, snap a pic of your design and drop it into Poptropica’s submissions form no later than 8 p.m. PST on Monday, July 26. Doodle on!

Last but not least, there’s a new guest post on the Creators’ Blog by Invisible Ring on the gone-but-not-forgotten Tribes of Poptropica. As she explains, tribes were teams you could join in the Poptropolis Games and rep on your friends page or with custom hats you could make in the Twin Palms Mall of Night Watch Island. Plus, each tribe had their own themed common room!

  • Seraphim tribe common room
  • Creating a tribal hat on Night Watch Island

You can learn more over on the PHB’s Tribes page as well as the individual tribe pages linked there (thanks for the blog shout-out, Ring!).

Here on the PHB, we’ve enjoyed even more tribal fun with our 2016 and 2020 Tribal Tournaments, and we even host a series of epic “Tribal Tailorings” in our ASG collection. Here’s hoping for the return of the eight epic tribes!

  • “Seraphim for the Win” by happyclonetrooper
  • “PHB tribe reps” by Gentle Dolphin
  • idkNanobotsASG

That’s a wrap for this post. What did you think of the Vivo ad game, and will you be streaming this release? What ideas are brewing in your head for the Coloring Creations Challenge? And which tribe rules them all? Share with us in the comments, and stay popping!

~🐠

Contests, Fan Art Features, Store

Costume contest closed, updated store open 🧙‍♂️🛍️

Sporty Boa

Howdy and hello Poptropicans! It’s Sporty Boa here dropping by with some news for you!

Poptropica’s Blog has been bustling with upcoming updates and information, but first and foremost, Poptropica’s Costume Contest for the month of June has officially closed as of 8pm PST Monday night.

The Pop creators mentioned having received a lot of creative submissions, and who knows? If you were able to submit your design in time, it may just find itself in the game as the winning entry!

I personally have a few fond flashbacks regarding these costume contests, as almost five years ago it was one of my earliest involvements with the Poptropica community!

This is actually my first ever tweet as Sporty Boa!

I got so swept up in the sweet memories that I went ahead and redrew my Legendary wizard robe costume which I plan to submit for July’s Costume Contest:

If you were also unable to submit a costume concept this month, no need to worry! Because the costume contest is monthly, stay alert for the creators announcement regarding July’s contest and get those costume creations crafted!

Speaking of creations, we have a couple cool fan art features on the gram:

  • Smart and Bard’s wedding by @brittscarlet1
  • Food fan art by @randomchan4

Stellar pieces of artwork we got here! (I would take a few pieces of that delicious-looking cake if I could 😋)

Additionally, Poptropica has got some updated items in the clubhouse store for you to check out. (Thanks to Capax infini for the pic!)

A few items are catching my eye as I’m always on the lookout for some interesting items to jazz up my clubhouse. (Tour coming soon!)

Well, that’s a wrap on this short and sweet news update! I’m curious to know what creative costumes you’ve submitted, or plan to submit for the Monthly Costume Contest as well as which of the updated store items you’d like to get your circular hands on!

Enjoy the day and remember to stay safe and stay awesome!

-SB🐍

Contests, Fairy Tale Island, Fanfiction

Fans deliver fantastic Fairytale fanfics 📚 ✨

Purple Paw

A little over two weeks ago, the Creators made a call for the Pop fandom to write and submit their own alternative endings for Fairytale Island—and, unsurprisingly, you knocked this contest out of the park!

Similar to the results of the Dream Island Contest, the Creators had trouble choosing just one entry, and instead ended up featuring four (very deserving) winning submissions.

Congratulations to Speedy Eagle, Mighty Fox, Slippery Sword, and Tall Cactus (from the PHC) on winning the Fairytale Fanfic Challenge! From the origins of Rumplestiltskin’s name, to the reveal of the real king, to an explanation for that mysterious tube of lipstick’s role in the story, your fanfics covered just about all we’d been wondering after Fairytale Island’s strangely abrupt ending. Read the full submissions here!

Between fan creation highlights on Instagram, the Fairytale Fan Art Challenge in April, and now this fanfic challenge, the Creators have been offering a lot of attention to their creative fanbase, and that’s great! It’s awesome to see them connecting with players as regularly as the Creators are, plus welcoming them to submit their own creations for possible features.

But asking players to write a whole new ending for an island, even if it won’t be canonified in the game, is slightly odd. Fairytale’s ending was generally unsatisfactory and left many important questions unanswered, which the Creators acknowledged previously in their blog post announcing the Fanfic Challenge. Where did Rumplestiltskin vanish to? What happened to that poor prince? Did somebody arrest the Huntsman for his attempted homicide?

Leaving these questions to be answered by the fanbase instead of simply including them in the island itself is… a bit weird, to say the least. Did the Creators not have the time to write a full ending for Fairytale? Are they planning on surprising us with a sequel, or are these fanfics the only endings this shorter island will ever see? 🧐

Either way, let us know what you thought of the winning fanfic submissions in the comments. And if you entered your own story, feel free to share it with us in a guest post! See you next time, Poptropicans.

~💜

Fairytale’s various characters may have gotten their happy endings in fan fiction… but what about the island itself?

Contests

PHB Special: Pop the Difference, Round 4

LJ

Howdy, Poptropican friends! It’s LJ here with another round Pop The Difference! Let’s pop right in, shall we?

Here’s how the game works: Down below are five pairs of Poptropica images, each containing five differences. Some differences are easy to spot while others may be tougher. Are you up for the challenge?

1) Shark Tooth Seek

2) Fairytale Fish-Around

3) Bazaar Bewilderment

4) Comb the Crowd

5) Scour the Staff

How many could you find? Send in your answers to [email protected].

The first person to correctly spot all 25 differences (5 in each) will receive a drawing of their Poptropican by me. (Check out my DeviantArt page to get a glimpse of what you’re in for. :P)

Answers and winners will be revealed at some point in the next coming weeks. That’s it for now and I’ll talk to you all in the next one. Pop on!

– LJ 🍀

Advertisements, Contests, Fan Art Features, Social Media

Monthly costume design contests, strange art shares, and… questionable ads?

Agent Bubbles

As we continue to wait on news for the porting of old islands and the imagined futures of Fairytale Island, the Pop Creators made an announcement regarding a new Costume Design Contest.

This event has been held a couple times in the past, but now, a new contest will be held every month! According to the Creators’ Blog, the contest will be open for two weeks each time, so the current one closes June 7 at 8 pm PST.

If this continues, plenty of fans should have the chance to see their designs become a virtual reality! Unlike past versions of this event, no prizes (such as membership) were mentioned, other than having winning costume designs implemented into the game. Good luck to all!

Continuing with the subject of fan art, Poptropica shared six new Instagram stories today. But there’s something a little odd…

Look closely and you’ll find that two of these pieces are not Poptropica related—with one being a non-Pop original character, and the other being fan art of a character from the game Resident Evil, which does not exactly share Poptropica’s demographic. They are done by arts.n.darts, the same artist who also recently made fan art of Betty Jetty that the Pop Creators did not recognize.

While it would be admirable if this is simply an effort to show more support towards artists who have previously made Poptropica fan art, the shares are nevertheless uncharacteristic, and also raises the question of whether Poptropica’s social media person (or people?) is once again unaware of Poptropica’s content. Sus?

On a final note, a couple changes appear to have happened to the ads that appear on the website and in-game.

From past observations, most ads on Poptropica are specifically targeted towards its younger audience, similar to how they are sponsored to make in-game advertisements that showcase books, toys, or movies and shows that its general demographic may enjoy.

However, lately the ads appear to be more random and not exactly geared for kids. PHB staffer Gentle Dolphin reported seeing ads for Honey, which is a browser extension for online shopping, as well as for Morgan & Morgan, an injury law firm.

It’s understandable that a game needs to make a profit to survive, but this does raise some suspicion towards Poptropica’s insistence that they are still getting a large amount (“over a million”) of players. Why would they need to accept more advertisements if that was the case? The COVID-19 pandemic has had an effect on businesses, but as an online game, has Poptropica been growing or shrinking in attention? The branching out on ads seems to suggest the latter.

As of now, fans have many questions, many of which we may not see answers to soon. Hopefully we can still have fun while we wait with contests, upcoming quests, and the next Dream Island!

Castori honorem ~ Maryann/Smart Bubbles