Hello again, Poptropicans! Dropping by with a few updates!
Unfortunately, the Creator’s Blog still hasn’t been active since the end of February, but there have been small updates on social media and additions — or in one case, a subtraction — to the game itself.
First, let’s show off some wonderful fan art features from the official Pop Instagram. Click the artists’ names to view the original posts!
The Creators also announced this month’s member gifts: a WhitePhantom Rogue costume, White Phantom Rogue Power that turns you partially invisible, and a White Phantom Butterfly Follower. 🦋
The ensemble is a little unusual compared to most other outfits in the game, particularly because of its monochrome color palette. Nonetheless, it’s interesting and quite refreshing!
Meanwhile, non-members and members alike can go shopping with the new rotation at Adventure Outfitters, now stocked with swords aplenty. If only these Astro-Knights came with the long-lost island itself! ⚔️
Have you been keeping up with the Daily Comics from the in-game map? After 300+ strips from the series which began its daily showings in July 2022, the comic strips have been reset. So rather than continuing on with the story, which had ended on a cliffhanger, the strips have been removed and are now being re-uploaded from the beginning. Seems like this was just another way for Pop to manufacture novelty!
Finally, long-time Poptropica CreatorJonathan Pitcher posted a couple tweets on his personal account related to his work for the game: a piece of concept art for the Multi-Tool in Steamworks Island, and compliments to pop band AJR for being his muse as he works.
There's something to AJR. Those guys never fail to help me get my creative juices flowing while I'm working on Poptropica. #AJR#poptropicapic.twitter.com/3Fjz7pO31O
So, are you about to joinamasquerade while donning your phantom costume? Will you listen to the music of the night as you work late into the days on fanart? Are you interested in going down once more into the antics of Jorge and Oliver?
Whatever you plan on doing, all I ask of you is that you think of me and the PHB team as you continue on your adventures!
You asked, and here are your answers, Poptropicans! The PHB recently got in touch with former Pop Creator Mitch Krpata, aka Captain Crawfish, with your questions about Poptropica’sdevelopment pre-2018. And Mitch kindly responded to them all! Take it away, captain…
Henlo, Poptropicans! I’m happy to announce a special upcoming PHB post: an interview with former Pop Creator, Mitch Krpata!
While the PHB has covered and even hosted interviews with this senior story developer in the past, this time we’re reconnecting with ol’ Captain Crawfish to talk about the development process for Poptropica. And you’re invited to join!
In the comments of this post, bring your unanswered questions regarding the stories and characters of past islands, pertaining to content made before 2018 (when Mitch departed the team). This interview will not cover the current state of the game, and Mitch cannot speak for the current team. That being said, ask away!
Mitch Krpata wrote three of the four Poptropica graphic novels, among others.
Before I close off, here are Poptropica’s latest Instagram stories, including an animation of Monkey Wrench Island some rockin’ Zomberries by the PHB’s Lucky Joker (LJ)! (…ok I’ll take my leave now.)
Make sure to check out these artists, and don’t forget to submit your questions in the comments of this post! I’ll see you soon for the next Villain Saga episode and the completed interview!
Poptropica released a brilliant, clever parody of itself and larger forces in game design and management with Mocktropica Island in 2013.
Idea Generator: Spin to win. Try your luck.
But then, as players have witnessed, it became Mocktropica in many ways. This week, former Poptropica publisher Jess Brallier revealed some of the details surrounding the game’s paradigm shifts in a blog post titled “The end of the Poptropica I knew.”
Operating System: When technology meets talent, anything is possible.
The saga picks up with the Pearson CEO’s sale of Poptropica. Specifics aren’t mentioned, but we know that Poptropica was sold to Sandbox, a London-based “edutainment” company, in 2015. (Sandbox still owns Poptropica, along with other brands like Coolmath Games.) But it was more than the sale itself that changed things for Jess.
With Poptropica, sure, I was not always going to see eye-to-eye with the new owner regarding priorities, investments, staffing, technology, growth strategy, and so on and so on. Yet decisions had to be made and they were no longer mine to make. Those were up to the new owner. I got that. Such is life.
But what I could not stand, and what I refused to further witness, was the dismissal of the team who smartly and lovingly built Poptropica.
Jess Brallier
Usual Suspects: This is where you line up for your turn.
Now, who was this new management who undermined the very people who had created so many Poptropica masterpieces? We’re not entirely sure, but we can piece together some details…
We know it was the then-new Pearson CEO, John Fallon, who didn’t see value in Poptropica and decided to sell it. He retired from Pearson in 2020. But Jess previously wrote that they only ever had one meeting about Pop, so it seems unlikely that Fallon would have been managing it.
New management invades Mocktropica. And Poptropica.
And Poptropica was sold in 2015, so current Pop CEO Abhi Arya would not have been involved, as he only began heading up Poptropica in 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. Perhaps in between Fallon’s arrival as Pearson CEO and the sale, new management was assigned to Poptropica whom we don’t know about.
Whoever they were (or are?), they were allegedly undervaluing the rest of the Poptropica team as early as 2013, the year Fallon became CEO of Pearson, and the same year Mocktropica was created and released. This revelation sure brings a new light to this classic island — it wasn’t just a mockery or a prediction, it was already unfolding.
Some of the beloved crew after launch of Wimpy Boardwalk
Drones: Replaceable parts. Cogs in the machine.
From the team pic (left), we recognize Jeff Kinney (top center) and artist Abe Tena (bottom center).
They developed content and an experience that kids actually loved. For the user/reader/viewer it was an emotional connection unlike I had ever, or since, witnessed. Yet I wasn’t surprised, because the team’s hearts were deep into the work.
They were ready to address the challenges and make Poptropica bigger and better than ever. If only they had been allowed to.
It was an ugly thing to watch.
Jess Brallier
Again, specifics aren’t given here, but we can gather that Jess had a lot of respect for his team that the new management didn’t. So he made the difficult decision to resign on July 14, 2015, right around when Timmy Failure Island was in the works. And he never looked back — literally, he never clicked on Poptropica.com or its apps ever again.
For me, personally, it was over when its remarkable team was torn apart. They built Poptropica out of heart and smarts. They resolved every business challenge. When they were gone, Poptropica was like a treasured childhood house with a loving family no longer in it.
Jess Brallier
In Pop We Trust: The genuine article. Accept no substitutions.
Jess concludes the saga with a final hope that all the pain and pleasure of creating Poptropica was worth it:
I just hope, as we imagined from the beginning, that we inspired kids to care deeply about art and design, and storytelling.
And that as they grow older, they’ll play it forward, making a difference in the lives of a next generation of good and curious kids. That would somehow make it all worthwhile.
Fingers crossed.
Jess Brallier
On that front, all of us at the PHB can affirm that Poptropica did inspire us, and likely all of you Poptropicans reading this too. We see it all the time in this community! And as wegrowolder, we definitely hope to keep building that blessing, whether here on the PHB or onwards.
Captains Courageous: Learning to appreciate poetry, one explication at a time.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won…
Poem by Walt Whitman (as featured in Mocktropica Island)
Jess’s blog post has attracted a few comments, including one from PHB guest writer Dangerous Dragon, who wrote that “Poptropica isn’t fun anymore.” Another comment from Kory (probably Kory Merritt, illustrator of the Poptropica comics and graphic novels) brought up how #Poptropica was trending on Twitter earlier.
“Poptropica” was trending a few weeks ago on Twitter. It was a bunch of twenty-somethings reminiscing about how much they loved Poptropica when they were in elementary school. I remember it being very popular with 4-6th graders when I first started teaching (2008-09). It was especially cool to see one amazing artist who posted art of a character she’d created, and then Tweet about how the character actually started as her Poptropica alter-ego.
It definitely made an impact.
Kory (probably Kory Merritt)
Scene from Poptropica comic illustrated by Kory Merritt
The PHB also sent a couple of tweets to Jess in response to his post, firstly to thank him for sharing and to let him know that all the heart that went into making Poptropica did in fact have the impact he’d hoped for. He responded: “WONDERFUL!”
The Yearbook is amazing. Nicely done and many good memories. And thanks for interview invite, but I'll pass. As I said, it's gotta be history for me. I've moved on. Again, all you've done is so impressive! Wow! https://t.co/71ViUAtxBm
That wraps up this post, and perhaps all of what Jess Brallier will be saying on record about the universe of Poptropica that he and his team lovingly built for over a decade. It’s been good to hear from him. Catch up on the saga here, here, here, and of course, here in this post.
Jess Brallier was first a publisher (book and online), a role he held at Funbrain, Poptropica, Planet Dexter, and Family Education Network. He has also served on the executive team at Harcourt, Little Brown, and Abrams, and has written 40 books for kids and adults. You can read more about Jess on his website and his insights on his personal blog.
Fun fact: In Shrink Ray Island, the book in CJ’s bedroom which you push down to create a ramp for the toy car is Tess’s Tree, an actual book by Jess M. Brallier.
Hey Poptropicans, we’ve got more insights on our favorite game from former Poptropica headJess Brallier! Previously, we shared the publisher’s reflections on Poptropica as the biggest kids’ site and how storytelling with games made it so.
I’ve been asked that many times. But I truly don’t know today’s product. I don’t look at it. It’s history to me.
Yet there was a time when I cared about Poptropica with nearly all (I do have a family) my heart. It was my life.
Jess Brallier
The post goes on to share more about what changed within and outside of Poptropica: all the challenges it faced in its later years, which Jess himself did not have the opportunity to face.
Poptropica was owned by Pearson, and in 2012, their CEO Marjorie Scardino stepped down and the education company was taken over by John Fallon. Jess does not name the new guy in his blog, but he quotes the new Pearson head as having told him in their only meeting:
Children do not like animation, the learning that happens on Poptropica is not worthy, and I’m going to sell it.
Pearson CEO (possibly John Fallon)
Oof.
To add to the troubles, Poptropica was built on Adobe Flash, a dying technology, and needed a million-dollar investment to rebuild the game. According to Jess, “that meant pausing Poptropica’s generous P&L (profit & loss) for 18 to 24 months.” He laments that of all the millions that are thrown around, none of it landed on Poptropica.
And there was another issue: “Poptropica’s audience was rapidly moving over to mobile apps.” So make it an app, right? Poptropica did eventually do that, but Jess wasn’t a fan. Turns out, it’s expensive: you make it per Apple’s or Google’s requirements, then pretty soon the requirements change, and you have to hire more hands to re-build your app. On and on it goes, draining your resources — to say nothing of the issues of discoverability in the app stores.
Next he pivots to Funbrain, “a vital traffic feeder to Poptropica.” Funbrain was aging like Poptropica and needed re-building too. But while Funbrain successfully got its upgrades, Poptropica didn’t quite get all the resources it needed to keep flourishing (as we can see from the trajectory of the game then and now).
With Poptropica’s global audience being much larger than Funbrain’s and bringing in more money, Jess writes that the investments should have gone more to the “fresh” Poptropica, “not its older and not so cool sister.” Alas.
The post wraps up with a quick summary of how the biggest kids’ site fell from its peak:
We had a product built upon Flash, a dying technology.
An ownership that thought ten million kids from around the world were idiots.
No viable mobile model to move to.
And a diminishing feeder.
Great.
Jess Brallier
In another post titled “Sales!,” Jess writes about his experiences in commercial publishing. Poptropica gets a small mention when he talks about the benefits of having non-sales staff collaborate together with sales staff:
I encouraged the same at Family Education Network (Funbrain and Poptropica), sending designers and editors out with the advertising sales staff. That made for a team of good people intent on publishing great stories AND figuring out how to pay for it (including that team’s own salaries and any additional staff they may hope to hire).
Picking up from the dismal summary of Poptropica’s woes, Jess moves on with an upbeat note about the fun of Poptropica comics and the success of the subsequent graphic novel series.
The comics caused us, for the first time, to create real characters (beyond the millions of random avatars created for our stories and by our users). Which was essential because brand extensions, including merchandise and other media, ride on the back of characters. Our two protagonists, Jorge and Oliver, were a classic and funny duo. And it was such a delight to see them hilariously hopping around the Poptropica Islands.
Jess Brallier
But that didn’t erase their other troubles. So Jeff Kinney, Mitch Krpata (Poptropica’s lead writer, whom we’ve interviewed on the PHB), and Jess spent two days in a conference room to hash out Poptropica’s mythology… and out of that came their pitch for an animated TV series.
In other words, just what is Poptropica? Why does it exist? What’s the REAL story behind all these islands? Where is Poptropica? How do you get there? How do you get away from it? Is there an evil genius behind all of it? Good grief, are we talking time travel and wormholes?
Jess Brallier
We’ve seen hints of these plans before. Back in 2015, Poptropica tweeted a pic from a script read session with the graphic novel characters (Jorge had orange hair here, too). But the cartoon never materialized, and we never found out much about it (though Jess did share the secret screenplay with Thinknoodles when they met in New York City).
Anyway, Jess shares that he, Jeff Kinney, and a film/TV agent spent a week pitching Poptropica: The Animated Series in Hollywood. They got good responses, but didn’t land a broadcast deal. Jess writes that if it had been today, they definitely could have gotten one, considering all the demand in streaming. So… maybe the current creators could follow up on that? 👉 👈 In our 2020 interview with the current CEO of Poptropica, they did say it was something they’re “always considering”!
So we now had a Poptropica mythology and cast of characters.
With Poptropica comics we had a proven and simple form of storytelling that could fly around social media without reliance on our own app. And we could do the same with short form animation.
We had a bestselling book series.
And we had a passionate global audience ready to welcome an animated TV series.
Ironically, at that moment, Poptropica was in its most perfect position ever.
Jess Brallier
From here, things seem to be looking up from where that other post ended! But Jess ends his post with an ominous hint for the next one: “Tomorrow: The end of the Poptropica I knew.” Stay tuned with us!
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