Hey Poptropicans, we’re approaching the end of the month, which means it’s time to announce another lucky Poptropican to win our monthly membership giveaway! 🎁
Congrats, Friendly Shell — we’ve enjoyed your friendly presence in the PHB comments and are pleased to give you this month’s membership prize. The availability of Poptropica islands today may be a shell of its former glory, but have fun revisiting Time Tangled and decking out your clubhouse with some new members only gear!
If you’re not a member, you still have the chance (or many chances, in fact): the PHB is hosting a giveaway every month, and it’s easy to enter! Just comment on the Free Poptropica Membership page and leave at least two other comments around the PHB within the month to be entered into that month’s giveaway.
We’ll announce a winner sometime in the final week of each month. If you don’t win, you can always try again for the next month! Full details »
Congrats again to Friendly Shell, and as always, keep on popping on! 🐚
It’s a familiar cry. Bring the old islands back to Poptropica! Ever since a huge chunk of islands went off the map due to technical incompatibility, Poptropicans everywhere have been calling for their return, including here on the PHB. But it’s been years, and gone they continue to be.
So let’s talk about that. The Poptropica Creators have no doubt heard the cries and have even promised to find ways to bring back the classics. But as time goes by, with few of the originals to show for it, players are getting restless. From the PHB, here’s our call to the Pop Creators, on behalf of nostalgic fans everywhere: here’s what it takes to keep the spirit of Poptropica alive and well.
🏝 Know and celebrate the old islands
The Poptropica map filled with islands (image: idk)
Poptropica used to have over 40 original islands, each a world filled with stories to explore. With the Flash-to-Haxe transition, we’re now down to about 10, and several are incomplete episodic adventures.
And the islands that Poptropica has put out in the past several years have shifted in style of gameplay — there’s a lot more handholding and a lot less exploring. So first things first, Poptropica needs to remember what made the old islands so special to so many of our childhoods.
Old Poptropica islands used the medium of interactive gaming to tell compellingstories to the kids who played them. But the newer islands seem to have one without the other: Reality TV: Wild Safari was all games, no story; while Fairytale Island gave us fun tales but without much participation in them from the player. A really successful island, like Mystery Train, manages to do both: puzzles and narrative together.
The Poptropica of the past several years have shown us that the Creators are straying further away from this vision of what made Poptropica so loved before. Players have compared this worrying trend to Mocktropica Island, the parody turned reality. More recently, a Creator’s clueless comment on Instagram revealed a lack of knowledge about Betty Jetty, a beloved character from an old island, which ultimately speaks to a lack of awareness for iconic parts of their own game.
So please, Poptropica Creators, revisit those old islands and experience their magic. Know the lore of the Poptropica worlds we grew up with, and let that intoxicating blend of gaming and storytelling guide you into making the next great island adventure.
While Poptropica hasn’t been pushing out their A-game in islands lately, we have been getting a lot of funky new features (and losing quite a few others, but we digress). Part of that is keeping up with today’s gaming tech needs with the Flash-to-Haxe transition, but all this focus on new, not-island stuff has made Poptropicans wonder what it’s all for.
Sure, it’s fun to see Home Island get a seasonal makeover or try on a new costume from the store. But why are the Creators so obsessed with redesigning Home Island? What’s with all the pop-up screens telling you what to do, or the remaking of features like the menu that were fine the way they were? Even assuming that these updates are well received, they should not be the main focus—they’re secondary aspects.
All the efforts spent in making these updates is time taken away from preserving the spirit of Poptropica through the old islands. Every inconsequential makeover or new pet item feels, to the nostalgic player, like valuable time that could have gone towards getting closer to bringing the old islands back. Which brings us to the last point…
⏩ Port the old islands to Haxe
Sounds obvious and probably easier said than done, but that’s really what a lot of players are looking for right now. Poptropica owns all that content, and the fanbase is eager to play them, so what’s the holdup?
When asked in late 2020 about whether 2021 holds new islands or the return of old ones, the Poptropica CEO answered:
We’re working on a mix of both, plus some remasters of the old islands. We’re also looking at ways to allow players to access the old islands once Flash isn’t widely supported anymore.
Abhi Arya, Poptropica CEO
Remasters are all well and good (well, unless they turn out watered-down like the remastered Mythology Island), but this reinventing could be one reason things are taking a while. But while we wait for those, what about giving us the old islands in their original form? That still takes work, but presumably less work than rewriting old islands.
Hut and Stuff: Quit your jibber jabber.
From that same Q&A:
We know how much the Poptropica you grew up with means to you and want to make sure you can always play that version.
Natalie Shahmiri, Poptropica general manager
Poptropica has heard and promised, but we’ve been waiting a while. It’s been 7 months since that promise in our Q&A with them, nearly 2 years since the old islands vanished from the map, and coming up on 5 years if we’re counting from Poptropica’s first attempts at rebuilding itself for an era without Flash via the now-defunct Poptropica Worlds. An update would be nice. More old islands would be even better. 💙
What say you, Poptropicans? Whether you’re a new or old player, share your thoughts in the comments so the Creators can hear more voices on how fans feel about the state of the game today!
Besides having an incredible and friendly team, I just like being able to participate so much in this community! Many fans including myself have looked up to it as basically the center of the Pop Fandom, and I’m very honored to be a part of it now after years of reading it.
2. What advice would you give to aspiring bloggers or writers in general that you wish you had starting out?
This is definitely connected to my personal experience, but don’t be afraid of waiting a bit to achieve your goals — whether they be starting a fan blog, publishing a book, or anything of the sort. I really wanted to write Pop blogs during the time I was too young to be on social media, and it made me feel like a failure. If you start writing a series and it doesn’t get the attention you hoped it would, or life gets in the way of starting that really cool project, it’s okay to focus on smaller things to hone your craft until you’re ready.
3. What is your favorite island and villain?
Oh wow. This is a toughie. Hmmmm….HMMM…Okay, but in all seriousness I’m not exactly the most subtle about this on the PHC or even here! The answer is of course Astro Knights and Binary Bard! That part of Pop has continued to influence my interests and creative projects to this day, and I will fight for more Poptropica representation of Mordred because he is the most interesting and well-written and that is a hill I will die on.
4. What challenge in the game has been the hardest to complete in your opinion?
I’ve never been the best at puzzles. I had to rely on guides for basically every single island! That being said, Virus Hunterwas probably the most grueling. While Skullduggery had the repetitive trading and Astro-Knights the notorious boss battles, Virus Hunter had something they didn’t–really horrible glitches. I’m not sure if it was just me, but the bugs in that island nearly made it impossible for me, and ten times more frustrating than the usual hard island!
5. What is your favorite feature (still here or gone) from the many years of Poptropica?
I just love the little additions in different islands, such as the flying in Super Power or that sweet elevator music in Night Watch. And of course being able to just fly around in your rocket in Astro Knights even after completing the island. I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, I just like anything that makes the world feel more interactive, even if it doesn’t add much story wise!
6. What is your favorite Poptropica item?
I really like the Capes N’ Cowls costume set. It’s cool to see animated costume pieces, and I even have one on my character! (Honorable mention to the Mordred-Princess outfit because it’s perty.)
7. What is your favorite Poptropica easter egg/secret/reference?
Okay, I’m just gonna say the Mocktropica trash bin characters (actually scrap that how about just ALL of Mocktropica) because it’s obvious, but another thing I really enjoyed finding during my digging through the Creator’s blog was all the extra bits of villain backstories you can find during the 2011 Villain Showdown. It’s almost a bit sad how some of those parts of their stories usually never got brought up again.
(LJ: You can friend her on Poptropica with the username mdp686!)
🌟 Would you like to be the next Popular Poptropican? 🌟
To nominate yourself or someone you know, send me an email at [email protected] or a private messageon Discord with the following:
the name of your nominee (a Poptropica name or other screen name)
a reason why your nominee should be the next Popular Poptropican
As always, thank you so much for reading and I’ll see you in the next one. Pop on!
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Dangerous Dragon. Enjoy!
Hi Poptropicans, DD here! (Gosh, it’s been a while.)
So I’ve been seeing MANY MANY comments appearing everywhere about how Poptropica should stop making everything modern. Yes, I think that too. One of the things I’m surprised about is how they changed our nice little crate menu. So let’s get into it!
Poptropica has had this cool crate for a menu for years, and even before this version of it, each menu item had a nice little icon. But why change what wasn’t broken? I thought this was one of the best parts of the game; it was fun opening the menu and seeing all those icons…
…but with the latest Home Island update, the Creators replaced it with a modern-style hamburger menu. Basically just THREE LINES. That’s so boring. Now we just click the button and seeing the extremely long list. I don’t understand what the point of this change was.
Three lines make up the new menu in the top corner.
Clicking on it opens up the menu options.
Anyway, now let’s go to some of the other issues that have cropped up lately. There have been some really annoying bugs…
Let’s talk about those 30-second full game screen unskippable ads. Ok, I know this is Poptropica’s way of earning money, but there is one problem. Sometimes when you’re patiently waiting for the ad to end, it comes to the end and freezes near 0:01. Then you have to reload everything and watch it again. Come on!
Likewise, while editing your clubhouse, the screen often freezes. (It happened to me a thousand times!) Then, when you reload the screen and come back, most of the things are not saved. This needs to be fixed!
Unskippable ads dominate the game screen
Another issue that’s been happening to a lot of people is the black screen of death. Basically, sometimes when you log in, you get stuck on a black screen that never goes away and the game doesn’t load. When I first got it, I was literally crying and I remember sending the PHB a panicked email. Fortunately, it usually fixes itself by the next day. But it’s still disappointing!
Load, load for eternity…
You can also sometimes get around this by logging in on a different account. Meanwhile, wait until the next day to log into your regular account, and send a message to Poptropica support to get them to resolve the issue for you!
Last but not least, the plain pet glitch. For weeks now, pets have mysteriously been stripped of their clothing and custom coloring, and all pet clothing has been missing from our items. Plus, ever since the pet barn disappeared from Home Island, we haven’t been able to use the pet colorizer at all, making for some rather boring, uncustomizable pets. When will Poptropica fix this?
Pet with custom color and clothing
Same pet, made plain by the glitch
That’s it for this post. What do you think of the new menu? Have you been getting these annoying glitches? Share in the comments, and thanks for reading!
Keep Popping, DD 💜
Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Dangerous Dragon. If you did, you might also enjoy his other posts, such as DD’s clubhouse tour.
The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. Interested in writing for the PHB? We’d love to hear from you! 📰✨
Howdy Poptropicans, it’s LJ back with another Popular Poptropican! Today I’ll be talking to Purple Paw as part of our PHB staff lineup of interviews. (Check out Spotted Dragon and Gentle Dolphin‘s interviews, as well as mine, if you haven’t already!) She was one of the founders of Ramble Reviews, does a variety of other fun posts on the blog as well, and we’re happy she’s on the team. Now let’s get into it!
1. What do you enjoy about blogging with the PHB?
I enjoy having such a big audience in the Poptropica community to share news, theories, tips, facts, and my own creations with. I’ve learned much more than I expected since starting out. Plus, it’s cool getting to connect with Poptropicans all over the world! Receiving the invitation to join this team was definitely the most excitement I’d had in awhile, and writing for the PHB has been an awesome experience thus far.
2. What advice would you give to aspiring bloggers or writers in general that you wish you had starting out?
A helpful tip I wish I’d used in my earlier posts is to start with the necessities. I would often jump right in and try to create a finished, revised version of a post right off the bat–but unfortunately, that’s not how it works with writing. If your first draft of writing doesn’t please you, don’t start over right away. Instead, finishing writing down your ideas and everything you’re planning to cover before you start adding special words, notes, images, etc.
There’s always time to go back and fix something after you’ve finished with the first draft, but it’s much harder to go back and fix an issue before you’ve finished laying down the necessities; otherwise, it’s likely you’ll get caught up in one part and forget everything else you were going to write. You gotta bake the cake before you add the frosting. 🎂
3. What is your favorite island and villain?
My favorite island’s always hard to choose, as there’ve been a huge assortment of amazing ones over the years. But in the end, I would probably have to go with Red Dragon, because of all its beautiful scenery and the ninja gameplay — and because of the nostalgia I get from a Magic Treehouse-based island. However, even though it’s one of my top favorites, I don’t believe it’s the best island in general. That, in my opinion, would have to be Ghost Story. Ghost Story had an intricate and memorable story I’ll never forget; one of Poptropica’s true masterpieces.
As for my favorite villain, I definitely loved Daphne Dreadnaught — I always thought she deserved more showtime than she got in the Ghost Story prequel, Spook Central. I also liked Mademoiselle Moreau, mainly since her motive behind her villainy is easy to understand.
4. What challenge in the game has been the hardest to complete in your opinion?
Probably one of the many gear-filled puzzles in Steamworks. Although I did quite like the island as a whole, the mini-games were definitely frustrating at times, the multiple steam terminals in particular. It also took me a very long time to complete Skullduggery (although I found it was easy to get into a rhythm after a little while of trying at it).
5. What is your favorite feature (still here or gone) from the many years of Poptropica?
That’s another hard question. While the islands are certainly the real gems of the game, side ideas such as Tribes were also fun to engage with. I thought it was cool to have a feature where players can proudly wave their flags and compete in an Olympic Games-like event, and even access special common rooms just for them and their Tribemates! I hope the Creators incorporate Tribes again in the future. Go Nightcrawlers! 🌙
6. What is your favorite Poptropica item?
Out of all the amazing items you get to collect throughout the islands, I would have to say the Jetpack from Early Poptropica. It sure was fun to whiz across the city without touching the ground! The stopwatch from Super Villain was also an intriguing object…(I really can’t choose just one of anything, can I?)
Out of the purchasable items in the Store, however, I always did love the many flavors of PopGum; I remember when I was younger I could never get enough of repeatedly hitting the space bar to watch bubbles float around the screen. Now that I think about it, I probably crashed the game once or twice doing that. 🤭
7. What is your favorite Poptropica Easter egg/secret/reference?
This one doesn’t come directly from the game itself, but the binary code at the bottom of every Binary Bard post on the Creator’s Blog was one of my favorites. I unfortunately didn’t engage much with the Creator’s Blog at the time they were posted, but more recently I revisited older posts and found the clever references to Bard’s name. All those mysterious 0s and 1s…
Oh, and of course I can’t leave without mentioning our true lord Beev! Pop simply wouldn’t be the same without him.
(LJ: You can friend her on Poptropica with the username PurplePawzz!)
🌟 Would you like to be the next Popular Poptropican? 🌟
To nominate yourself or someone you know, send me an email at [email protected] or a private messageon Discord with the following:
the name of your nominee (a Poptropica name or other screen name)
a reason why your nominee should be the next Popular Poptropican
🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺 