Category: Pranks

We’re kicking off our new PHB blogging style with a fun Outfit of the Week Weak: the Burnt Out Big Boy! Here’s how you can dress up like this sleep-deprived sucker:

• Dye your skin tone a sickly yellowish shade with the Colorizer on Home Island.
• Perk up a little with glasses from the resource manager on the fourth floor of Mocktropica Island HQ. You still gotta look like you’re a little alive, at least.
• Down in the basement of Mocktropica HQ, grab the “SLEEP” eye mask and the sweaty sweatpants from one of the overworked developers.
• Because you’ve still got a little decency even though you’re barely pulling it together tbh, put on a dress shirt from the Home Island clothing generator.
• Try on a cuddly handheld toy like the Dr. Hare Plushy. Not pictured, but at least we have the decency to tell you so, unlike a certain mention of a Rastafarian beanie we saw somewhere…

Rumor has it this is what the average Poptropica Creator probably looks like…

#burn #justkidding #maybe #examseasongotuslike

Yo Poptropicans, the PHB team’s been thinking…

Blogging is becoming overrated. Even the Poptropica Creators hardly do it anymore. So we’re going to take a cue from them and try out some new things around here.

We’ve been hard at work 💪 on some new posts inspired by the Creators’ Blog and Twitter feed, and we think you’ll like them. Stay tuned.

#BloggingBlues #WhereAreTheCreators #WhoEvenWritesTheseThings #OhYeahWeAreHashtaggingNow #ThatsCoolRight #SeriousResponsesOnly #Relevant #BlessUp #ExploreCollectCompete #GoodStuffComing #StayPopping

April Fools, Poptropicans!

Yesterday, on April Fools Day, the PHB announced PopFeedz, a new site promising pure Poptropica entertainment, named as the PHB’s “cooler cousin” for abandoning the PHB’s typical posting style in favor of fun web trends like clickbait titles and the most random personality quizzes, gifs, listicles, cute animal pics, more. Well, as many of you guessed, it was just an April Fools prank: we’re not actually planning to turn the PHB into another Buzzfeed.

Many of you caught onto our joke, although we did manage to fool some of you. 😜 Either way, we hope you enjoyed exploring the PopFeedz site we put together! If you missed it, or want to relive it, the site will remain available at popfeedz.wordpress.com – so enjoy!

The PHB team worked hard to put everything together, combining ideas and being inspired by each other. Lucky Joker even put up a new quiz about PopGum after we had announced the site! A sketch from Brave Tomato made its way into the post about Skinny Moon – which, if you haven’t figured out yet, is just our imagination, and not a real interview. 😉

As the team was coming up with ideas for what to do for this year’s prank, we kept thinking we wanted to do something about Poptropica Worlds, which was tricky since we still don’t know much about it. However, Slippery Raptor had the idea of turning the PHB into a “PHB 2.0,” just as Worlds is a New Poptropica – and from there, it took off!

The name PopFeedz is, of course, inspired by Buzzfeed, a popular entertainment website with all sorts of fun time-wasters. The content of PopFeedz is similarly inspired, particularly with quizzes, memes, and an overall style of clickbait titles and concise text. Of course, everything is adapted to Poptropica, such as Spotted Dragon’s “You Will NOT Believe What’s In These Behind-the-Scenes Sketches…” playing on our own concerns about what might happen with Poptropica Worlds, but with a humorous intent. And as a reference to the shiny Worlds art we’ve been seeing, we even threw in a little parody of the hit song “Shiny” from the recent Disney film Moana in our announcement post.

Pets of Poptropica is inspired by some of Skinny Moon’s latest social media posts, not only about her pup Toby, but also her call to post pictures of pets on social media with the hashtag #PetsOfPoptropica. A few of us had pets (both past and present), so we started a pets series on PopFeedz! Here’s a look at my betta fish, Biscotti, staring at my Poptropican on the computer screen:

Because these articles were enjoyed so much, we hope to re-publish a few of them here on the PHB over the next few weeks, so they can be enjoyed by even more readers, who might have missed them on PopFeedz. However, some of them will remain exclusive to PopFeedz since they are more suitable there, so be sure to check them out.

On April 1, PopFeedz received over 1,600 visits to the site, and we heard from many of you about how much you liked it! We even received this complimentary message from the one and only Skinny Moon:

As always, the team here at the PHB is grateful for your continued support and readership, and we’d like to think PopFeedz was one fun way to celebrate that fact. The Poptropica Help Blog is here to stay, so stay popping, Poptropicans! 😜✌️

– slantedfish 🐠 –

Well, Poptropica hasn’t always been this glam
It was a lame little game once
But now, we gotta say, it’s our jam
Because it’s beautiful, baby…

So we all know about the new Poptropica Worlds that’s going to debut this spring. But it’s been quite the wait, and all this talk of new has gotten the PHB team thinking: As Worlds takes on a life of its own, what are we going to do to adapt?

It occurred to us that, just as the game has to adapt to modern technologies, so too should our blog adapt to what’s in these days. And that’s why we’re excited to present…

{ popfeedz.wordpress.com }

PopFeedz, the brand-new cooler, cutting-edge cousin of the Poptropica Help Blog! Yeah, come on, check out what the buzz is all about. It’s pretty awesome.

This newfangled, revamped PHB brings you the latest fads in website entertainment, and honestly, it’s so cool that it makes what we’ve got here on the old PHB look boring.

On PopFeedz, we don’t need tedious guides that only serve to cheat people out of the joys of playing the game. Nor does PopFeedz fool around with lengthy posts that analyze Poptropica’s updates to death the way the PHB would. Instead, it fools around with the fun parts of Poptropica, and everything’s short and sweet!

There are the personality quizzes…

(So far, we’ve got the big hits of “What Island Are You?”, “Can You Pop to the Top?”, and “Do You Know Your Poptropica Islands in 140 Characters or Less?” Stay tuned for “Which Astro-Knights planet describes your mood?”, “What flavor of PopGum are you?”, and lots more!)

the celebrity gossip and memes…

(Haven’t you always wondered about Skinny Moon’s childhood? We don’t want to give too much away here… you’ll have to see it for yourself…)

the cute pets…

(Toby the #PoptropicaPup isn’t the only cute animal in this community!)

…and muuuuch more. Seriously, you’re going to love it. So come on over and read our new clickbait articles until the sun comes up in the morning and you’re wondering why you still didn’t finish your homework. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Gone are the old ways of the PHB. No more long wordy posts investigating the tiniest detail of an image. In fact, we’ll stop rambling on soon and let the site speak for itself. Everything’s bite-sized these days, and it’s all about the fun, fun, fun.

No need to come to us for the news – that’s all on the Creators’ Blog. We’ll make it fun for you, though, so come back to PopFeedz for the latest gossip, cute pet pics, and other entertainment! Just as Poptropica Worlds is bringing us a new gaming experience, so PopFeedz is here to bring you a new fansite experience.

This might just be the last long-winded post on the PHB. From here on out, we’re handing the reins over to PopFeedz. New style. New substance.

A poppin’, shiny, simpler newsfeed. Check out PopFeedz today.

We’d rather be… shiny
Like treasure from old Captain Crawfish’s wreck
Scrub the deck and make it look… shiny!

(Certified 100% Shiny™ by our crustaceous friend Tamatoa.)

–the PHB PopFeedz team–

Heyyo Poptropicans, it’s Ultimate iPad Expert here.

Well, as many of you have guessed after seeing our PHV announcement…

The Poptropica Help Vlogs is indeed a prank.

We’ve been conjuring up this idea for a few months now. And there was a lot of work behind the whole thing. So, let me tell you about the making of the PHV.

It all began a few months ago with the PHB staff brainstorming new prank ideas for this year’s April Fools Day. As we discussed, one idea in particular emerged: turning our blogging into vlogging.

First step was to create a backstory. To introduce the new and novel idea of the PHV to the PHB, we decided to have Slanted Fish “leave” the PHB so the leadership would be in new hands. With her “out of the way”, the PHB could be led into becoming the more modern form of YouTube vlogging. There was some speculation that out of her departure and PHV, that perhaps one was a prank but not the other, but that’s not the case. So don’t worry, Slanted Fish isn’t actually leaving.

The second step was filming each portion of the video. We’ll start with the vlog part itself, where HPuterpop, Giant Hawk, and I (UiPE) were talking together in the video. How we met up is a fun story in itself, considering we live in different states. Giant Hawk and I are twin brothers and we live together, but our friend and fellow author HP lives elsewhere.

Back in February, Giant Hawk (Joshua) and I just so happened to be going down to South Carolina to the city HPuterpop (Andrew) lives in, for an event. Of course, we had to meet up! While we were there, we were able to meet up twice, once at the event we were all going to, and the second time, at the hotel we were staying at. It was there at the hotel that we filmed the vlog.

We later found out that then-author Blake had also been at the same event, but none of us had known about it until it was too late to meet up. Fun fact, I guess!

That being said, it was super awesome to meet up with Andrew, with whom we’ve become good friends with over the PHB and other aspects of online community. We figured you guys would enjoy seeing our meetup, so we wanted to share it with you guys! With the exception of me and Joshua, being that we’re siblings, this is the first time a group of PHB authors have ever met up in real life!

Anyway, that’s enough of me rambling about that. 😛 Just about a week ago, the other authors began filming their parts of the video. Cobalt Spinner filmed his comedic drAWihn wiF zPNSr video, Spotted Dragon created a Draw My Life video, Slippery Raptor made a Flipagram intro with the PHB author lineup, and Brave Tomato performed an amazing piano rendition of of the Monster Carnival theme.

Over this past week, I’ve been undertaking the third step, editing. It took me a good 10-12 hours on some of the separate segments of the video (overall at least 50-60 hours of editing) and I’ve been working almost non-stop on editing since last week. I created all sorts of graphics for the prank, as well.

The most time consuming portion of the editing was of the vlog with me, Andrew, and Joshua. Joshua and I still aren’t comfortable with sharing our faces publicly, so we had to edit Poptropican heads on top. While the original vlog was about 8 minutes long, we narrowed it down to about 2 minutes, partly because editing was time-consuming and partly because some of our ramblings were not so relevant.

In fact, the reason we didn’t post our PHV announcement until about 9:30 PM (EST) last night was because of complications with this part of the vlog. Although perhaps the antsy-ness while waiting for the post, expressed by some of our PHB and PHC friends, might even be considered (unintentionally) part of the prank itself!

Anyway, this brings us to the fourth and final step: execution. On March 31, Fishy made her post stating that she’d be taking some time off of the blog and was passing ownership to me, HPuterpop, and Giant Hawk. At the same time, we put up a header to show we were “under construction”.

Between that post and the official PHV announcement, HPuterpop and I were fervently editing the video and preparing for its release. Finally, we finished everything and officially announced the PHV, putting up the new graphics on our YouTube channel. I really love how the whole video turned out, so I hope you guys will watch and enjoy. Welcome to the PHV!

Plus, the PHB (or is it the PHV?) was updated with a new header to reflect our big shift.

–

The reaction to the prank was really awesome! We got over 200 comments just on the PHV post.

Of course, there were the few extremely skeptical people. (Honestly, I don’t blame you, I trust no one on April 1st.) But I’m glad some of the more skeptical people tried to play along.

A few people were really confused about the whole ordeal. To some it “seemed so real,” and we even got some comparisons to the PHB’s first prank, the Club Penguin Help Blog.

Among some of the “fooled,” were the saddened, since, as part of the prank, we were “deleting the blog”. And we even fooled Poptropica’s very own Skinny Moon on Twitter!

Also, a group of dedicated PHB readers (WimpyKidFan, Dangerous Eye, Tall Cactus, and Nature Beauty) even began screenshotting every PHB post, so they could be saved forever. XD Really sweet of them! You can check out the project here.

Last but definitely not least were the many comments I saw (not only on the PHB, but on YouTube and the PHC) from people enjoying the video. I really appreciate these comments out of everything that’s happened – it’s really great to see that my hard work and effort has paid off.

–

Well, that about wraps up my recap of this year’s April Fools prank. The PHB is not going away anytime soon, Slanted Fish is here to stay, and we’re not actually replacing our blog posts with vlogs. Really hope you guys enjoyed the prank, and especially the video!

Meme King out. 👑

• Ultimate iPad Expert •