Pop 5

The Top 5 Best Common Rooms

(¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.-> Hi Gs, <-.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)

These days, Poptropica common rooms don’t get as much attention as they used to — but we’ve been missing out on a lot recently. The recent common rooms are awesome! Here are my top 5 best common rooms to date! 😀

5. Bananabee’s — Night Watch Island

This is a resturaunt spin off of Applebees, a popular classy restaurant. Poptropica once had a kids meal pamphlet that came with the meal featured at Applebees. I still have mine. ^-^

This common room has multiple tables and chairs, each with a dish of food sitting on it. It’s perfect for chatting, and on the top floor is a game room. It’s all very ritzy (as Applebee’s is), and has a nice feel to it. The attention to detail is very nicely done.

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4. You Know the Drill Eatery — Super Villain Island

This common room has many key features that make it unique. The specials are sea cucumbers and burritos, there is a poster advertising the island’s villain, Dr Jupiter (also known as Zeus), and the name is just awesome! It has an oil rig theme, and a skyline view from the second floor. Some parts of it are new and modern, while others are not — it’s a great mixture, and creates a great environment!

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3. The Hair Club — Spy Island

This common room’s outer building is shaped like a giant hair spray bottle and giant comb on the side. You can spray the giant hair spray bottle by jumping on the cap! 😛

Inside, it’s themed like a 1930s barber shop, with a jukebox, stage, and milk shakes sitting on nearly every table. It also has lights on the top floor. This is a timeless (though based on a time period) classic common room — it’s worth visiting! 😀

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2. Celebrity Wax Museum — Backlot Island

This common room is just amazing. It features four wax celebrities; Elvis, Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn. Each of the celebrities are drawn, and Groucho Marx’s eyes follow your cursor, and he winks! I love this room for it’s artwork and creativity.

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1. Party Time Tower — Time Tangled Island

This common room, when you’re talking about parties, has it all! It has balloons, a bubble machine, a huge birthday cake, more balloons, and a big clock — which doesn’t really go with the theme, but then again, it’s in Time Tangled Island.

This was released with Time Tangled Island as the third common room. It’s one of the biggest when you look at the outside of the building. It all has a special place in our hearts, and it’s the best place to be when Poptropica’s birthday comes around. 😉

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Which common rooms are your favorite? Tell me in the comments! 😀 You can also vote in the poll below to see which common room from the the top 5 is everyone’s favorite. 🙂

And don’t forget — you might just see me in one of these common rooms, as I troll them! 😛

The meme of the day is…

Poptropican - Plays Poptropica labs no narfs

-HPuterpop

Pop 5

5 reasons Poptropica is the best virtual world for kids

While surfing through the waves of the web, I came across an article called “Five things learned from five years of Poptropica“, which you can click to read if you’re interested. It’s written by Director D – I mean James Lema, the director of product development at Poptropica.

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Anyway, onto the good part! Here were 5 reasons James cited as what makes Poptropica a better kids’ virtual world than any other game:

  1. We are not building a game. Let’s create a collection of narrative driven quests.

  2. Ask for age and gender. If they want to register, ask them after they have played around for a while.

  3. 2D is faster, cheaper… and none of us know 3D.

  4. We will use pre-scripted / random chat.

  5. We are NOT Facebook for kids.

Interestingly, Poptropica started out with a staff of just two artists, one of them being Lema, and Poptropicans spend an average of 30 minutes per session on the site! If you’d like to read more, check out Lema’s Poptropica article on Dubit, which explains the 5 things more in-depth.

Want to know what we at the PHB think about Poptropica? Check out our Poptropica: Game Review article in the Cool Stuff section!

Now the question is, why do YOU think Poptropica is awesome? Let us know in the comments! 😀