Category: Store

Membership, Mini Quests, Roblox, Store

All Members’ Content Now Free 🥳🫣

Slanted Fish

You read that right: All members-only content is now free to play!

Releasing right on the heels of Poptropica’s sudden removal of membership, all islands and store items that were previously for members are now available to all. This includes Survival Ep. 4, Arabian Nights Ep. 2, Mission Atlantis Ep. 2, and PoptropiCon Ep. 3. Enjoy! 🙌

However, the members-only side quests — Rumpel’s Challenge after Fairy Tale, and Blitz on the Fritz after Goofball — are now nowhere to be seen. But perhaps it’s a small price to pay for everything else now being accessible to all. This essentially means membership is now obsolete.

Well, almost — the clubhouse appears to be the last holdout. Non-members who pull the switch to access the multiple rooms (a members-only feature) will be greeted with the message that first popped up last week about how memberships are no longer offered.

It’s amazing to see Poptropica dropping their paywalls, but we still haven’t heard them give any sort of official statement as to why. As exciting as it is for more players to gain access to previously limited content, the lack of updates in general seems to further confirm the lack of priority being given to the game. 🫣

Meanwhile, Suit Up Games — the Roblox studio spun out of Poptropica since last year — has continued to release new Roblox games. This year, instead of Pop, they’ve been working with clients like Hasbro’s Nerf toys.

And the resources being diverted from Poptropica to Roblox are most evident in the profiles of the people behind them. For example, while Suit Up Games’ Managing Director, Ross Targett, was also Poptropica’s General Manager last year, this year he’s taken the Poptropica role off his LinkedIn profile entirely. Meanwhile, Poptropica’s full-time Art Director, Jon Pitcher, is also now Suit Up Games’ full-time Art Manager and Lead Animator as of August 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Suit Up Games announces Nerf Extraction
Jon Pitcher promoted at Suit Up Games

But hey — no more Poptropica membership. Go enjoy it while you can! 🥳 And if you want to do it in community, drop by the PHC, our Discord server for Poptropica fans ages 13+. Keep on poppin’ on!

~🐠

Creators, Graphic Novels, Member Gifts, Store

New sheriffs sink Pop’s long story arc 📘🔫

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! Pop in for shiny sheriff gear, enjoy how aquatic is back, and hear about what happened to Poptropica’s book series. 👀

A new month brings a new set of member gifts, and this November we’ve got some sharp shooters with a New Sheriff Outfit, New Sheriff Defender (the space bar action is reloading the gun), and… a Chicken Follower? 🐔 Bawk-ward.

Over in Adventure Outfitters, there’s a new rotation of costumes, plus the shop floor is stocked with outfits and decor from under the sea! 🐡 The last couple times this happened, it foreshadowed the re-release of an episode from Mission Atlantis Island, which is awaiting its third and final episode. Could this be the case again? 🤔 We’ll have to sea.

In other news, here’s a juicy bit of noise from a former Pop Creator! Poptropica fan artist and Tumblr blogger Sleepy Biker recently reached out to former Poptropica CEO Jess Brallier about his comment in a 2015 interview with the PHB where he shared that Poptropica had planned 12-book story arc for their graphic novel series, of which only four have been published to date. So where’s the rest? 👀📘

“All of that work — i.e., the Poptropica story — was owned by FEN (Family Education Network). Then FEN was sold… The new owners chose to pursue a different growth strategy… We have no legal right to discuss what is owned by somebody else,” Jess answered. In other words, it’s in the hands of Sandbox now. Read his full response below:

Jess Brallier’s response to Sleepy Biker’s inquiry about the fate of the Poptropica books.

Welp, we’re certainly disappointed that the current leadership of Poptropica is sleeping on this gold mine. But thanks to Jess for shedding some light on the situation! To read more insights from Jess about his decade+ of experience creating Poptropica, check out our Jess Brallier mini-series from 2021 here, here, here, and here.

Keep on poppin’ on,
~🐠

Advertisements, Poptropica Junior, Store

Shop and pups, even for little ones 🐶

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans — pop in for a shop and some pups! 🐾

For the fall season, Adventure Outfitters brings a slew of sweaters and hoodies to its latest store rotation. Plus, September is Poptropica’s birthday month, so be sure to log in for birthday freebies and join in the PHB’s art collab to celebrate! 🎉

There’s a new mission on the map: an ad “island” for the upcoming “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie“! Head inside the building and you can play two mini-games for a few prizes.

Talk to Liberty the pup to help find the six pups hiding around the headquarters. Simply click on their shadowed images peeking out from various equipment, and they’ll pop out. You’ll win a Super Suit and Skye Power (with floating action by pressing space bar) for your efforts.

You can also talk to Ryder, the boy, to help him and Chase through a city race. Move your cursor to control your vehicle, avoid crashing into cars and puddles, and grab the purple orbs to power-up and zoom through the streets. Make it to the end, and you’ll gain a Patroller Follower!

The PAW Patrol ad games are also available on Poptropica Junior, Poptropica’s website for Pre-K kids launched last year. You don’t need a Pop account to play on Pop Jr. Plus, the “Activities” section of the site has also added PAW Patrol-themed coloring pages, a recipe for shortbread cookies, plus guides for mask-making and handprint art.

A year after its launch, Poptropica Junior hasn’t seen much fanfare, adding just a handful of activities, but barely updating its own social media page. It’s interesting to see it get a bit of attention from the parent brand’s latest sponsor, but will the site keep growing and possibly nurture a new generation of Pop players? We’ll have to see.

~🐠

Fan Art Features, Member Gifts, Store

Monkey business as usual 🙊

Slanted Fish

It’s August, Poptropicans! 🌞 While we’ve started off the month with a bittersweet end for our Community Creations series, Poptropica continues to churn out some of its standard updates.

Like clockwork, Poptropica is kicking off the new month with a set of member gifts: a Monkey Fun Costume, Banana Follower, and Monkey Dance, which has your character bend and swing their arms. 🐒🍌

Yup, a couple of the inventory items are mislabeled.

Adventure Outfitters on Home Island also rotated its stock, bringing out “new” items including scooters and snacks for your clubhouse, and summer styles like the blended pastels and frog bucket hat. 🛵🐸

Finally, check out some of the latest fan art featured on Poptropica’s Instagram stories last week — including more Pop-inspired cosplay from clovermulo, whose other clips were nominated in this year’s Poppies awards. Speaking of which, don’t miss our Poppies recap! 🩵

Outfits inspired by PopGum flavors by @clovermulo
Outfits inspired by PopGum flavors by @clovermulo
Outfits inspired by Poptropica islands by @clovermulo
Outfits inspired by Poptropica islands by @clovermulo
Early Poptropica Island Comic, Part 11 by @krazytalez
Golden Heart (Pop OC) by @thegoldensungoddess
Poptropica nostalgia by @lexly1234
Blimp meme by @happyclonetrooper
Brownie Points (with fanfic) by @sleepybiker

~🐠

Member Gifts, Social Media, Store, Survival Island, Zomberry Island

I spy with my private eye some Poptropica news 👁️🔍

Gentle Dolphin

Greetings, Poptropicans! We at the PHB apologize for the lack of news coverage these past couple of weeks. We have been preoccupied by Poppies planning and your fantastic fanfictions. Luckily, we uncovered some juicy updates and memes. Here is what we found:

We began our investigation on Home Island. While we didn’t see anything new outside, we found that Adventure Outfitters had changed its display for July. This month’s display features the return of old costumes (including Maryann-favorite Acidic Dinosaur🦖), as well as some summer clubhouse decorations. 🏖️👕🏡

We then took to the skies and surveyed the islands below. Some quick investigating revealed that Survival Episode 3: Distress Signal is now available to all players! 🏔️📻 There are two more episodes that have yet to reappear on desktop, but you can play them now on Steam or with AS3 Flashpoint.

That can’t be all, right? We turned our focus to social media and found a few notable posts. The first post is a news report covering how a brave Poptropican named Courageous Bean thwarted the hare-brained scientist, Dr. Hare, who is now in prison for treason and tax evasion. We reached out to Courageous Bean for more information, but they unfortunately never replied to our message.

How about Dr. Hare? Our only clue is this image of him writing messages to music sensation Taylor Swift. Perhaps he is convincing her to bail him out of prison? Poptropica’s police department might want to keep an eye on the situation.

This next bit of news resonated with us detectives. July’s member gifts give members the ability to become private eye investigators. Members can now don a stylish Private Eye outfit, wield a magnifying glass, and ride around on a scooter. 🔍🛵

Our last discovery might be the juiciest of them all. It has been suggested that Zomberry Island‘s blueberry smoothies might have predicted McDonald’s Grimace Shake. Pop Creator Jonathan Pitcher shared his fondness toward Grimace, so there is a connection between these deadly drinks. 🫐🥛

And with that, our investigation has come to a close. We hope you appreciate what we found. We will always cover Pop news as long as Pop keeps going.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬