Fan Art Features, Social Media, Uncategorized

Illustrative Instagram stories and bizarre bunny memes 🐇

Agent Bubbles

Happy beginning of hot blazing horrible weather, everyone! 🌞

Poptropica’s social media activity has been up this week, with tons of new Instagram stories, as well as an odd Twitter post recalling our dear Dr. Hare. First, let’s turn to the ‘gram…

Among the feature are highlights to the latest Poptropica store update and the nearing end to the first of the new Monthly Costume Contests.

There is also a particularly large number of shares for fan art features:

There’s some really cool art in here! Glad to see entries for the Monthly Costume Contest as well. I personally love the sharp design and dramatic color scheme of the Black Widow piece! 🕷

Meanwhile on Twitter, the Creators tweeted a “Feel old yet?” joke, featuring Dr. Hare and a Snapchat photo of actor Matthew Gray Gubler in pink bunny ears with the caption “I hate it here.”

Wait, what was that?

While memes can be a fun way to spread hype and provide some comedy to a community, this more obscure and random one is a bit out of character for Poptropica’s usual social media antics. Several people were quick to comment with a mix of amusement and confusion.

What do you Poptropicans think? Are there any particular artists or pieces you like from the gallery, and what do you think of this odd addition to the Twitter timeline?

Until next time (yes I do remember the Island Flash-backs, they will be returning!) stay creative, maybe by making some Poptropica memes and joining our Community Creations this month!

Castori honorem ~ Maryann/Smart Bubbles

Candy Crazed, Member Gifts, Store

Ballin’ with sweet treats and styles 🏏🍭

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! We’ve got a few updates for you in this post: member gifts, a store rotation treating us to new items, and more behind the sweets of the Candy Crazed Mini Quest. Let’s go!

First, it’s a new month, which means a fresh batch of member gifts! June’s prezzies are all about balls: we’ve got a Trac Ball (press space bar to toss!), Bouncy Beach Ball, and Giant Squish Ball.

If you’re not a member, you can enter the PHB’s Free Membership Giveaway for a chance to win one! All you have to do is comment on the giveaway page and leave two other comments around the PHB within the month to join the lucky draw. You can try every month!

This week we’ve also got new items in Adventure Outfitters!

Fresh costumes include the Barbarian Warrior* (350 credits), Cat Hoodie (300 credits), Garden Glamour dress* (250 credits), and Summer Breeze* (250 credits). On the floor, we’ve got a Gummy Rider* (450 credits), Gumdrop Pup Follower (350 credits), and Master Huggins Piggyback* (150 credits). (* = members only)

You may recognize a few of these sweet treats from the Candy Crazed Mini Quest! It’s too bad most of the new things are for members only, but maybe they’ll return for all in a future rotation?

For the rest of the store rotation this week, check out this gallery courtesy of the Creators’ Blog update:

The Pop Creators also shared more behind-the-scenes deets and drawings on the making of the Candy Crazed Mini Quest. Here’s the roll call for the whole cast of hungry or confectionary characters, which you can read more about, puns and all, on the Creators’ Blog!

  • Hansel and Gretel, from the traditional fairytale
  • Gummy
  • Gumdrop Pup, known as Dot in earlier sneak peeks
  • Master Huggles, or is it Huggins?
  • Little Witchy
  • Nanny

Get well soon, Master Huggles; get your name cleared, Little Witchy; and get to safety, Nanny! Guess it’s a hard life for the tasty-looking.

That wraps up this post! What do you think of the new items and the stories behind the crew of Candy Crazed? 🍭 Share with us in the comments, and keep on popping on, Poptropicans!

~🐠

Fairy Tale Island, Fanfiction, Guest Posts

Fairytale Fanfic Challenge: Dangerous Dragon

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Dangerous Dragon, made before the winners of the Fairytale Fanfic Challenge were announced yesterday. Enjoy!

  • Dangerous Dragon

Hi, DD here! I know everyone is sad about the old islands being gone, and I am too. At least we got a new one this year, Fairytale Island.

I think it rocked! Still, it wasn’t at its full potential. Yeah it got modern and I liked that the creators put cutscenes but it lacked gameplay. They could keep the cutscenes but also add more asking dialogue, like old times, plus add item collecting!

Don’t worry, I’m going to imagine extra stuff for the island. Remember the Fairytale Fanfic Challenge? Here’s what I shared with the creators:

Where did Rumpelstiltskin disappear to? Will he ever return?

So here he has gotten free after troubling every fairy tale. Back on his home planet, he has a secret army! He is training his army to come back and attack every fairy tale further.

What does the prince’s fate hold? Will he have to get a job?!

Since his father has disappeared (for now), he has no choice but to move on from his royal past and become a normal person. You’ll see him working clumsily, as he has never done housework before. Sad sad prince… FOR NOW.

What comes of the new happy endings for Red, Snow, and Cinder?

Red’s got some babies to take care of… pizza-eating babies!

Oh, Snow White? She’s gone to college to study different animals!

And Cinder’s doing a concert at PoptropiCon. She’s famous now!

What friendship blossoms between Little Red Riding Hood and the Seven Dwarves?

They all are happy. Red and the dwarves are working together to make pizza now, since the dwarves love it!

Does Snow White open her veterinary practice?

She’s started practicing on hamsters, dogs, cats, and other small animals, but she’s still studying how to care for the bigger ones!

Do the Huntsman and Cinderella fall in love? Hopefully the Huntsman’s left behind his homicidal hijinx…

The Huntsman goes to Grandma and apologizes for his mistake. He also gives her a wedding card… to celebrate his and Cinderella’s love! It seems like Cinder’s attention is not only on her music, but also her soon-to-be husband!

And what did Rumplestilskin do with the real king?

He is his slave now! Now the king is helping Rumple, sadly, but he wants to escape because he knows what a GREAT DISASTER is coming their way… THE GIRLS ARE HAPPY AND SAFE… FOR NOW.

What happens next is up to your imagination! Now, here are a few other ideas I had for gameplay on Fairytale Island…

🍕 Making pizza with Red: So instead of just starting the mini quest delivering the pizza, what if we would get to first find the ingredients inside a kitchen and then assemble a pizza?

📘 Finding a book for Snow White’s vet dream: Maybe along your adventures, you get a book from someone who was a vet, and later, you can give it to Snow to start her journey.

💄 Getting the lipstick as a real item: You get it in your backpack. Instead of Amelia telling you everything… you get a little suspicious. Then you discover that in the mountains, there lives a wizard who knows the difference between a good spell and a bad one. There’s another side-quest where you find this wizard, and when you find him, you show him the lipstick and he tells you it’s a trick. Then, going back to Snow, you find her “true love” (goat).

👗 Spending more time with Cinder: More parts to the journey with Cinder would be fun. Let’s say something happens to her dress, hair, makeup, and so on… you go through a few stages to get her closer and closer to the ball… and by the end, she becomes the fuming Cinder we know and love!

Thank you for reading! I liked the island, and I hope you like my opinions! If it won the Fairytale Fanfic Challenge, I would have tears in my eyes!

Keep Poppin,
DD 💜

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Dangerous Dragon. If you did, you might also enjoy getting to know him in his Popular Poptropican interview!

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! 📰✨

Contests, Fairy Tale Island, Fanfiction

Fans deliver fantastic Fairytale fanfics 📚 ✨

Purple Paw

A little over two weeks ago, the Creators made a call for the Pop fandom to write and submit their own alternative endings for Fairytale Island—and, unsurprisingly, you knocked this contest out of the park!

Similar to the results of the Dream Island Contest, the Creators had trouble choosing just one entry, and instead ended up featuring four (very deserving) winning submissions.

Congratulations to Speedy Eagle, Mighty Fox, Slippery Sword, and Tall Cactus (from the PHC) on winning the Fairytale Fanfic Challenge! From the origins of Rumplestiltskin’s name, to the reveal of the real king, to an explanation for that mysterious tube of lipstick’s role in the story, your fanfics covered just about all we’d been wondering after Fairytale Island’s strangely abrupt ending. Read the full submissions here!

Between fan creation highlights on Instagram, the Fairytale Fan Art Challenge in April, and now this fanfic challenge, the Creators have been offering a lot of attention to their creative fanbase, and that’s great! It’s awesome to see them connecting with players as regularly as the Creators are, plus welcoming them to submit their own creations for possible features.

But asking players to write a whole new ending for an island, even if it won’t be canonified in the game, is slightly odd. Fairytale’s ending was generally unsatisfactory and left many important questions unanswered, which the Creators acknowledged previously in their blog post announcing the Fanfic Challenge. Where did Rumplestiltskin vanish to? What happened to that poor prince? Did somebody arrest the Huntsman for his attempted homicide?

Leaving these questions to be answered by the fanbase instead of simply including them in the island itself is… a bit weird, to say the least. Did the Creators not have the time to write a full ending for Fairytale? Are they planning on surprising us with a sequel, or are these fanfics the only endings this shorter island will ever see? 🧐

Either way, let us know what you thought of the winning fanfic submissions in the comments. And if you entered your own story, feel free to share it with us in a guest post! See you next time, Poptropicans.

~💜

Fairytale’s various characters may have gotten their happy endings in fan fiction… but what about the island itself?

Nabooti Island, Social Media, YouTubers

Looking back on good times with Jeff Kinney and Dimension Bros 🐦📺

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, we’re throwing in some throwback talk from a few familiar faces: Jeff Kinney, creator of Poptropica; and the Dimension Bros, who make Poptropica and other fandom videos. Let’s pop right in!

The other day, Jeff Kinney (@wimpykid) responded to a Poptropica fan account on Twitter dedicated solely to bringing Nabooti Island back, saying: “Nabooti was a good one.” He also commented on a separate short thread about losing game progress while playing the island when it first released in 2008, calling it a “tragic tale.”

It may not sound unusual for Poptropica’s founder to tweet about the game he created, but Senpai Jeff’s public comments about Poptropica are sadly few and far between these days. Although he served as its creative director since its beginning, he’s not involved with Poptropica these days, and most of his Twitter activity goes to his more popular creation, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But with #Poptropica tweets recently showing they still have some star power left, maybe it’s worth a little more attention now!

Who remembers The Poptropica Timeline? The Dimension Bros on YouTube recently dropped an updated version of their first ever video, which won Best Fan Video at last year’s Poppies, the PHB’s annual Poptropica fan awards. With the Poppies coming up again in July, catch up on what’s sure to be another contender for the award:

Note for our younger PHB readers: While the Dimension Bros channel does have plenty of Poptropica videos, not all of them are kid-friendly, and generally are for ages 13+. The above video is fine for all ages.

The Dimension Bros also just announced that Poptropica Month will be returning this September—with a twist. While last year’s month-long celebration of fan-made videos honored Poptropica’s 13th birthday, this year’s theme will be “Poptropica Month (In Memoriam),” in recognition of the disappointment of a huge chunk of the game being lost in the Flash-to-Haxe transition.

Although September is a whole season away, it’s never too early to start thinking about what Poptropica videos you’d like to create and share with the world when the time comes. Remember, you can still play the old islands through the mobile app and Flashpoint, and keep petitioning for their return to the main web version of the game.

Let the memory of Poptropica live on!

~🐠