Howdy, Poptropicanos, this is LJ! It’s been four years since we last conducted a readers’ survey here on the PHB, and within that time our content, audience, and even Poptropica itself has evolved quite a bit.
The purpose of this survey is to gain insights into our readership and to gather your valuable feedback! What types of Poptropica-related content would you like to see on the PHB? Share your suggestions and answer additional questions through the Google form, which will be accessible for two weeks, until March 1.
With just 13 questions, this survey won’t take up more than five minutes of your time. Your responses will remain anonymous unless you opt to disclose your identity in the comment box at the end. Take the Readers’ Survey now!
You can look forward to seeing the results by the end of March. Thanks, everybody! I’ll catch up with you all soon. 🍀
Hey everyone. It’s been a while, and I know the title of this post sounds a little intimidating. So let me explain…
My name is Smart Icicle and I’ve been part of the wonderful PHB staff team since 2021 (you can check out my Pop story to learn more). I ran the PHB’s Ask Poptropica Siri series and previously the Smart Icicle Blog. But I’ve recently realized something I must do, and it is really hard writing this without getting emotional: I am resigning from the PHB.
I know it’s sad to say goodbye. But I’ve been shocked to find my interest in Poptropica vanish. It hurts knowing that my favorite game that I’ve been playing since childhood has become something that I am no longer interested in. Also, with a sense of writer’s block leading to my blogging gap, I just feel overall that my time here is done.
I’ll be shifting gears towards another passion that I love, which is animation, specifically indie animation. I always had a fondness towards it and hope to develop this interest further, starting with my new YouTube channel, Smart Icicle Animations.
I do plan to stay on the PHC because I love seeing everyone and showing up for the Poppies (I’m still waiting for a rematch, LJ !). I wish the best of luck to Slanted Fish, LJ, and the rest of the staff.
With that, let me leave you with these cherished words that encapsulated my time here on the PHB: Don’t dwindle on dreams, instead hone in on them and turn them into reality. You never know what’s going to happen if you never try.
Piñata Man is a quirky, wanna-be superhero whose dream is to prove himself to the Mighty Action Force! This comic follows a silly adventure of his, in which he attempts to save The Wizard’s soda which is stuck in the evil vending machine! Will he be able to do it or… will he fail terribly?
BONUS! Here’s my comic making process:
First, I get the script for the page I’m working on (the amount of times I lost it while working on this was actually insane). Using that as a guide, I make a messy doodle of what I want the panel to look like.
Second, I ink the panels. Not much to that.
Then (third), I roughly sketch out the characters. For some reason I decided to use pink for all my sketches and stuck with it the whole comic 😛
Fourth, I ink the comic and detail the characters!
Unlike the other pages, I gave this one a black background to make it ✨EXTRA DRAMATIC✨
Fifth, I color the characters and the backgrounds! The colors I used for the characters were not the actual colors of them in-game — I used simpler, brighter colors to make it easy on me to draw. 😀
Finally, I add shadows and highlights to help bring these silly guys to life!
For the rest of the pages I added speech bubbles for the very last step. But for this page there is no dialogue, so I just added a white outline on the evil soda machine.
And that’s my process! Now repeat all of that 11 times over the course of two and a half months, and you get this comic! 🥳
Thank you so much for reading this comic! It was a lot of fun to make and I hope that y’all enjoyed it. 😄
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by TechWizard. Enjoy!
Freeze Frame: Getting animated about Poptropica.
Hello, I’m TechWizard. You may remember me from all those nonsensical (or whimsical) guest posts where I showcaseddeveloper rooms or gave my thoughts on top 5 islands. What fun times we’ve had!
I figure I’d write to the Poptropica Help Blog once more with something different: my personal retrospective about Poptropica and its future.
After Hours: When the lights go down, the action heats up!
I guess I’ll start things off with a simple question: how’d I get into Poptropica to begin with?
Well, like probably a good portion of my generation, I frequented a little website called Funbrain, where I’d seen plenty of ads for Poptropica. Like the curious individual I was, I decided to try it out. I was enamored by the circular avatar before me (though it’d be awhile before I figured out how to properly save an account), and added Poptropica, as well as notorious competitor Club Penguin, to my rotation of Web-based Flash games.
Dig Deep: But don’t get tunnel vision.
For a good while, from circa 2010–2011 to all the way in 2017–2018, I’d be heavily invested in Poptropica, eagerly anticipating each new island, enjoying the benefits of membership (every item for free at the time was quite worth it), and overall just enjoying the fun times. I remember Poptropica’s transition to AS3 islands, where I was when Virus Hunter Island released, and even the buzz and discussion of Poptropica Worlds.
Well, unfortunately, Worlds wasn’t the bright refresh the franchise needed. While it was quite an interesting concept (even if Poptropicans with hands were a little jarring), it was eventually taken down.
Tower of Power: Reaching the penthouse suite.
But, unlike Club Penguin around 2017-2018, Poptropica itself was still going strong. But there’s still another looming threat: the death of Flash. It’s a good thing they migrated to Haxe, right?
The game migrates to Haxe, and… we get barely anything. With maybe three new islands total, Poptropica exists in a state of limbo, now being hosted on Cool Math Games. So, why bother keeping Poptropica around, if only to keep it in stasis?
Deep Freeze: Only frozen foods for you on this voyage.
I hope Poptropica eventually gets its footing again and puts out more content. I am very impressed that the game is still around, but I wonder if it’s truly worth it if the folks at Cool Math Games don’t intend to update it? Anyway, it’s been a long journey—plenty to talk about here!
We’ll meet again, probably.
—TechWizard
(If you read this whole darn thing, congratulations. Take this screaming book off my hands and go bury it in the woods. I beg you.)
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!
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Invisible Ring, showing us her awesome Realm based off Super Mario Bros. The Realm code is w3r7r. Enjoy!
Heeeey, Pizanos! It’s time to put down your Nintendo Switches and tune in to my next realm, Deakeamchi Jurfai! Trust me, you’re gonna love it. We all love playing Super Mario as well as Poptropica, but who here has played Super Mario IN Poptropica?
It’s a real blast — a real blast of HEAT, that is! So, before we get out of the frying pan and into the fire, allow me, Invisible—I mean Princess Peach—to cool you off with my previous Realm tour, so you don’t overheat in THIS one! Are you ready? Let’s go!
🏝️ Poptropica Help Blog 🗺️ 