🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺

Happy Halloween, Poptropicans! It’s time to announce the winners of the PHB’s 16th Halloween costume contest! This year’s theme was Ghost vs Hunters, which opened the door for some spectacularly spooky looks. Without further ado, the winner of Team Ghosts is…

👻”Masked Maiden” by Creepy Boa👻

Put your hands together for the most gorgeous ghoul you’ve ever seen! This Masked Maiden’s voluminous hair and ballgown are eye-catching, and the half-skull mask provides a nice visual contrast with the bright makeup. Would you accept this ghost’s invitation to dance?

Let’s give a special spectral salute to Creepy Boa for making such a boo-tiful costume! But what’s a ghost without a hunter? The winner of Team Hunters is…

🏹”In-Specter” by Jean of Pop🏹

If there’s something strange in Poptropica, who ya gonna call? In-Specter!!! Not only does this costume have a perfect name, but it successfully captures the Ghostbusters vibe with the uniform and tech. Those heat vision goggles are sure to track any cold spots created by ghosts. Good luck with your ghostbusting ventures, In-Specter, and nice work securing the win, Jean of Pop!

Along with their costumes being immortalized in our Look Book, our winners can choose whether to receive a copy of Poptropica on Steam or a Poptropica merch item of their choice from Zazzle (up to US$20). They will also receive portraits of their Poptropicans from any PHB author of their choosing! 🏆🎮🎨

🎃Honorable Mentions🎃

Before we go, we want to share some more costumes in our Honorable Mentions segment! Let’s start by appreciating some awesome apparitions from Team Ghosts:

Now we must return to the land of the living and check out some slayers who slayed from Team Hunters:

“Inexperienced Ghosthuntress” by Lazy Kid

Thank you for joining us for this year’s PHB Halloween Costume Contest! You can find more ghostly getups in the comments section of our contest post, and you can see all of our previous costume contest winners in our Look Book.

Thank you for reading, and have a Happy Halloween!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

Merchandise, Red Dragon Island

The Lost Yokozuna Plush: A True Kanji Secret

October 15, 2025October 15, 2025 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by HPuterpop. Enjoy!

Hey fellow Poptropicans!

I’ve got a real head-scratcher for you today, one that takes us all the way back to the golden age of Poptropica merchandise. You might even call it a Kanji Secret. We all remember the awesome official plush toys that were released alongside the action figures, and super-fans may recall the unreleased early prototype plush toys that never saw store shelves… but there’s another plush toy waiting to be discovered, calling out to us from the past…

I wish we could go there!

Red Dragon Island marked the 19th island addition to Poptropica, a collaboration with the Magic Tree House series. Adapted from Dragon of the Red Dawn (Book 37 in Mary Pope Osborne’s series), the island transported players into Edo-period Japan. Among its memorable characters was Yokozuna, the towering sumo wrestler who served as one of the game’s most iconic boss battles. Players had to outmaneuver his charges and stomps until his own rage caused him to fall out of the ring. His design drew from authentic Japanese culture: his very name signifies the highest rank in sumo wrestling. Some fans even speculate that his look may have been inspired by WWE’s “Yokozuna”, Rodney Agatupu Anoa’i. Beyond the fight itself, the character was given nuance — fierce yet deeply adored by his fans.

Recently, a Yokozuna plush toy surfaced in an eBay listing, and it’s quite an anomaly. Yokozuna, remember, is the formidable sumo champion from Red Dragon Island, released back in 2011.

This sent me down a rabbit hole. I scoured the Poptropica Creators’ Blog archives, dug through old press releases from 2011-2014 (when the toys were hitting shelves), and searched for any promotional material. The result? Nothing. There is absolutely no official record of a Yokozuna plush ever being announced, promoted, or sold.

Now, you might be thinking, “This (exorbitantly priced) plush toy was probably a fan creation.” But after getting my hands on it, I can confirm that the build quality is nearly identical to the official Poptropica plush toys from back in the day. It has the same distinctive felt details for the hair and clothing, the same fabric used for the eyes, and the overall professional construction that marked the official line of merchandise. A fan-made plush of this quality, especially for a less-mainstream character like Yokozuna, seems highly unlikely.

It all begins to make sense once the context is fully considered: Red Dragon Island launched in May 2011 for members (and June for everyone else), while Jazwares’ physical Poptropica toys hit Toys “R” Us shelves just a few months later, in August. The plush I found matches the official line’s quality but lacks retail tags: a hallmark of pre-production samples. And considering Yokozuna’s prominence as one of the Red Dragon Island’s bosses, it’s logical that the character would’ve been considered for a plush toy.

Sure enough, when I asked the eBay seller sweetsweet, they replied with exactly the information I was expecting:

(Shoutout to sweetsweet for the friendly and fast reply! Their store is a treasure trove of rare memorabilia, so check them out if you’re a collector.)

I’m really fortunate to own this rare piece of Poptropica (and Magic Tree House) history. The Yokozuna looks right at home along with the rest of his plush friends and The Dragon of the Red Dawn, the pages in which he first came to life.

Case closed… or at least, mostly.

– HPuterpop

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by HPuterpop. If you did, you might also enjoy reading more about his upcoming Poptropica-inspired game in development, Poptropica: Legends.

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

👻 The PHB’s 16th Halloween Costume Contest: Ghosts vs Hunters 🏹

October 6, 2025November 1, 2025 Gentle Dolphin

🎃 Submissions are now closed. Check out our winners here! 🎃

🎵Night falls on a spooky scene, Pop fans dressing up for Halloween! In a spooky fog, on the Pop Help Blog… For our contest, there’s a ghostly theme!🎵

Welcome, everyone, to the Poptropica Help Blog. It’s time for the 16th PHB Halloween Costume Contest! Inspired by how Poptropica ghosted the fandom and the game, we’re returning to an older format for this year’s theme: Ghosts vs Hunters! 👻🏹

For every ghost wandering the earth, there is a hunter searching for it. For this year’s costume contest, we’re on the hunt for the spookiest specters and the coolest catchers. You may stand firmly for either Team Ghosts or Team Hunters, but you always have the option to play both sides. 😉

To get in the spirit of things (pun fully intended 😜), the PHB split between the two teams and made some costumes to inspire everyone!

👻Rules👻

🕵️Create your costumes on Poptropica! You may enter as many costumes as you’d like for either or both categories, and you may create them on any version of Poptropica (desktop, Steam, Flashpoint, and such). However, each person is eligible to win just once per category.
📸Take a screenshot! We recommend that you take your screenshot on either the character customizer screen or the Costumizer window on PoptropiCon. Here’s how to take a screenshot. Please crop the image to show just your character.
💻Upload your picture to the internet! Upload your picture to image-sharing websites like Imgur, Instagram, Twitter, and Discord. Once you’ve uploaded your picture, comment on this post with an image link so we can see it! Also, let us know which category you’re entering and any additional information like the costume’s name.

🪦Tips for Creating Your Costumes🪦

📦Make use of what you’ve got! Dig through old items or buy new store costumes to mix and match pieces together.
👕Use the Costumizer to snag parts from NPCs. Keep in mind that it only works on PoptropiCon in the desktop version.
👾Try glitching with the ASG Machine (for full costumes) along with usernames from our ASG collection.
👉Visit the PHB’s Costumes Look Book for more ideas, including past Halloween contest winners and Pop fashion tips and tricks.

🏆Prizes🏆

📆You may submit your costumes until Monday, October 27 @11:59 p.m. EST.
🎃On Halloween (October 31), we’ll post our favorite costumes from each category on the front page of the PHB for all to enjoy.
🥇A grand prize winner will be selected for each category. Each grand prize winner will win a copy of Poptropica on Steam or a Poptropica merch item of their choice from Zazzle (up to US$20) as well as a portrait of their Poptropican from a PHB author of their choice!
🤵Winning costumes will be immortalized in our Look Book, but we’ll also have honorable mentions for just the post, not page.

Special thanks to Magic Kid for drawing the banner and PHB header for this year’s costume contest! 👩‍🎨

Good luck to all of you ghoulish ghosts and hardy hunters in Poptropica! We can’t wait to see your boo-tiful costumes! Now log in and slay! 💘

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

PHB Specials

The PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collage 🎂🎭🖼️

September 30, 2025October 2, 2025 Gentle Dolphin

Gather ’round, Poptropicans! After twenty-nine days of drawing and posting, the PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collab comes to a close. Now, on the final day of Poptropica’s 18th anniversary month, we begin this masquerade with paper faces on parade! 🎭

We present to you… the PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collage! 🎂🖼️

A round of applause to all 32 artists who contributed to this year’s birthday collage! These internet illustrators accepted our invitation and filled the Poptropica Help Ballroom with 54 masked characters. Let us admire the attendees’ fashion and pay tribute to their talented designers. 👨‍🎨👗🧥

Before we end this celebration, let us show our gratitude to the Poptropica Creators for bringing this game to life and to Coolmath Games for keeping it alive on their website. Throughout its life, Poptropica soared to great heights and plummeted to devastating lows. Despite everything, the Creators put their all into the game while the fans showed their support. Here’s to 18 years of Poptropica! We may hide our faces tonight, but we will never hide our love for this game! 🎭🖥️

Thank you all for coming to our party, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

PHB Specials

You Are Cordially Invited to the PHB’s Pop Masquerade Birthday Collab 🎂🎭

September 1, 2025September 30, 2025 Gentle Dolphin

Submissions are now closed. Stay tuned for the birthday collage!

Greetings, everyone! We have celebrated Poptropica’s 16th and 17th birthdays with community art collabs, and this year will be no different! Now that Poptropica is old enough to be a legal adult, this year’s art collab will have a classy theme…

🎭 Masquerade Ball 💃

Masquerade parties inspire mystery, intrigue, and creativity. Dress to the nines with your favorite mask and have a grand time at the finest birthday party this side of the internet! All you have to do is follow three simple steps:

1. Draw a character wearing a mask. They can be a canon Pop character, a popsona, or even a character from another piece of media. Please save your drawing as a ✨transparent .png file✨; doing this makes it easier for us to add your art to the collage. Here are two examples drawn by me and Magic Kid:

2. Upload your picture to the internet. Post your drawing to a website that supports transparent images such as Imgur, Discord, DeviantArt, and Twitter/X. You may send us a maximum of three images.

3. Comment on this post with a link to your drawing. Copy and paste your image link to a comment on this very post so we can see it. Along with the link, please add your Poptropican name and/or one social media username that you want listed in the artist credits.

We will be accepting submissions for this collab until Monday, September 29th @ 11:59 pm EST. Just like our previous birthday collabs, we will gather everyone’s drawings and edit them into one big birthday collage. Let’s make Poptropica’s 18th birthday a magical one! 🎉✨

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬