Contests

Announcing the PHB Header Design Contest!

LJ

phb header contest

Hello, Poptropicans—it’s Lucky Joker here!

The PHB just celebrated its tenth anniversary last month (pretty incredible, right?). Over the decade of this site’s existence, we’ve had many headers at the top to visually show who we are and what we’re all about.

Now, we want to give you the chance to design our header. That’s right: the PHB is announcing its first ever Poptropica Help Blog Header Design Contest! To get you thinking of ideas, here’s a selection of some of our past headers:

To see more of our past headers, check out this post and this post.

Here’s what you should know if you’re participating in the contest:

  • To submit an entry, you have several options: email us at staff (at) poptropi (dot) ca, comment on this post with a link to your design, tweet us @Poptropica_Help, tag us on Instagram @PoptropicaHare, or send a private message to me, Lucky Joker, on Discord.
  • The contest ends on August 31, so no entries submitted after that will be considered eligible to win.
  • Submit as many entries as you like!
  • Your header graphic should have a file size of 1180 (width) x 160 (height) pixels, or a ratio equivalent. Otherwise, it may get cropped.
  • Your header graphic should include the words “Poptropica Help Blog” somewhere. Other elements you may choose to include, but are not required, include: a witty tagline (or use ours), our logo, our Poptropicans (you can grab images from the Avatar Studio, and find our usernames on the Friend Finder), the VIP logo (which you can grab from the sidebar) or other images from the game (the Poptropica Clip Collection and napstachill’s Digital Wallpapers are great resources for Poptropica graphics).
  • You can create in any medium, whether digitally through illustration, typography, photo manipulation; or traditionally, with pencils, pens, cut-out shapes, and so on; or a pastiche of whatever. If you’re not creating digitally, be sure to retain quality by using a scanner or decent camera in good lighting.

And don’t feel too pressured to make it look like any one of our past headers — be creative! We’re just looking for something that catches our eye.

One winning entry will be selected to be featured as the PHB’s main site header for the entire month of September. We’ll also feature our favorites in a post on the blog.

🍀 Good luck, Poptropicans! 🍀

Have fun! We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Pop Fan Artist Spotlights

Pop Fan Artist Spotlight: POP-whitewolf

LJ

Hello, Poptropicans! Lucky Joker here showcasing the works of POP-whitewolf in this week’s Pop Fan Artist Spotlight feature!

Yup, it’s POP-whitewolf—the winner of the Best Fan Art category in this year’s Poppies! Here was her award-winning piece, “Alice and Fierce Fox” for all of your viewing pleasure:

fierce_fox_and_alice_by_pop_whitewolf-dce2i5u

You think that was good? Then check out this collection of more of her work below (click the images to enlarge them):

“Schehezerade”
“Annabelle”
“Slanted Fish”
“White Wolf”
“Poptropican Pro”
“Skinny Moon”
“Balloon experiment Girl”

Isn’t her artwork so pretty? If you want to see more, check out her DeviantArt where she posts (almost) all things Poptropica!

That’s it for this spotlight! I hope you enjoyed this look into a Poptropica fan’s artwork! Perhaps you’re even encouraged to make Poptropica fan art yourself. If you’ve created some of your own, we’d love for you to share it on our DeviantArt group gallery at We-Love-Poptropica.

Thanks for reading as always! Don’t forget to check out the other amazing artists I’ve featured here on the PHB, and I’ll talk to you all soon… pop on!

– Lucky Joker 🍀

Nabooti Island, Pop Places IRL

Pop Places IRL: Nabooti

LJ

Pop Places IRL Header

Hello, Poptropicans! It’s Lucky Joker here with another “Pop Places IRL” tour!

Though Nabooti Island is a fictional place, all of the other locations we visit in our Nabooti adventure are very real-life places in Africa! Get ready to fly as we take a look at some of them and see how they compare to Poptropica’s versions. 🛩️

At one point in the island, we tour the temples of the Great Sphinx. The 66-foot tall statue is located in Giza, Egypt and is a symbol of strength and wisdom. It’s theorized that the face on the Sphinx is a representation of Pharaoh Khafra—the fourth king of the fourth dynasty. (The more you know!) Poptropica nailed it with this one, in my opinion. The only real difference would be the little hole of light at the top, of course.

unknown source

When you land in Blue Nile Falls (also known as the smoky waterfall), you can see a large number of rocks and a surplus amount of lush vegetation surrounding the massive spectacle, just like in real life.

ethiopiavoyage.com

And now we’re off to the Kaya Forests! Kaya is a forest located in Kenya inhabited by the Mijikenda people (a group of closely related, but distinct tribes), and includes an array of fortified villages which are considered to be their sacred, ancestral homes. Poptropica portrayed the forest villages quite well, don’t you think?

weloveyatours.blogspot.com

To the place where you encounter a mancala master and collect a costume-giving cell phone, we now arrive at The Rwenzori Mountains! Located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, these mountains are the source of the second largest river in the world—the Nile River. They’re known as Mountains of the Moon in Poptropica because that was what the legendary mountain range was referred to by ancient peoples.

rwenzorimountainsnationalpark.com

In this last comparison, we see a variety of beautiful wild animals in the safari and they’re equally as captivating in Poptropica as they are IRL. Wouldn’t you agree?

nathab.com

And that’s it! Thanks for coming along for the tour of Nabooti and the places that inspired it’s being! What do you think of all of these beautiful destinations? Would you like to visit any someday? If you liked this post, be sure to explore the other Poptropica places we’ve tour guided. And with that…

Where would you like to go next on “Pop Places IRL”?

– Lucky Joker 🍀

Member Gifts, Membership

Exclusive Member Gifts! …or are they?

LJ

How’s it going, Poptropicans? It’s a new month, and that means that the member gifts for August are here! Log into Poptropica Original with an active membership and you’ll automatically receive them.

august member gifts

The exclusive item gifts this month are:

  • Rasberry Toss (which is accessible from idk’s ASG machine with the ASG username “Rosemoji62“)
  • Dog Costume (with an odd pink bow on top…)
  • Rocket Board (which also has an ASG: “ZombieEyesASG“)

So technically, two out of the three member gifts aren’t just for members. 😉

That’s it for news for now. Thanks for reading as always! I’ll talk to you soon…pop on!

– Lucky Joker 🍀

Hellos & Goodbyes

Curtain call

Brave Tomato
the_runes_and_the_queen_by_1313cookie-d9hid2p
“The Runes and the Queen” by Brave Tomato

There are going to be points in life where you must make a very hard decision. And I don’t mean decisions like what to eat at a restaurant or, I don’t know, what to wear. Those are things that you simply do and forget about in a month or two.

And then there are the tougher decisions that will affect the rest of your life. Where to go, what to do, what do you want to do with your life—those are the hardest decisions that people will come across, and there must be a time where you’re ready to face it head-on.

So with that said, I’ve decided that, after six years, it’s my time to resign from the Poptropica Help Blog.

It wasn’t easy, but I do have a motivation as to why I’m resigning. Well, you probably noticed that I haven’t posted on here since Greek Sea Odyssey was announced (ironic, huh?). Over time, I realized that I wasn’t the same girl as I was six years ago. My interest in blogging started to fade away. When I first joined the PHB, I’d just started high school, and now here I am, approaching my third year of community college. I have a lot of other projects ahead of me now, and it feels time to step aside for another person, a person like the one I was six years ago, to enjoy what I had.

But don’t get me wrong—I’m not leaving the fandom. I’ll still make videos for my YouTube channel; I’ll still create things for people to enjoy. Poptropica as a game is still dear to me, and I will continue to follow its progress with Poptropica Worlds. Also, I’ve made several close friendships that I cherish deep in my heart. I’ll still be around; I won’t let myself fade away that easily 😊.  However, I really do feel like this is the perfect time for me to leave the PHB.

I could never be more grateful for the opportunity to be here in the first place. So, I want to say thank you. Thank you, past and present PHB authors, for working alongside me and being supportive on the journey. Thank you, Slanted Fish, for seeing something in that 14-year-old me; for bringing her over to the PHB.

Thank you to the Creators, old and new, for all the things you do for the game, with a special personal thank you to Jessica Devine (for being such an amazing community manager in the past), Mitch Krpata (for going out of his way to give me a shout-out in one of his Poptropica video walkthroughs), and Ashley Lange (for that drawing of the PHB crew she made a few years ago).

phb art
PHB team drawn by (Dr.) Ashley Lange, Poptropica Creator (2014)

Thank you to all my friends I’ve made through this fandom over the years, for being listening ears and sharers of happy memories. And thank you, the audience, for being a part of the show. Winning the Poppie award for “Best PHB Author” really meant a lot to me, and I’m so glad that you saw something in my contributions over the years. So thank you ever so much for that.

And now the show, for me, has to end. The curtain call must be made; I’ll stand and take a bow one last time. Remember the good times we experienced during the performance. The decision to end it was inevitable, and the time has finally come. Here’s to the show going on for the PHB, here’s to everything that brought us together, and here’s to the next chapter of what’s to come.

With love,

Brave Tomato ⭐️