🦄 Ponytropica 🦄

Over the past few weeks, other Poptropicans on this blog have shared their stories. While theirs mostly led up to how they ended up on the PHB, that would only be the beginning of my story. The story of the PHB can also be found on our History page, but this MPIP focuses a bit more on the founder herself (yours truly). Here we go: Slanted Fish’s “My Place in Poptropica”!

2008 | the PHB’s foundation

My Poptropica story began a long, long, time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Well, sort of. It did begin early on, in the summer of 2008, when Poptropica itself was only a year old and islands fit on a single map page. I was eleven, and I had just been introduced to the game by my brother, who was only slightly younger than me. He’d discovered it via Funbrain, a site where we used to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid before it had even been in print (let alone been a bestseller – such hipsters we were!).

Anyway, the name I ended up going with was “Scary Tomato” – what a fine name it sounded like at the time – and my username was tentacle, just evidence of how young the game was that I could create an account with a common word. Scary Tomato was a boy with tan skin and spiky blond hair, while I was a girl from Hong Kong, which meant I looked nothing like ST. But whoever said we had to look like our Poptropicans? At the time, I just felt that boys had better customizing options, so that’s what I went with.

At around this time, I tried making a WordPress blog, and it was going to be about Club Penguin, another game I was an avid player of at the time. But I changed my mind when I started testing URL options and realized that poptropica.wordpress.com wasn’t taken – it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, and so, instead of joining the hundreds of amateur Club Penguin blogs that already existed, I made “Scary Tomato’s Weblog” – the first ever active Poptropica fansite. With a very amateur Microsoft Paint job for a header.

Super Power Island (the 5th island) had just been released a few days before the blog began, so to get the ball rolling, I wrote my first guide on it. The blog soon took off in popularity, further than I had ever imagined, especially with the hype surrounding the release of the next island – Spy Island. Countless comments came in asking when it would be released, and it took a fair bit of time every day for me to stay on top of everything that was happening and post sneak peeks from the Poptropica Creators’ Blog.

About three months in, I hired my first couple of staff members: Smockers, a frequent commenter, and Codien, who was interested in helping with graphics and even came up with a new name for the site: the Poptropica Help Blog, or PHB. The header images improved quite a bit after that.

We even reached 100,000 site hits in November, just four months in, which was pretty impressive for a site run casually by just a few kids.

2009 | unimagined growth

At the start of the new year, the PHB had already reached 300,000 hits. With regular posts about sneak peeks posted on the Creators’ Blog, advertisement games, and even Codien’s PHB Sneak Peeks series, the site continued to grow in content as well as its fanbase.

One of the highlights of that year was our ingenious April Fool’s prank – we turned the whole site into a “Club Penguin Help Blog”, and what’s more, we seem to have fooled even the Poptropica Creators. Or maybe they were playing along? Sadly, they’ve since removed this little acknowledgement from the official blog, but the evidence remains in our hearts – and on the internet’s Wayback Machine.

Before the end of May, we reached one million site hits, and the blog wasn’t even a year old yet! 😀 To celebrate, we gave away rare costumes that were leaked from the then-mysterious Monster Carnival Island. (If you don’t know that story, click here.) We also expanded our community to the now-defunct PHF (Poptropica Help Forum), a site run by Coderkid, as well as the PHC (Poptropica Help Chat), which continues to exist today. (However, do check out our PoptropicaHelp subreddit – our relatively new Poptropica mini-forum! And check out our Hub for all the Poptropica Help Network sites!)

I also changed my screen name to Hijuyo, to reflect the names of me and my brother, since I was no longer the only ST around and didn’t really like the name ‘Scary Tomato’ anymore. For a while, I let people think that Hijuyo (or Juyo) was the two of us, as it felt too weird to say that it was just me all along – but, it really was just me all along for the most part.

2010 – 2012 | changes & fishes

A lot of eventful things continued to happen in the Poptropica community, with me heading up the blog, which you can read about on the PHB’s History page. Among them: we nommed Captain Crawfish, got our own website domain to reflect the growing Poptropica Help Network, and changed our website theme a couple of times.

In 2012, I changed my name again – goodbye Hijuyo, hello Slanted Fish. “Slanted Fish” has more of a personal meaning to me: it’s a pun on my Chinese name that someone made up for me. While playing with same-sounding words with different meanings, one such version of my name led to “Slanted Fish”. The name stuck, so I went with it – and perhaps as a plus, it sounds a bit like a Poptropican name, even though it isn’t one.

2013 – beyond | cultivating a community

While I won’t get into every little occurrence, as that would go on forever, I can say that the little blog I started in the summer of 2008 continued to grow and fulfill its purpose of helping fellow Poptropicans with the game I knew and loved. When I started in 2008, it was simple: there were about five islands, and no Store, membership, and most other extra features to speak of. The game has grown so much since then – and that’s a beautiful thing.

The community has grown, too. As of this post, we have 21 million hits on the PHB and counting. Behind every author who has come and gone on this blog is where I stand, the person inviting them on board, managing this whole site little by little by finding authors to contribute, making edits here and there, and more. It’s an interesting job I’ve somehow created for myself, but it’s something that I love doing, and it amazes me to see this site become what it has and will continue to be.

Also, I’m happy to say my skills with graphics have grown a lot since those dark days of Scary Tomato’s Weblog. That’s what happens when you hang around your high school’s art room for way too long…

For those of you calculating my age from this post, yes, I am among one of the oldest in the Poptropica community – for a little bit of perspective, when this blog started in 2008, the PHB’s current youngest author was in kindergarten!

Countless Poptropicans have contributed to the Poptropica Help Network in various capacities. Whether it was simply replying to a comment asking for help somewhere on the blog, or bringing a little flair whenever they hung out on the PHC, or writing a guide for the PHB, or even just being a faithful reader of the blog, and so on – this area of the internet known as Poptropica Help could not have flourished without its community. So thank you, dear reader, for the part you play.

Thanks for reading ‘My Place in Poptropica’. I hope you find yours, too.

– 🐟 slantedfish 🐠 –

Hello, everyone! Remember me?  I know it’s been a long while since I posted, and I’m sorry. The Authors and I have planned to do this “My Place in Poptropica” to tell our stories of how we came to be. We also want to hear your stories and experiences! I would love to see other people’s stories on how they came to the game that we all have a common interest in and love! So today, It’s my turn. My story is pretty bland, so if any of you yawn at it, don’t feel bad. Here’s my story on how I came to be…..

Before Poptropica | A Sporty Guy & Video Game Fanatic

Ever since I was little, I’ve always had an interest in video games. I loved to play all kinds of sports games and Lego Games, but the thing was, I didn’t have a lot of time to play them when I was younger. I was constantly involved in sports activities (soccer in fall + baseball & soccer in spring) and extra-curricular school activities at my private school. The sports practices were basically every night and then the games were every weekend. I didn’t really have time for video games even though I loved them. Either I was doing sports or homework (SD can attest to how hard it is to have a life if you are involved in sports after school). But one fateful weekend I had off from sports, I was exposed to something that forever would have changed my life….

Winter 2010 | The Discovery

It was a cold, rainy weekend. I didn’t have much homework that weekend and my brother was playing this game he found at school on his computer. He encouraged me to try it. He was playing this game called “Poptropica” and his name was Grumpy Snowball. I laughed and thought the game was ridiculous, but he convinced me to try anyway. I immediately was hooked. I replayed all the islands currently out then and loved them all. I would stalk the Poptropica Creator’s Blog for info on the new islands. I was crazy – and still am about Poptropica. Then if you read my Behind the Name post, you would know how I got my account and name.

Summer 2012 | Finding The PHB & Making My Blog

It all started on the fateful day of May 15, 2012. I remember I just got back from vacation and I was dying to go back and play Poptropica again. I was so interested in the new friend’s feature Poptropica just added to the game & I was looking for famous Poptropicans and the usernames of the Creators to add them to the game. My brother suggested I go to The PHB and I was really impressed with all the usernames listed in the Creators Database. I began to start looking around the blog and found so many interesting pages. I soon became a regular follower of the blog and inspired me to make my own blog a few days later!

The blog that I created on May 17, 2012 (Tough Icicle’s Blog) became a huge part of me over time and became one of the Top 20 most popular Poptropica fan blogs on the internet in a short amount of time. Over the first 2 years, I had a whopping 50,000 views. Most of which, to be honest, came from when Fishy used some on my posts & guides on The PHB and introduced people to my blog. I was blown away at the success of the blog and the people that actually enjoyed to view my blog and find interest in it. I couldn’t thank everyone enough for viewing my blog and enjoying what I wrote. I wouldn’t have met all these people in my life without it. There was some good and some bad times on my blog, like any other thing in life. I don’t want to go into details, but I’m sorry to everyone that was a part of that debacle. I wish to reconcile with everyone that was a part of it. Everyone makes mistakes and I regret what happened, I should have controlled it better and made it fairer. My ultimate goal though was to be and author on The PHB and after about a year and a half…My dream came true.

Winter 2013 | The Dream Come True

I woke up on the morning of December 7, 2013, to find an email from Fishy asking me to be an author on The PHB! I was so shocked and flattered to be asked to be apart of the biggest Poptropica blog in existence. I quickly replied to it and said I would happily join the blog! I was so excited, I had so many plans and aspirations! I quickly became known as the “zealous partier” between the authors for organizing the parties and trying to make them fun. Instead of having the Christmas Party on my blog, I decided to have the first ever Tough Icicle & the PHB’s Poptropica Christmas Party! It was so awesome to see so many people come and enjoy holiday cheer! It was a complete revelation to me that people would bond and enjoy each other’s company over one common thing – Poptropica.

2014 | One Amazing Year

Just all of 2014 was an amazing year! It was probably the best year of my life thanks to every single one of you! I had 2 top-ten finishes on islands (here & here), Uncovered a Fake Gamer Guy, had an exclusive interview with the creator of CYDI runner-up House of Cards Island (my review here), hosted multiple parties (here, here, here, and here), restarted up the PHB magazine with HP & other authors, and even a PHB’s 11 million Monster Raffle (HP helped me out of course & 11 million hits last yr at the time!?!?!? What the heck????)!

2015 and Beyond | A Slower Year & The Future

I’ll admit it to you guys, this year was just a bad year in general for my posting – and I’m really sorry. Every time I wanted to post; it was posted already or I didn’t have time to post because I was busy with school, my officer duties of my club, or college coming up soon. I am really sorry guys and I will make a huge effort to start re-posting again.

So let’s move onto the future! I’m planning on having the 3rd Annual PHB’s Poptropica Christmas Party! I know it’s late notice guys (don’t hurt me pls) but I want to rekindle with the whole Poptropica community and spread Holiday cheer (even you crazy Creators are invited o;)!

I am eternally grateful and honored that Fishy gave me a chance to be a part of something as big as the PHB. I am also honored to be a part of the PHB’s future. I can’t wait to see what future will hold for every single one of you in your own Poptropica experience! Who knows? You may be where I’m at soon 😉 .  I’d like to also thank the Creators for all they have done to improve the game and make it unique and special! I’d really like to thank all the authors that have helped me through struggles overtime and friends I have made through Poptropica, But most of all, I would like to thank every single one of you that has viewed my works and enjoy it! I wouldn’t be here without you guys!

I’m Samwow5 (Tough Icicle)…..and this is My Place in Poptropica!