Weather alert: The skies continue to be clear of the Baron’s airship, but not for much longer, according to a comment from Poptropica on their blog: “The Airship hit a bit of headwind, but will be arriving soon!” 🍂
In the meantime, September’s costume contest has already commenced, and it’s seeking Halloween designs! Last year, not one but six costumes were selected for the Baron’s Red October event, and such festivities are set to continue this year. Enter by Monday,September 26 at 8pm PST for your chance to get your costume made!
Fun fact: One of the winning costumes was the “Pumpkin Punk” from the PHB’s Gentle Dolphin. See them all here for this year’s inspiration!
In other news, enjoy the latest fan art features from Poptropica’s Instagram stories, with Raven tears and cosmic jeers! 🐦🥺
Hey Poptropicans! The Pop Creators have been cooking up some collaborations with us here at the PHB, and over the next few months, we’ll be sharing some interviews with each of the PHB staff.
First up: yours truly, Slanted Fish! The Creators tested the waters of this blog-founding fish with an interview last year you can read here, but for this round we’ve got a splash of new content as well. Let’s dive in!
From your perspective, how have you seen the Poptropica Help Blog (PHB) and community change over time?
The biggest change I’ve noticed personally is that the kids have gotten older, both in the PHB community and the fandom at large. Though Poptropica has always been aimed at kids, it’s fascinating to see how teens and young adults (myself included) still participate in the fandom, often returning from childhood nostalgia and sticking around for the community and inspired storytelling (perhaps even creating some of their own). Of course, young kids are still around. From my perspective, even children are capable of enjoying Poptropica’s more sophisticated stories, particularly those from the classic islands.
As for the PHB itself, it’s definitely grown in professionalism over time. When it first started, we were a group of mostly 10–12-year-olds just starting to learn how to run a blog together, with all that entails. We’d create cringey graphics, ramble on in our posts with inside jokes told in all caps, and occasionally have drama spilling over in the comments. Not that we manage to completely avoid that now, but we’ve come a long way since the start and our style has definitely matured a bit. Nowadays the blog is proud to present content that is more consistent, organized, informative, balanced, and still with a touch of fun!
PHB team pic by (Dr.) Ashley Lange, Poptropica Creator (2014)
6. What inspires you?
Inspiration can come from anywhere: an interesting article, artifact, artwork… and it’s important to find some good ones, as that shapes our thought patterns and, eventually, the kind of person we become! As author Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Besides traveling the islands of Poptropica, I enjoy looking at real-life nature, listening to music and podcasts, and learning the stories of people past and present, as ways to be refreshed and inspired.
Journey: The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
Outside of Poptropica and your PHB involvement, what are you passionate about?
Perhaps it’s cliche, but I’m an advocate for making the world a better place, which can look a million different ways, including social justice, environmental sustainability, and everything in between.
Touching back on my work with the PHB, and outside of it, I’m also passionate about language. I love conveying ideas through writing, discovering just the right words to use, and appreciating a good pun or poetic line. English is my first language, but Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese are part of my life, too. Being curious about languages opens up new worlds!
Fish Face: These ocean-dwellers are getting animated.
Big thanks to the Pop Creators for having me on the official blog and for their efforts connecting Poptropicans with fun content — and more to come. Catch my full interview with Poptropica on their official blog! 💙
Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Dizzy Feather. Enjoy!
Smoke and Mirrors: It’s all just a big show, isn’t it?
Hello everyone, Dizzy Feather here with round three of “What’s Missing?” Here’s how the game works:
I’ll show you screenshots from Poptropica with a detail covered up, and you try to guess what the missing piece is. Leave your guesses in the comments of this post, and in about a week I’ll share the answers and shout out those who got any of them correct! A couple of rules:
No cheating! Don’t go in-game to the area shown to find the answers, and don’t copy someone else’s answers (best not to look before sharing yours). Not only would that be cheating others, but you’ll be taking the fun away from yourself!
Have fun! It’s just a game. Don’t pressure yourself to get them all.
Now that we’ve got that down, let’s begin with this Fairytale Island/Rumpel’s Challenge edition puzzle! You may need to click on images to view them in full.
1. All birds have them. F_ _ _ _ _ _ 2. They come by once a month. R_ _ B_ _ _ _3. Flush it when you’re done. G _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ _ _ _4. This once stood on Home Island. X _ _ _ _ _ S _ _ _ _ _5. Classic garden decor. G _ _ _ _ 6. Ribbit. F _ _ _7. Debatable presence on pizza. P _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _8. For lovebirds. H _ _ _ _9. A galactic… G_ _ _ _ _ H _ _ _ _ _10. Made from wheat, and a common ingredient. F _ _ _ _
So what’s missing? Share your guesses in the comments, and if you’re right, I’ll mention you when I reveal the answers. Good luck!
Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Dizzy Feather. If you did, you might also enjoy previous rounds of “What’s Missing?”: Round 1 and Round 2.
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!
Pop drop alert: PoptropiCon Island, Ep. 3: Reign of Omegon has been re-released for members on desktop and mobile! 🚨🤖
With that, the PoptropiCon trilogy is once again complete (though it already is on Steam and Flashpoint). Once you’ve made your way inside the convention and uncovered a top-secret costume design, Episode 3 takes you to the final boss: the unexpected rise of a robot ruler.
If you’ll be visiting the depths of Omegon’s terrors, be sure to keep our PoptropiCon Island Guide near! No word yet on when it will officially re-release for non-members, but if we’re guessing from past patterns, it could be several months — or even a year. Hopefully sooner, though.
The latest converted episode comes just after an announcement from the Pop Creators less than two weeks ago on the official blog, and a day after another brief appearance in our fan-run Discord server, the PHC. Poptropica didn’t stop to chat, but fans were quick to follow up with an emoji petition for bringing back the classic Astro-Knights Island. 🚀
(UPDATE – DEC 2023: The Discord appearance has been debunked as not representing the real Poptropica. The PHB apologizes for the error.)
The Pop Creators’ Blog also brings news of a shop update featuring hoodies galore for the season of fall, as well as a new fanfic from guest writer Dizzy Feather. Check out the full shop stock as well as the prologue to The Adventures of Shy Owl on the official blog! 🍂🦉
The start of a new month also means new member gifts! The latest batch for privileged players features a Neon Bike, Neon Leather Jacket, and Neon Helmet. Ride with style! ✨
However, other expected monthly deliveries have yet to arrive with any mention — namely the Baron’s airship along with the costume contest winner. Does the Baron’s unexplained absence last month have anything to do with it?
One more thing: September isn’t just any month, it’s Poptropica’s birthday month! Are there surprises in store? We’ll have to see… 👀
This is a guest post from HeartOfEnder sharing her My Place in Poptropica story, which is all about one’s Poptropica journey. Enjoy!
Heart here, back with — not the next part of The Witch’s Heart, though still working on it, don’t worry — something different. Ever since my discovery of the Poptropica Help Blog, I always wanted to write my own “My Place in Poptropica” story. So as a break from putting my poor fanfic characters in danger, now’s the time. Without further ado…
2018: Finding Poptropica
I found Poptropica in the strangest way possible.
Whenever I discover a new game, it is either because a video about the game appeared in my Youtube recommended, my friends play the game and I thought it looked fun, or the game was on sale so I bought it. Poptropica… was none of those.
Holmes Run: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could do it…
Instead I found Poptropica when I was googling games similar to Animal Jam, a game I was obsessed with. Poptropica was on the list, but back then, I scrolled past without interest.
A few days later, I was about to leave my local library when I saw a kid playing a game with a blue screen, vines, and white letters with the word ‘Pop’ in it. If he was playing it, it must’ve been fun! So when I got home and was allowed on my laptop, I returned to the list, found the game with ‘Pop’ in it, and started playing.
The first variation of my character, Spotted Thunder, had pink hair, and she pretty much looked like some pop star from some cartoon. I completed Monkey Wrench Island and was like, “huh, this is a fun game.” And so my Poptropica adventure began.
Wheel Talk: We can go around and around on this all day.
Still 2018: Making memories through the darkest times
Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I started playing Poptropica when things were going downhill, what with longtime Pop Creators leaving and things going silent. However, I wanted to experience Poptropica and enjoy more of it.
One of my favorite (and slightly embarrassing) memories is how long it took me to remember the name “Poptropica.” It took me about two weeks just to figure out it wasn’t “Poptrioca.” Close enough!
Now back to the actual gameplay. The first island I attempted was Time Tangled, but all I did was walk around, then leave, because I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing. What do you do when you have no clue? Ask Google. I found a few Wikihow articles, but unfortunately they weren’t very helpful.
See and Say: Baa, moo, cluck.
Next stop, YouTube! I googled “poptropica island walkthroughs” and was blown away at just how many there are. I noticed that most of them were made by this one YouTuber named Thinknoodles. Every time I found an island I wanted to complete, I would watch Thinknoodles’s walkthrough on it before attempting the island myself.
Despite this, I was no super genius, so I couldn’t remember everything. So I googled for other guides and found… the Poptropica Help Blog.
With the PHB and Thinknoodles to help me, I completed island after island, and Poptropica was the only thing I could talk about for the rest of 2018. (I apologize to my friends at the time.)
A Vine Time: We call this the old rope-a-dope.
2019–2020 | Still going strong… or not
When 2019 began I was still talking about Poptropica. If my friends thought that my obsession would end, well, it didn’t.
I continued playing Poptropica, watching things change, patiently waiting for new islands, and generally doing regular Poptropica things. 2019 was the year I discovered and completed my favorite island, Vampire’s Curse.
2020 came around, but by then, my interest in Poptropica finally faded. I still remembered it, but stopped playing for the most part.
Tree of Afterlife: That red dotted line might be your path to safety — or not.
2022–present: Hey, what was that Pop game again?
A couple years later, I found myself bored and remembering all the games I used to play when Flash was around, like Animal Jam, Transformice, Poptropica…
Wait, isn’t Poptropica still around? Didn’t they move to a new build before Flash went goodbye?
I googled the game and found it still going! I remembered my login and was greeted with a brand new Home Island and someone stealing a statue. Typical Poptropica.
Returning to the game, I gave Spotted Thunder a brand new look and a proper name: Gwendolyn. It popped into my head — maybe because of one of my favorite characters from The Owl House, Gwendolyn Clawthorne — but anyway, I thought it sounded cool.
I joined the PHB’s Poptropica Help Chat, began noticing an increase in Poptropica fanfiction, and thought it would be fun to join. So I reworked the plot of an old fanfic I wrote and started posting on Tumblr (and later Quotev, because Tumblr likes to force people to make an account to continue reading). My story became Storm’s Calamity, which people seem to be enjoying so far!
As I was writing the third chapter, I had the idea of writing a short series focusing on one of the characters, Alouette, as the protagonist — and that’s how The Witch’s Heart came to be on the PHB.
Still Not Constantinople: Why they changed it, I can’t say.
Well, it was fun remembering and writing about my Poptropica journey. This was something I wanted to do for years, and I have finally done it. I hope you have a good day, everyone!
Hope you enjoyed this “My Place in Poptropica” story! If you did, you’ll probably enjoy our other MPIP stories here on the PHB.
If you haven’t already shared your story, we invite you to send in your own. Interested in writing for the PHB under a different Pop-topic? Take a look at our Write for the PHB page for ideas, guidelines, and more!
🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺 