Hello, Poptropicans young and old! The Pop Creators debuted an extension of the Poptropica brand and are now promoting it across social media. Introducing Poptropica Junior, a new website for “play-based learning” geared to Pre-K and early elementary kids!
While Poptropica characters (without line art!) like Amelia and Xavier headline this new site, there’s also plenty of non-Pop content from sister site Funbrain. Pop Jr currently hosts a variety of mini-games, short stories, and coloring pages to preoccupy young players. The videos tab doesn’t work at this point, but let’s hope it gets fixed soon.
It seems that the Creators are trying to attract a new generation of Pop players with this website for those in early childhood. It kind of makes sense, with older players aging out of Poptropica, which is celebrating its 15th birthday next month. But what happens if those new players don’t stick around, especially with the current state of the game?
We’ve seen Pop trying to appeal to many demographics with mixed results. From the Steam bundle to Roblox games, this is yet another example of Pop throwing a reel into the pond of potential players. As a simplified version of an already simplified game, will Pop Jr be the gateway for new players, or the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
Meanwhile on the Creators’ Blog, Poptropica is promoting Coolmath Coding, a new Coolmath Games program dedicated to teaching kids how to code Roblox games and Minecraft mods. Check it out if you’re interested in learning game development at your own pace!
While the Creators’ Blog post mentions that you can try the first programming courses for free, the rest of the courses are locked behind a paywall. Pricing varies depending on which membership plan you pick.
Now for some bad news related to coding. Due to the impending closure of free plans on cloud-hosting site Heroku starting November 28, we may lose access to various unofficial Poptropica glitching tools: the Save Data Converter for Flashpoint, Poptropica Format Loader for Flash-supporting browsers, and Modify a Poptropican for customizing your character. Fortunately, Flashpoint will not be affected. You can still access the oldest islands on Flashpoint, but say goodbye to saving future progress on them. (Thanks to Prof Robin and Oof for the news.)
So let’s make the most of what time we have left with these beloved programs! Finish those classic islands and dress up your Popsona in whatever old, obscure items you can find. Celebrate while you can!
Thank you for reading, and have a good day!
—Gentle Dolphin 🐬
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