Welcome back to the PHB, where Poppies hype is in full swing! 🎆🎉🏆
(Poppies 2026 banner by Magic Kid)
After sorting through your nominations, we compiled the most popular nominees into a poll for your voting pleasure! Cast your votes for who you think should win this year’s Poppies before the poll closes on Monday, July 20.
What do you after you’ve voted? Join us for our annual Poppies Party on the PHC Discord server on Saturday,July 25 @ 7PM EST / 4PM PST! If you’re in a different time zone, use a time zone converter to see when the party starts in your area. 🥳⌚
We’ll start with a video announcing this year’s winners, then we’ll have fun and chat in the server. Poptropica’s common rooms may not work like they used to, but that won’t stop us from having a good time. We played a few rounds of Gartic Phone last year, so feel free to suggest some fun activities for the event.
Although we can’t see each other in common rooms, do dress your Poptropican to the nines for the PHB’s 18th birthday! You can style your avatar inside any version of Pop or draw a custom fit traditionally or digitally. You can make a spiffy suit, a dazzling dress, or maybe even some genie garb? Just a little reminder that Lucky Fish’s Genie Dance Art Collab is accepting submissions until next Tuesday, July 21. 🧞♂️😉
POPTROPICANS! ✨🎉 Set down your sandwich, get your nostalgia caps on, and lock in! It is that time of year again… time for…
✨ The Poppies2026! 🦸
(2026 Banner by Magic Kid)
If you’re new here, welcome to our yearly super cool event called: The Poppies! This is our annual community awards event. During the month of July, the Poptropica fandom (that includes YOU!) nominates, votes, and finally, celebrates the winners of our awards categories! It truly is a fun time for all members of this community to get together and celebrate this game we know and love, and the fandom built around it.
This year, we have 10 categories! You can make up to 3 nominations in each category of whomever or whatever you think deserves the crown for that title. 👑 Nominations are open now until July 8, so tell yourself and your friends to get your suggestions in soon!
Despite the “Drawing Your Poptropicans As Emoticons” series coming to an end, and we’re going to ignore the fact that my most recent post was last year, I have not ceased to make Poptropica fan-art!
My most recent drawing is actually a redraw of one of my oldest Poptropica fan-arts. I’ve made it a tradition to recreate every year and figured it would be fun to share my journey with all of you lovely poptropicans.
2022
Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? In 2022, the Poptropica creators did a “12 Days of Member Gifts” design contest. I submitted three ideas, and amazingly, one got used for it! I was an art baby back then and also EXTREMELY new to digital art. Somehow, I drew this on just an old Chromebook with the touch-pad thing under the space-bar. 😂
From the official Poptropica creators, when they announced my design made it! Proud moment for lil me :>
In between the first drawing and the second, I upgraded my drawing situation and saved up enough for a tablet! YIPPEE! I was really excited to have a much easier way to do digital art so I got really into it. So excited in fact, I was drawing faster than my brain could come up with ideas for the art in the first place. 😂 Then, I figured it would be fun to re-draw old art and see how much I’ve improved. I ended up picking my “Just Chillin’ ” drawing because I was still really pleased it got made into an actual in-game costume. 🙂
2023
You can definitely see the slight improvements. The shading exists, overall construction got better, and the line-art got sooooooo much smoother. ✨
For the 2024 redraw, I had developed a specific style for drawing poptropicans that I used for LOTS of drawings, which I applied in that year’s redraw.
2024
In that year, I discovered what layer modes were on procreate which I had A LOT of fun with. I may have gone a bit overboard with the ‘overlay’ mode on this drawing, but I think it’s a cool style and adds some pops of color! 🙂
In December 2025, I was so busy with life and touching grass (you should try it sometime, 10/10 recommend it 😝), that I COMPLETELY forgot about my re-draw tradition! Sometime early February 2026, I had some spare time and was looking at old art when rediscovered my evolutions. Instantly, I whipped up this quick addition which remains to be the most recent ‘Just Chillin’ upgrade! 🥶✏️
2025/26
For this one, I used my favorite brush, which I hadn’t for the others, and went back to the original roots for the pose inspiration. Instead of having the ice drip, it’s sticking up to one side. Another difference is finally having the addition of hair! In previous years I stubbornly didn’t add it (to stick close to the first drawing) but this year I finally caved in because… well… I like drawing hair, what else can I say? 😂✨ I also brought the scarf back from 2023. And while I still enjoy using layer modes excessively (it’s just a part of my art style at this point lol), I think it looks a little better now. 🙂
Thank you for reading along with my voyage with this drawing! I encourage you to redraw YOUR old Poptropica fan-arts and share them with the community because it’s so cool to see how much more skilled you’ve gotten over the years! 😀
Howdy Poptopicanos! 🤟 This is LJ, and today I’ll be ranking the islands from 2015, a decade after they were released. There were only 4 islands that came out this year that I’ll be including in this ranking: Galactic Hot Dogs, Mystery of the Map, Timmy Failure, and Escape from Pelican Rock. Let’s see how they place!
(Please note, the final episodes of PoptropiCon & Arabian Nights were released in 2015 as well, but those islands were included in the 2014 ranking. Also, these are not full reviews of the islands; therefore, each analysis will be brief.)
(released: January 30 for members & February 19 for all)
I’ll be honest, Galactic Hot Dogs Island never interested me at the time of its release and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the urge to ever replay it. I do like the character designs and the colors are visually appealing to me—the overall art style might even be better than the next island on this list. Still, that’s just not enough for me to rank this one any higher. Sorry Galactic Hot Dogs!
(released: September 17 for members & October 6 for all)
Just like Galactic Hot Dogs Island, this one also didn’t grab my interest. I struggle to recall much about this island, aside from Timmy Failure’s pet polar bear, Total, who totally stole the show for being a whole mood. Total seems more likable than any of the characters from Galactic Hot Dogs, so because of that alone, Timmy Failure Island sits in third place. (Oh, and the mini-game where you have to dodge the trash from the garbage truck is one other thing I remember. That was pretty fun.)
I’ll be upfront and say that I have a positive bias towards this island. Why? I’m not entirely sure, maybe it’s just the good vibes it gives off. The soundtrack definitely hits home for me as I remember playing this island over 10 times when I was younger.
Now, if you’ve read the first book in the Poptropica graphic novel series that this island is based on, you’ll see just how dull this island feels in comparison. It really doesn’t have much in terms of character or story development (which is a common theme for this year in general). Still, it’s not the worst island we’ve seen in Poptropica and it’s definitely an improvement over the last two islands on this list. I’ll admit again that I’m biased, though. I really like the characters Oliver, Mya, and Jorge for who they are beyond just this island.
(released: December 10 for members & December 30 for all)
Escape from Pelican Rock, in my opinion, was the last truly great island that Poptropica came out with. To me, it’s even better than some of the islands that were released in what we all think of as Poptropica’s prime time. EFPR has a colorful array of characters and an engaging storyline centered around a jailbreak and clearing your name.
Although spending each day in the prison could feel a bit monotonous, I appreciate that there was always something slightly different happening every day. The island was challenging, but not to the extent that it caused a complete meltdown from stress—just good fun. And let’s not forget that the PHB got a shoutout in the form of an easter egg! How awesome is that?
Unfortunately, 2015 was sort of the beginning of the end of Poptropica, so this wasn’t really a difficult ranking to make. Escape from Pelican Rock Island is the standout that’s really carrying this year, MotM is just kinda there, and the other two aren’t really for me.
Have you played any of these islands? Which one did you like the most and which one did you like the least? I’m especially curious to see the comparisons between Galactic Hot Dogs and Timmy Failure. Which one is better/worse for you, and why? Share your opinions in the comments down below. 👇 Also, check out my other rankings of the Poptropica Islands if you’re interested: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013, & 2014 Thanks for reading, everybody…pop on and have a Happy New Year!🍀
Well, actually I can believe it. I put a LOT of work in this series. 😂
Each drawing took me about 20 minutes (according to Procreate’s nifty little time-tracking tool) and there were a total of… 72 emoticons. 😳
…You do the math. 😂🙏
I actually really enjoyed it all, though! And if anyone’s curious, here’s my process with Ned Noodlehead:
SketchLine ArtFlat Colors+BlushShading and LightingColor inside lines and outline for FINAL!
So that’s how I draw them! 🙂
*dramatic sigh* Well, there’s no point keeping them all from you any longer… the final batch…
ROUND 10!!
H7— Sporty RunnerA6— Wild BearB9— Ned NoodleheadGolden- E9D6- Dr. LangeD7- Ringmaster RavenE2- Pink StarC6- Lone FlipperA5— White Rock
“And… wrap that up and give it to a child on Christmas, ’cause we’re done!” 😝
Typically at this point of the post, I’d just have the normal drill of “If you want YOUR Poptropican drawn blah blah blah” but since this is the last post in the series, I would like to give a special thank you to everyone who’s supported this series! Whether you’ve been here from the very beginning, or if you just found this a week ago, I really appreciate everyone who’s contributed a Poptropican and everyone who’s left a comment. THANK YOU! 💖
🏝️ Poptropica Help Blog 🗺️ 