Pink Poogle Toy
Pink Poogle Toy (formerly PinkPT and PPT) is a Neopets fansite which was founded by Kym Huynh and Alicia in February 2001.
Now maintained by Kym Huynh and run by international volunteer staff, Pink Poogle Toy was once considered by many to be one of the better Neopets help sites and is the largest on the Internet comprising of news, editorials, Neopets cheats, solutions and articles.
It hosts a still active multi-topic forum where Neopets users come together to interact and share their ideas. Pink Poogle Toy used to have it's own podcast called "The Pink Poogle Toy Show" and was the home of the first Neopets band "The Pink Poogle Toys".
Nowdays, most features have been removed and the blog now daily posts automated news. Neodex still remains an active component of PinkTP, just one of the few remaining features left over from the site.
Kym Huynh
Kym Huynh, born in July 6, 1984, of Adelaide, South Australia founded Pink Poogle Toy in 2001 at the age of 17. He studied law and commerce at the University of Melbourne and graduated 30th Oct 2008.
Corporate Relationships
Pink Poogle Toy maintained a friendly relations with the Neopets staff, particularly Adam Powell, Donna Williams (who both had accounts on the PPT Forum) and the friendly Neopets programmer, Mr. Insane.
Members of the Pink Poogle Toy community were often given previews of new developments at Neopets and their opinions on how the game can be improved are at times implemented on the Neopets website itself. (The implementation of the captcha system in the officially Neopian shops is just one example although it was later removed.)
There had also been friendly banter between both sites with the Pink Poogle Toy's description on Neopets changed to "This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it! :P." This pokes fun at the popular Neopets fansite Pink Poogle Toy, which has a reputation for its users expressing their displeasure about these aspects of the game on its forum.
History
Year 2001
Started in February of 2001 by Kym and Alicia {a young woman he knew over the Internet}, the fansite started with a meager two visitors per day and displayed answers to a small fraction of the Neopets games (notably Poogle Solitaire and Cliffhanger). As the content grew each day, word went around and over 200 hits per day were being recorded by the end of February.
Alicia then created the oekaki, an online art board. Created on the servers of unixdaemons, the oekaki quickly became a popular feature on the site and grew into an online community with at least 2,000 pieces of artwork being created every day. Due to the popularity, Sako's oekaki was created alongside the Pink Poogle Toy Oekaki, to compliment extremely talented artists that were emerging from the oekaki.
Unfortunately, the oekaki grew so much that no host could host it any more as it was consuming a large amount of bandwidth nor could Kym afford it. Despite its closure for an extended period of time due to its "insane amount of generated traffic", the Pink Poogle Toy oekaki is now online again at Pink Poogle Toy's own servers.
In March 2001, one month after opening, Pink Poogle Toy was reaching visitors of up to 2,000. It was also during this month Alicia decided to leave. She returned briefly two months later. Unfortunately, a further two months proved Alicia could not juggle her daily life with Pink Poogle Toy so she resigned; turning entire control of the website over to Kym.
Near the end of April 2001, Pink Poogle Toy was receiving 25,000 page views a day. In August, a representative from Peel Networks approached Pink Poogle Toy with a deal: In exchange for hosting and network membership, Pink Poogle Toy would advertise their US based magazine company. The offer was approved as Pink Poogle Toy had begun to experience host troubles with hosts such as Virtualave, Hypermart and GeoCities.
In September 2001, a new deep blue colored layout created by Ben Williams from Hologram FX was implemented in an attempt to make Pink Poogle Toy look professional and create organization for the site much sought after as the content volume had grown to over 100 pages. By the end of 2001 Pink Poogle Toy was receiving an average of 8,000 unique visitors per day.
Year 2002
In January 2002, Ben Williams of Hologram FX once again redesigned Pink Poogle Toy with a sky blue layout. It aimed to encapsulate the qualities of playfulness, cheekiness, mischievousness and fun.
Early February 2002, marking Pink Poogle Toy's first birthday, Mike joined, quickly learning the ins and outs of of PHP and MySQL to create the In-Depth Battlepedia, providing in-depth information and statistics to all Battledome related aspects on Neopets. In-Depth Battlepedia became an instant hit, quickly growing into a large site itself.
The forum opened up to the general public and became an instant success with over 600 sign-ups in one week. Bob quickly picked up administration of the forums, proving himself to be a good role model with a strong vocabulary, all the while guiding Kym through many problems of the forums.
Supporting Bob in helping run the forum smoothly was the friendly Michelle, who once sent in a sign saying "PPT rox my sox!", Janie, a model with two children, ChromeFox, a quasi-celebrity for her run-ins with the infamous Mari Jhane, and many other skillful Moderators. Forum hosting became a problem when sign ups increased, as the first host, PowWeb, was forced to cancel Pink Poogle Toy's account from using too much bandwidth.
To solve this problem, Pink Poogle Toy was approached by an Administrator at YaBB with an offer to host Pink Poogle Toy's forums under the consideration it would change to the MySQL version. However, the host was unable to handle Pink Poogle Toy's visitor load, and the account was frozen after one day.
Pink Poogle Toy then found a host called Aplus. During the transfer, however, all the membership information was inadvertently lost. Deciding to start fresh, the MySQL version of YaBB was once again used but due to false information about "unlimited system resources" claimed by Aplus, Pink Poogle Toy forums were constantly down, unable to accommodate the growing fan base and visitor load. Once again reverting back to YaBB CGI in the hope that the forum problems would be solved, the forum once again went down after one week.
With the implementation of the news feature installed by NeoFan who worked with Neo-Net , updating became a simple task with a little click on a button. The Pink Poogle Toy team was also joined by three charming ladies with wit to match, Amanda, Sarah and Silver who worked on the news team to update Pink Poogle Toy with regular Neopets news.
With the tremendous growth in emails the site was receiving, robot_blumaroo offered to take care of all Neopet related questions. He stayed with Pink Poogle Toy for approximately three months before opting out. The help link was then redirected to the forum help boards.
In April 2002, Pink Poogle Toy was reaching visitors of up to 8,000 a day.
In July 2002, Pink Poogle Toy was introduced to Sam. Skilled in many programming languages, he quickly became one of the team, sharing ideas, creating extra features and in many regards co-webmaster the entire site itself. His uncanny ability to fully grasp any concept explored and create left the entire team astounded with his deftness, precision and timely responses to any emergency.
In September 2002, NeLLa joined Pink Poogle Toy as a guide writer, chosen over 200 applicants in the first 24 hours of the notice being posted. With guides such as Swarm and Evil Fuzzles from Beyond the Stars, her writing skills possessed a jovial quality, which was a major factor in deciding the final application.
Also in this month, Harry joined Pink Poogle Toy to head the NeoDaq, a department providing information related to the Stock Market in Neopets. During this time, Pink Poogle Toy's new host Aplus was experiencing troubles with handling In-Depth Battlepedia and forum. Because of constant down time and numerous forum restarts, Kym approached Ted from SimGateway and bought hosting from DoubleHost.
Year 2003
The third year approached and with it many milestones. Everyone consolidated within the "Pink Poogle Toy Empire" had their own individual story to tell, and while the year had many achievements, there was also a fair share of disturbances. There was great times of joy and friendship, and even times when friendships were tried and tested, some with favorable outcomes and some not so good, watching the backs of various members leave.
Once again many issues took place on the forum. A total revamp of the administration system at Pink Poogle Toy occurred, with the administrators Janie and Bob leading the crew of Global Moderators and Moderators into a period of bug fixing. Unfortunately, an issue involving ChromeFox saw her demoted to a normal member, and a furious uproar took place within the forum over the facts and points of "the case". In two months ChromeFox came back into the Pink Poogle Toy forum crew as a Moderator, and once again forum life continuing as usual.
Nearing the end of January, Bob, the first employed forum Administrator for Pink Poogle Toy (aka 'man-with-big-stick'), resigned. Although many were taken by surprise, the forum crew saw it coming. Bob had achieved his goals as forum Administrator, changing the little forum it was into one of the largest, safest and most friendly forum for Neopets. Many thanks and well wishes were given, and it is believed Bob had carved his name into the minds and hearts of the Pink Poogle Toy members, whose legacy still remains.
After much deliberation, Bob handed his reigns over to Big Jim (British like Bob). Handling the affairs of the forum alongside the now longest running Administrator at Pink Poogle Toy, Janie, the duo have paved and strengthened the way Bob and Janie started with the help out the Global Moderators, Moderators and members. As of April 4 2003, the forum line up was as follows:
- Forum Administrators
- Janie
- Jim
- Global Moderators
- CoolKau
- Fiddelysquat
- Kagome
- Michelle_Belly
- V3n0m0us
- Moderators
- Airglo
- atamand,
- Bno
- Charisma
- CheezieHotti
- ChromeFox
- Count Von Roo
- CragHack
- CSK
- Cyanna
- FaerieGirl
- Hunter Lupe
- Infernobanjo
- Lina Blade
- MarcoBMG
- Magax
- Marching Duck
- Mina
- Neko
- Nshade
- Platypus
- Raiden
- Sam
- Shy Divine Dragy
- Stephy
- Stodder
- Werepup
- White_Wolf
- Winnerliu
The year also began a string of forum competitions, and fads such as "lets-all-post-wav-files-of-our-voices" to "let's-make-silly-movies-of-each-other". The first ever large-scale forum competition began late 2002 and was dubbed the "PPTbies". Modeled after the real life Logie Awards, the forum members old and new stepped up to claim awards. The winners were as follows:
- Most Valuable Person - Shoyru_Lover
- Outstanding Contribution - JanieJanie
- Most Influential - JanieJanie
- Best Moderator - Chromefox
- Best Female Member - Fiddleysquat
- Best Male Member - CoolKau and Bob
- Click That Topic - MichelleTheGoth
- Best Newcomer - Hunter Lupe
- Most Helpful - Cyanna
- Funniest Member - FiddelySquat
- Happiest Member - Sonchynne
- Most Generous - V3n0m0us
- Best Artist - Stephy
- Best Avatar - Stephy
- Good Grammar - Knitting Knut
- Bad Grammar - Yuvs
- President - Chromefox
- JailBird - MichelleTheGoth
Now considered an annual event, it led to other creations such as PPT Survivor (which still is in progression), Mina's MMAC (Mina's Monthly Art Contest) and Hunter Lupe's PPT Staff Sacrificers, which saw all male Pink Poogle Toy members voted out first.
Early 2003 saw Hunter Lupe heading the new department at Pink Poogle Toy called the In-Depth NeoQuest Guide. Growing very quickly, it is now one of the largest detailed NeoQuest sites on the Internet, which contain complete walkthroughs and maps of the entire game. This department was also created in anticipation of NeoQuest 2.
March 2003 saw the Work Shop open at PPT. Encompassing tutorials on how to make models of various Neopets aspects, the idea quickly took on and received overwhelming support and good responses from the Neopets community.
During March 2003, the design of Pink Poogle Toy was changed again. Opting out of the generic "blue" look all other sites seemed to now possess, Pink Poogle Toy redesigned its layout into a bold red, this time with the logo of the Pink Poogle Toy staff drawn by Mina as its welcoming image. Once again designed by Hologram FX, the new layout expressed a cleaner and professional version of Pink Poogle Toy. During this time, the first ever member to reach 10,000 posts was ChromeFox, a huge accomplishment considering the next biggest poster was behind by a few thousand posts.
Alongside all these new changes, came new staff. Magenta, Alex, Mermaid Hil and Swedevil joined the news team while Pink Poogle Toy adopted the talents of Mina Kim and Lina Blade as artists. Stephy soon joined as the graphics artist at Pink Poogle Toy, designing banners and buttons for various purposes. What Pink Poogle Toy didn't anticipate this time however, was the range of talents it was now adopting. It seemed each staff member at Pink Poogle Toy had more than one single talent. Magenta, while posting excellent news also was very well versed in graphic design, while Stephy, who was originally founded as a forum Moderator was soon found to also be an incredible graphics artist. Hunter Lupe, who was also modding the forums was soon discovered to be a phenomenal scripter and after critically looking at the staff again, Pink Poogle Toy soon found that each staff member was directly contributing to more than one aspect at Pink Poogle Toy! As a result, the Pink Poogle Toy forums started taking on a more otaku-ish path, everyone lapping up the design atmosphere fueled by Stephy's creations and Mina's art contests.
While these new developments were taking place, more somber issues were occurring outside of PPT. Late 2002 to early 2003 saw what would take place in what is commonly known as the "Fan Site Wars". Many new Neopets related fan sites quickly sprang up and a series of attacks on other websites, accusations, hacking, slander and libel quickly took place.
Pink Poogle Toy attempted to stay away from this as much as possible. After the incidents were finally resolved and a tentative 'peace agreement' was made between the other websites, Pink Poogle Toy once again distanced itself from those websites for it did not wish to be a party to such events if they should occur again. Pink Poogle Toy was created for the fans, and that's the way it will always be. It decided never to take part in any petty politics, which should never take place between fansites.
Just when everyone started breathing again, another round of rumors began circulating, while many of them were unfounded. However this time, the threat came from Neopets itself. Many fan sites found themselves under threat of having their websites removed unless they were in line with the Terms and Conditions set forth under Neopets. Pink Poogle Toy went offline for a period of four days coincidentally during this time, which started a fresh batch of rumors that Pink Poogle Toy was removed which was untrue. However, Pink Poogle Toy once again opened up after its short down time and put a definite stop to the rumors.
In April 2003, forum Moderator werepup, fresh from a trip to Spain, joined the main Pink Poogle Toy site as the newest Webmistress of Pink Poogle Toy. Dubbed Elle by the crew, Elle has given Pink Poogle Toy the much needed female touch.
Well there you have it. The third year so far has had many triumphs and tribulations while also its fair share of small problems, which were easily taken care of. I, Kym, could not have taken PPT this without with the dedication and support of so many people. The forum mods, and GMs, the admins, the separate help of individual people, to list them all here would take forever. However some do stand out in my mind and I would like to take this opportunity to thank certain people: Janie and Bob for always being my "second parents" even though they didn't mean to; Elle for always being there to help out whenever she could; Jim, for spending countless hours talking about nothing with me; Sam, Hunter and Mike, the programming whiz kids with a "all-for-one-and-one-for-all" attitude; the news crew Magenta and Alexa, for being the anchor of the team, and CSK, V3n0m0us, Stephy, MichelleTheGoth, Mina, Lina, Pheny, Charisma, Cheezie and Michelle for just those random fun and crazy talks which seems prevalent among the PPT members. Lastly, Cyanna. While we hardly ever talk, you've always struck me as a very sensible, kind and fair person.
Year 2004
This is the year known amongst the Pink Poogle Toy populace as The Great Reset. The forum databases crashed and everything was lost on April of 2004. Since then, the community has rebuilt itself, and nearly all 10,000 members who were part of the forums before the crash joined again, many under different names.
Year 2005
September 2005 saw the overhaul of Pink Poogle Toy. With over 1,400 pages of content, the site re-organized its many scattered links on the front page into self contained categories to make the site user friendly. Pink Poogle Toy additionally made a vow to itself to serve the visitors, by getting rid of all the pop up advertising and download prompts that once plagued the site. This was eventually realized in 2005, when Pink Poogle Toy moved off the wh000t networks which was run by Kym's friend at World of Britney. Although Pink Poogle Toy still contains banner advertisements, the days of intrusive advertising were officially over.
With another redesign by Ben Williams of HologramFX, Pink Poogle Toy now exuded a confidence in its bright colours. The forums grew to new heights, breaking its record of most users online (since the forum reset) of 149 on September 12, 2005, during the early days of the Lost Desert Plot. This online record has since been broken, but it became apparent the Neopets users were using Pink Poogle Toy as a source of information before it became publicly available, which was totally fine by the PPTers.
Pink Poogle Toy also saw programmers of The Neopets Team posting on the forums to interact with Neopets players, even Donna Williams and Adam Powell. This would eventuate to Neopets changing the description of the Pink Poogle Toy on Neopets to "This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it! :P". In fact, Adam Powell wrote "Detention for PPTForum!" on an image of the discovered NeoSchools area when members of the Pink Poogle Toy Forum announced it before it was announced by Neopets themselves.
2005 also saw Pink Poogle Toy open its doors to other Neopets fan sites. With the advent of all the new Neopets fan sites, Pink Poogle Toy welcomed them by creating a large link database for everyone to join. The Neopets links page listed some of the more prominent websites, but was always open to accept links to and from sites that clearly have shown a lot of effort in them.
In 2005, the Pink Poogle Toy Topsites, which opened and then closed due to hosting problems, re-opened. It's now the largest Neopets-related topsite in the world and is listed as one of the largest hosted topsites on iTopsites.
The Pink Poogle Toy Oekaki flourished to new heights during 2005, making it one of the largest oekakis available. Now on its own dedicated server, the population has once again grown, and on March 3, 2006 had over 20,000 individual pieces of artwork created on it.
Also in 2005, Pink Poogle Toy expanded its Neopets help programs by posting Neopets news, and by adding the Neodex, Neopets Graphics department and the Avatar Catalog.
Year 2006
On March 2, 2006, a new website layout was created by Ben of HologramFX, replacing the previous layout which started to become cluttered due to the amount of content on the site, solved in the new design which categorized everything into distinguishable areas.
With the redesign of Pink Poogle Toy finished, Kym began to focus on creating a Pink Poogle Toy news team for unreleased Neopets news, a comprehensive pre-template layouts section for users to have on their User Lookup, promoting the Avatar Catalog , and promoting the NeoDex and turning it into the most comprehensive place online source for all Neopets information. Eventually, he hoped the NeoDex to also be used by The Neopets Team for reference purposes for their work in addition to anyone who wanted to learn a little bit more about Neopets. Kym also saw the potential to turn the entire site into an entertainment network, and eventually leverage the site traffic into other areas of his work.
During the appearance of the new design the "Write an Article Contest" begun to take full effect . Two months after its creation people were sending in many entries to Kym, who quoted he had over 800 emails in his inbox waiting to be replied to in addition to over 60 contest entries to look at, add to Pink Poogle Toy and judge on on March 4, 2006.
Another redesign was made yet again by HologramFX on August 13, 2006, making the previous pink colour purpler and reordering the categories the layout again. On August 15, the ‘’Pink Poogle Toy Promenade’’ opened up for Neopets users to buy from. The Pink Poogle Toy Promenade was a "mall" (collection of user shops) owned and maintained by users of Pink Poogle Toy. The Your Neopet Dailies was also created on (need date), and contained several quick links, features, and many other things a user would daily do.
Year 2007
Year 2008
Year 2009
2009 was a paradigm change for Pink Poogle Toy. With graduation from Law School behind him, Kym sought to turn Pink Poogle Toy from an ad hoc hobby fansite into a working business model. This began with an overhaul of how staff were employed and managed, from the introduction of paid positions at Pink Poogle Toy from late 2008 to enacting procedures and policies to ensure that staff members that worked at Pink Poogle Toy were given continuous feedback and encouraged to developed their own goals and plans for the own portfolios.
In addition to these policy changes, a business model and corporate structure was created and regular meetings over Skype were enacted with all staff members at Pink Poogle Toy, in particular with Administrators for their various departments. As of April 2009, the changes are still taking place.
The following took place in April: (1) A new round of forum Moderators was introduced; (2) The selection of the new oekaki Administrator; (3) The selection of the new NeoDex Administrator; (3) The selection of the new podcast Administrator; (4) The upgrading of the site blog to the P2 interface and the syncing up of blog updates to Pink Poogle Toy's own Twitter account; (5) The implementation of auto links in the news to the NeoDex; (6) The creation of unrated neopets and petpets at NeoPool; (7) The release of 2008's Pink Poogle Toy collage; (8) The opening of the Pink Poogle Toy collage for 2009; (9) An initial revision of the Pink Poogle Toy Constitution; and (10) An overhaul at the oekaki including the introduction of the oekaki blog.
The following took place in May: (1) Nekopan hired to handle the weekly feature posts: (i) Rate-a-Neopets Monday; (ii) Wiki Wednesday; and (iii) Rate-a-Petpet Friday; (2) Negotiations with a graphics artist to start a free userlookup, guild and petpet pages layouts section; (3) The creation of the Altador Cup IV content pages to provide coverage for this year's Altador Cup plot; (4) A podcast Administrator appointed (Ella); (5) Eileen promoted to the new forum Administrator; (6) Third round of forum Moderator sorting to ensure at least two active Moderators per forum board; (7) The navigation on PPT updated with the categorization of submitted guides; (8) Cosmetic fixes to the current layout; (9) New designs at all three PPT oekakis; (10) The re-introduction of weekly themes at the PPT oekakis; (11) New favicons around PPT; (12) All PPTbie prizes sent out from 2008; (13) The creation of the sandbox boards for forum Moderators; (14) An update to the ranking system at the forum; and (15) The forum header graphic updated.
The following took place in June: (1) New Adam Powell and Donna Williams interviews added; (2) Main section clean-up; (3) An oekaki Moderator appointment; (4) A news poster appointment; (5) A Co-Webmaster appointment.
Era of decline
2010 - Present
Despite the numerous years of prosperity, things began to not go so well after 2009. With the attempts to implement a more business-like structure, the site's foundations began to crumble and soon fell to a state nothingness.
Abandoning it's previous Pink and frilly layouts, in 2010 PinkTP switched to a new, much more modern layout showcasing various news and guides submitted by various users. With the coming of 2011, however, the news feed itself began to stop all together, with the last news post in 2011 inviting users to join another pet site.
In mid-2011, the site adopted another layout, one which was grey and less life-full than it's predecessor. From this point on, the blog was filled daily with recycled posts from years before, in some cases posting guides to the 2007 Altador Cup's Prize Shop, or mentioning events long gone. The automated news was further seen to be true when the comments for daily posts would be from years before, also discussing topics long gone. Many of the sites features also disappeared, now leading to 404-errors and dead links.
Today, Pink Poogle Toy remains very much the same, automatically pulling up news from years before and posting it on the front page. Every now and then, a post will appears on the forums from a random passerby or still dedicated staff member, though the days of talks with TNT staff and long-fun filled conversations long remain in the past. All that remains would be still dedicated PPT fans chatting in the general neopets section, with the other sections of the forum seen empty as far as 2009.
Neodex still remains widely popular, with dedicated staff and editors still working hard to archive events, characters, and happenedings in the world of Neopia.
Milestones
- February 1, 2001: Pink Poogle Toy is created.
- May 30, 2004: The day known as "The Great Reset" - which was the day everything on Pink Poogle Toy was lost - mainly involving the forum.
- Thursday, June 01, 2006: Pink Poogle Toy breaks the 300 subscribers barrier to its feed including email subscriptions.
- Friday, June 02, 2006: Pink Poogle Toy Forum breaks its most online users record - 178 on 02 Jun 2006 03:43 am.
Departments
Avatar Catalog (Removed)
The Avatar Catalog was a source for all the Neopets avatars! Allowing users to register unique accounts, users could keep abreast of which avatars they have and which they do not by saving checklists that would remember what has been marked as "achieved" and has not.
Unfortunately, it no longer operates.
In-depth Battlepedia (Dead)
Main Article: In-Depth Battlepedia (PPT)
The In-depth Battlepedia was the world's most renowned source for Neopets Battledome information. It unfortunately closed down in 2011 after going bankrupt.
In-depth NeoQuest
Main Article: In-Depth NeoQuest
The In-depth NeoQuest the first complete NeoQuest information site and remains the most comprehensive on the Internet for both NQI and NQII.
NeoDex
Main Article: Neodex:About
The NeoDex is the online wiki Neopets encyclopedia and is the largest of its kind online.
NeoPool (Removed)
Main Article: NeoPool
Added May 19, 2006, the Neopool was created to offer Neopians a more rounded visitor experience. Created to fill a void left upon the closure of Neocolours, the Neopool is the first in its kind to allow users to vote and rank neopet species/colour combinations. It was removed from the site at an unknown time.
Trophy Catalog (Removed)
Added May 31, 2006, the Trophy Catalog provided visitors with a checklist for all of Neopets' trophies, a first for any fansite.
It was removed from the site at an unknown date.
Other Features
Pink Ink (Removed)
Pink Ink was Pink Poogle Toy's newspaper, once containing articles, stories and art pertaining to Pink Poogle Toy, Neopets and other topics. It began in summer 2003, but the first issues were lost in the reset in 2004. Pink Ink returned on October 31, 2004, but has since been removed and lost again.
Podcast (Discontinued)
Pink Poogle Toy used to produces a podcast called "The Pink Poogle Toy Show." The first show launched on August 23, 2005. The show featured discussion about the game Neopets but is also featured the latest additions to Neopets from the corporate world and how it affects its users. Show episodes were once released weekly and the podcast was one of the largest Neopets podcasts in existence.
The show is no longer recorded.
Custom Shields (Removed)
Pink Poogle Toy's Custom Shields were initially created by Mike, a veteran Neopian who ran with Ad0 back in the days of the great Neopian hackers. Proving immensely popular, custom shields were once able to be requested by Pink Poogle Toy visitors for creation. The service has since been discontinued.
The Forum Community
One of the more popular areas of Pink Poogle Toy is the large community run on a phpBB back-end. Within its walls, PPTers (a person who often visit Pink Poogle Toy) converse about all things Neopets and many other topics. PPTers have been described as hard-working, fun-loving insane people, much as Pink Poogle Toy is meant to be. With the help of the forum, a lot of content, and a great community, Pink Poogle Toy has developed their own little slice of online culture.
The "One Black Meowclops Pen" experiment (Over)
The One Black Meowclops Pen experiment was started by Pink Poogle Toy user jrtman (Dead link) who was inspired by Kyle MacDonald's very successful One Red Paperclip experiment in which he started with a single red paperclip which he traded up until he received a house. Jrtman created the One Black Meowclops Pen experiment to see if he could recreate One Red Paperclip in the world of Neopets.
A small webpage for the experiment was put up on his pet PrinceGrizzly's petpage explaining the experiment and listing the usernames of every person who contributed to it. The mission was to start with a single Black Meowclops Pen (worth around 2,000 neopoints at the time) and continue to trade for slightly better things until the goal of a complete Secret Laboratory Map set (9 pieces) was reached successfully. The experiment was closed on July 16, 2006, due to lack of interest, and the final item, a Disco Petpet Paint Brush, was donated to the Money Tree.
Enemies
Despite the fact that Pink Poogle Toy has such a wide fan base, it has also ranked up a number of enemies. As the largest Neopets fan site, many runners of other sites claimed that Pink Poogle Toy is a site that encourages a multitude of problems, including spyware, viruses and hardcore pornography. Of course, this is not true.
Although the websites sports a number of advertisements, the management makes sure that no illegal content makes its way onto the computer. Not only do other sites have grudges, but many older members of the community also return to antagonize the forums. Still, with over thousands of members, Pink Poogle Toy could be considered the largest fan site for Neopets.
Mascots
The most noted celebrity on Pink Poogle Toy is the chicken, Arrow. In the beginning, it started out as an emoticon, but this chicken has been officially raised to the 'mascot' of Pink Poogle Toy. At the top of the forum, one can see the banner. There is a picture of Arrow, painted by the resident artist, the wonderful Yoshi. In various forms, during the holiday seasons, you could once Arrow in such forms as the roast chicken during Thanksgiving, and a Cupid arrow, during St. Valentine's Day
Influences
The Pink Poogle Toy item on Neopets has had its description changed to "This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it! :P", a playful reference to the members of Pink Poogle Toy forums, many of whom frequently complain about various aspects of Neopets.
A plushie featuring Arrow exists on Subeta, saying in its description: "Aww, it's a cuddly stuffed version of the PPT mascot!".
A lesser-known mascot of Pink Poogle Toy is the Oekaki community's mascot, Squishy - a peach-coloured blob sporting a black hat with the initials 'PPT' on its rim. Though it isn't clear exactly who or what Squishy is, this cheery rotund creature has a taste for muffins and has an ever-increasing collection of assorted hats and headwear. Squishy was the winning entry of a mascot contest held on the oekaki back in 2004, and was created by the former oekaki Administrator Gfaerie.
Pink Poogle Toy's Lost Layout
Pink Poogle Toy had a fourth layout, a pink one that briefly appeared for a few days before being taken down. It made a brief re-appearance during a template switching system Hunter installed but after an unfortunate server reset in which a lot of data was lost, including all the forum files and databases, this template never re-appeared.
Trivia
- A former department, Neopets Layouts, offering graphics and templates for Neopians started in (need date) was merged into Pink Poogle Toy's main site on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 due to quality control issues. It was also used to complement the recently added custom shields section headed by Mike, a friend of Ad0, who is famous in Neopian folklore for hacking Neopets.