The History of Neopets 

This video brought back a lot of memories. Neopets was more than just feeding a pet; it was an entire virtual world. As someone who played Neopets religiously for years in the 2000s, even though most of the time spent was pretty unproductive, I did learn many life skills as a kid: HTML/CSS + photoshop (for my user lookup and pet pages), management (I helped managed guilds with thousands of members), economics (ok this is a bit of a stretch but buy low sell high came into play a lot), and surprisingly social skills (I’m still friends with a few of my Neopets friends to this today even after 17+ years). I really do miss the Neopets days, and wonder what it would be like today if it was still popular. Now it’s just all nostalgia.

Neopets was also one huge language learning site for us non-English speakers!👌

I work in website design and I learned nearly everything I needed to know about computers from Neopets and Myspace.

I’m about to turn 30, and I regularly CRAVE the feeling of playing neopets specifically in 1999. 😭

But the SHOPS!!!! I'm shocked you didn't really even mention them! That was the #1 reason I got drawn in to coming back over and over again, and learning about marketing like supply and demand, or drawing people in with some lower priced products and hoping they'll stay and buy some higher priced products.

It's so funny to me to think about all the adult themes of the site, now that I'm older. I started playing in 2002 when I was 7 or 8, and I played religiously for years. My entire childhood. In second grade, I was so obsessed with it, that my teacher banned us from even saying the word Neopets or talking about it. Lmao. In all seriousness, I found Neopets while my parents were going through a terrible divorce and I had just moved to a new state. The immersive world was my escape. And I'm incredibly thankful for it.

Oh hey, I'm one of those people who started doing web development through neopets guild layouts and profiles who is now a professional web developer! I feel very seen right now 😂

I remember learning HTML at 13 so I could make my Neopet's webpage into a Hamtaro fan site. I remember that there was a bit of a scramble when the Neopets plushies hit store shelves. I waited outside of The Icing (Claire's but for slightly older girls) to see if I could get the one I wanted. I think my sister got an aisha doll. The Neopets team did a tour and my sister got one of the artists to draw her Neopet. My mom still has it around somewhere, it may be worth something.

Neopets used to be my obsession. I always did wish a animated movie could have been made.

Oh my goodness, Neopets shaped a good portion of my childhood. My first memory of the internet is playing a minigame on Neopets of one of the little dragon dudes. Kougra was my favourite. :)

Hi I’ve been playing Neopets since 2003. Don’t go back, don’t check on your pets. It’s depressing to look at the website in its current state, plus it’s having a current and active user data breach. Also the community has been begging net dragon to not start a third NFT project after the first one failed (leaving the buyers with nothing) and the second NFT project was canceled after the team for it was repeatedly caught talking shit about the main Neopets user base. This video is a great overview of the long term history but it really misses the major issues that have been going on for the last 3-4 years. (Edited for grammar)

Ah man, Neopets. What a flashback. I played way, way, back in the day, I don't remember exactly when I started or stopped, But I think around 2000-2003. I know I was near the end of middle school when I started, and had lost interest somewhere in the middle of high school. Some of the stuff she talked about, specifically the brand integration wasn't really a thing yet. I bought some of the trading cards, (still have them in storage somewhere) that was around the time I had mostly stopped playing. A few years after I had stopped playing for good, I started coming across some toys in stores. I bought this blue Uni toy that made sounds for old times sake, because my first Neopet was a blue Uni named Tsunamii. I think had a couple others, I had a red and purple hippocampus type creature (I don't remember the species name) called Wetteron, and maybe a few others. Unfortunately, because my account was so old, and I was inactive for a very long time, my account was deleted. I have very fond memories of that game.

I'd love to see a similar history of for RuneScape, or maybe in-game economies with a discussion on microtransactions. It was pretty wild learning economics to be able to merchant effectively back in the day from RuneScape and seeing just how inventive people can be with scams. The game still exists but after microtransactions it kind of ruined the naturalness of the economy.

I liked the Kau 🐮. Also, the giant omelet and soup kitchen were cute features. Those games were very very addictive 😆.

I still love Neopets and log in every December for their advent calendar. Unfortunately the site hasn't been able to keep up with technology and is quite hard to run properly on most systems now. My (admittedly little) knowledge of html all came from playing Neopets. I also love using Neopets to gamble as I get the fun without having to bet real money (when I can get it to work).

OMG i was using Neopet like crazy as a kid. Made my first female friends simply because my "pet" looked cool (Shadow color), strong and knew the tricks to the site. Anyone else get some memories back?

Neopets was my first big outlet through which I developed my voice acting-something I didn't know of at the time. I would often read aloud dialogue in the comics, games, animations, and banner ads, acting like I was the characters. This extended to my pets as well: a yellow korbat, two red usuls, and a blue techo.

I JUST checked on my Neopet for the first time in years yesterday and now this shows up on my feed haha

Oh god I miss Neopets. I logged in earlier this year and it's like a zombified version of what used to be there, given that Flash is dead now.

I learned how to type much faster by chatting on neopets over one summer than I did in 2 mandatory semesters of typing “computer” classes in 6th grade. I miss playing the games. The haunted mansion one was fun but I never finished it. I managed to snag a Chombie when there was a release at one point. My original accounts are gone, they were tied to a Comcast email. xP

yall talking about playing as a kid and here I am still playing as an adult

I can't believe anyone other than me remembers what NeoPets even was. I did have a lot of fun with the game, but certainly didn't think it played a large enough role in culture to be getting videos like this one made. Glad to see it though :)

I had a joint account with my best friend at the time and we had four pets (the max you could own) and cared for them for years. I go visit every few years for the nostalgia and mini games :) I personally never understood how players customized their stores or found the stock market thing, so I guess I missed out on a lot of the educational stuff lol but I still had a lot of fun there.

I absolutely learned HTML/CSS on Neopets. People were sharing tutorial sites and it was the place to go to ask questions and find people to help debug any HTML code within Neopets and people's own personal websites.

i was super into neopets around the 2005-2006 mark for sure! My best friend and I would log in after school and chat on msn while playing 🤣 my favorite game on there was hannah and the pirate caves! (which i beat recently thanks to flashpoint)

I never played the game but I remember when Macca's had neopet toys in their happymesls, the toys where fully random and they're where so many and it was the coolest thing ever

Wow! Good memories. I learned how to do CSS and HTML on Neopets. Even met one of my best friends while playing Neopets. I still have my Neopets magazines and a few of the toys.🤣 Edited to say that I just logged in on my account for the first time in a long while.

i'm so happy the games are working again! meerca chase makes me so nostalgic.

No better time for a Neopets video Then when they're currently still in the middle of an active data breach that they have not fixed over several weeks

Can confirm, without NeoPets I wouldn't have my current career.

Pouring a hot cup of Borovan for Adam and Donna. Thanks for shaping my imagination for over 20 years.

The reason I became as proficient in English as I am today was in no small part due to neopets. I wad an active pet trader and the english boards were far more active and had far more pets than the spanish ones. It forced me to write in english in a way no other site or media could. Thanks neopets!

More Neopets content!

I had this weird desire to log back into my neopets after watching this... but the email I used for it is so old I don't have it anymore. 🤣🤣 We are talking like 15+yrs ago!

I had friends that got into neopets hardcore. The mini plushies came with codes you could use on the site. The Neopeys currency was one of the first i saw buyable on "gift card" like credit cards in a few stores. And because of the many activities n mini games it banked on the addictive nature of folk and even fomo. Just crazy times, they were.

I was in college when I first learned about NeoPets. I knew it was a big deal, but I had no idea

Oh man, I kind of miss my neopets. I don't think I'd be able to log in anymore, though, as I have a vague memory of being forced to update my password and no idea what I would have chosen. I remember when Paintbrushes could be bought for 10,000NP and I grabbed one from a friend for my very first painted pet. I remember being on Team Haunted Woods for the first Altador Cup tournament and winning a brush that way. I remember the early forums, and the times before faerieland fell.... I think I started playing back in 2001 or 2002? Aaah memories...

Fascinating!

I had forgotten that neopets was where I first learned code!

11:20 We had them as Happy Meal toys in Canada since Target didn't exist here. I got 3 different plushies and tried to use their official names but eventually I forgot what their official names were and I just named them something else I didn't have internet so those Neopets plushies were all I really had in terms of Neopets. One was a frog creature, one was a dog, and one I'm not entirely sure what it was but I decided he was a mouse

I sort of remember Neopets, but I never got involved with it back then, despite being a teenager at the time. I could've even had one of those nice profiles, as I taught myself HTML out of a book in 8th grade and was making basic websites on Angelfire and Geocities. I kinda want to check it out now...

Literally I always tell people I learned HTML from Neopets. 🤣

"Controversial religious society" is probably one if the nicest ways you could have described Scientology 😁

I still go on every day to do my dailies lol who else played in the altador cup this summer? 🙋🏽‍♀️

NeoPets turned me into a pro BlackJack player.

Neopets is definitely what got me into HTML, CSS, and Photoshop.

“You’re probably not caring for a four-legged pet named Poogle,” Me, who owns a Poogle: 😶

Remember all the Neopets you left forever starving, but never dying.

I had 4 neopets but I have no idea of my username or password is. I remember a kougra but can't remember what the other 3 were. I'm 63 now and my daughter introduced me to Neopets when she was in grade school. She's 32 now. This brought back a lot of memories.

What a great video! Used to play everyday from 2005 to 2010. What a whole complex world that is, hope it could be great again like in the old days. My pets are now alive and well fed btw 🤣

My poor neopet has been starving all this time I wish I knew the login

Don't forget Xanga profiles and learning html to make custom backgrounds and what not. I think it was 1999 or 2000 I had my neopets account I had a tiger like pet. I will always remember spinning the daily wheel thing and winning the 10,000 points or whatever the largest amount was. I also remember winning lots of paintbrushes from that. I eventually painted my tiger thing with flames.

I was a neomillionaire, but not because I knew any of this was possible. Mainly got my neopoints by playing poker and blackjack all day... when I was 8.

I still have 5 accounts that I occasionally go back and manage. I used to really get into stocking my shops, each account had specific items they sold, books, food, grooming supplies, toys, and weapons. Unfortunately, with the Super Shop Wizard, a search engine that will automatically sends the buyer to the cheapest items, playing the shop stock game became pointless. If you can't buy the items cheaply and sell them for a slight-to-mid markup, there's no point. These days when I go back I usually go around to the dailies and get free stuff to sell.

Aww man. My childhood. Neopets definitely taught me how to do basic coding. Miss the good old days

The neopet plushies didn't take off because webkinz began in 2005 and for a long time was the neopets of the 2000s and into the 2010s. So webkinz took the spotlight away from neopets for a long time. But right now neopets are back and are in a new era. I'm a webkinz player and I just began playing neopets last night so I'm new still and so far its fun and boy is it harder then webkinz

Omg, I remember learning html in middle school to make my account page rock!

I had a blue shoyru named baby nables, and then eventually the korbat named salerno batty LOL the names, I shared an account with my friend who had a poogle, and my other friend had the monkey. i remeber adding music to my profile.

You’ve just unlocked a memory

Neopets also had trolls, before the word troll was coined. I remember them, for whatever reason being called "kirbys". I never got why.

I have a plushie of a yellow Aisha still on my bookshelf.

I still check my 20 year old account every couple days. The NFT projects have been total failures and they've done nothing but devalue Neopet's IP. No real Neopets fan that has stuck with the site all these years was in favor of this project. I'll probably be around to the bitter end, but I'll never spend money on the site again.

I had a Neopets account back in about 2001. I had 3 pets. My friend and I even started our own guild. But then I somehow forgot/lost my password, and the hotmail account I had used to sign up had been deactivated due to lack of use, so I was never able to log in again. If anyone wants to check up on the pets belonging to Chimm86, and maybe feed them something, I'd be forever grateful.

I mean yeah! I was in the Asploding Adults guild. We were the best.

I am extremely disappointed that the Limited Too collab wasn't mentioned. I made my mom buy me basically everything because they all came with codes for random exclusive items. OG Amiibos. I had no idea Neopets were still around after like 2004. I guess I quit after I made my first myspace account?

Guess I'm logging onto my old account when I get home... 23 years later...

OMG I had a red eyrie named Prythian, and at one point my then-boyfriend bought me one of the t-shirts with *my* pet on it!

I don't have fond memories of Neopets. The community section was too restricted to allow for real communication. Like so many others I switched to Subeta, which I still play today.

We didnt' HAVE to play Oregon Trail in a computer class at school. We GOT to play Oregon Trail in a computer class at school. =P

Neopets and GaiaOnline taught me html and basic economics

I always logged in every year or so for nostalgia, but one time about 5 years ago, my account got frozen due to "suspicious activity" aka me getting the password wrong a single time. It took me months of harrassing their tech support before I could get back in. One of the things they asked me to confirm my ownership of the account was to list all the emails that had ever been attached to it... Ok buddy, let me just pull out my carefully documented list of all the stupid Hotmail addresses i cycled through since 2004 lmao. I got it back in the end though, and I think I'm due for another log in...

My sister had a physical neopets thing, like a tamagotchi. We didn't have regular internet access at home until 2013? So we never got into the digital. Cool video tho

Learned html on those pet pages

Neopets was the temple/blueprint of other MMO games like Webkinz

RIP Keyquest

Another warning side of my adhd that was overlooked

I had a little shoyru toy and I loved them so much I ended up getting them in three colours and I woudl play with thema nd my Bratz togther and my bratz had pet shoyrus, and then they hadmlittlest pet shop pets as pet pets... oh man... the good old days

Karina from Drawfee is going to have some notes for you. Good ones, probably.

I still know my account numbers after almost 2 decades.

90% of the entire site is unusable now since the death of Flash. I really hope they save it somehow it's completely broken and useless atm.

I’ve been saying for a while that the craze with guys playing the stock market and with cryptocurrencies is because they never played the neopets stock market when they were kids. It feels new to them

I always wanted a Jetzam!

Will it work? WILL IT WORK? The NFTs were a scam! The first batch was bought up by bots and then their value plummeted. Now, whenever people associated with Neopets behind the scenes bring up another NFT campaign, the public comes with such a loud outcry that those ideas get shut down almost instantly... only to then later resurface again. You also forgot to mention that since the Jumpstart takeover the site is still in disarray with things not working at all (especially since the Flash crash), working on a hybrid of old and new pages to just being plain boring. Granted, they are trying (and in some cases succeeding) to keep Neopets alive and interesting. There must be some reason that I come back every day to feed my Neopets (which includes a Poogle, Erin >: | ). The recent security breach did not do them a lot of favours however, especially since it took them two weeks to actually resolve it. And then there's the numerous mobile games they've tried to launch over the years, with very limited access and success. I just wish I could have started playing when the site first started.. Oh all those rare items I'd have....

Neopets is one of the reasons I learned html and css.

Haha I remember getting me and my cousin into trouble by making accounts on the highest age group and their parents finding out 😂 I think the chat function was locked on the lower ages... I remember finding the unicorn character interactive toy in a bargain shop and being so so happy to finally have a neopet toy as they weren't really available in the UK...I did make a new account to try play some of the old games earlier in the year but it is a husk of what it once was 😭 also being in a religious school but not believing myself I used to "pray" to the dark faerie Jhudora instead of God... Edgy 💀

Why do I remember no advertising lmao

Damn I wonder if my accounts is still around. I can't even remember my username and password anymore. Pretty sure the email I used as kid is long gone too.

This sounds metaverse but prehistoric

I'm so sad that Neopets became how it is last year T_T

I *still* have a neopets account…

so basically Axies Infinity is neopets as NFTs

Jeez, I was so into this game during its heyday. It ruined one of my friendships though, because she hacked my account and took everything. A rather dumb way to lose a best friend, whatever way you look at it.

Collecting eggs from the snow/ice dragon

Neopets were kinda like NFTs before they were a thing.

I wouldn't even begin to be able to remember any login information associated with Neopets... besides which, the whole care-and-feeding aspect that other people apparently find addictive became annoying for me pretty quickly. Even today, all these games that want to have timed chore lists to increase engagement are irritating to me.

I still play lmao. It is pretty dead though.

Oh God

Gai online next please

cool bangz

Neopets, Geocities, LiveJournaly - yep I was on all of those. I still think LJ's model was the most healthy Social Media model. No algorithm, just reverse timeline of watched users, all of whom had robust and flexible friends group and moderation tools. Too bad it was bought by Vox.