The Neopets Iceberg Explained 

will never forget sending my mom a neopets e-card on her 39th birthday with a bunch of neopets laughing at the grey faerie and the caption “you’re old!!” as a joke and accidentally making her cry

welp, you've just awakened my neopets hyperfixation like an ancient beast

I don't think anything in this video is going to be more shocking than the phrase "New, officially licensed [Neopets] Hot Topic merch"

It's unbelievable that The Last Smiley was considered lost media for a while. I played it as a child!

also in like 2003 i had my dad fax in a literal permission slip to neopets in order to give me access to the whole site (the forums mostly i think? maybe some of the gambling games?) , instead of remake an account because i didn't want to lose my pets, np, etc. wild times. my dad thought it was sketchy but bless him he did it and i was so happy when it worked.

When I was a kid, I was only able to explore the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended) when it came to Neopets. I had no idea how to really get started beyond just making a generic pet and play a bunch of games to earn NeoPoints. I feel like I probably would've gotten into it a lot more seriously if I was ever able to break the ice, but it felt like I was never in the right place at the right time. Any rare items I managed to get were either completely uninteresting to me or I had no clue what to do with them (This was when I was a kid, so I was probably just painfully ignorant about simple things). I remember always seeing these really cool paintbrushes and wanting to get them but always getting frustrated with how inaccessible they were. I do wonder how much different my experience would've been had I been introduced to the site while I was a bit older and able to understand these things better.. it's a shame so much of the stuff I used to be fascinated by are no longer a part of the site. It feels kinda like I missed out on what could've been a much larger part of my childhood.

Neopets Tip for Newbies: Want a name for your Neopet without any numbers? Try a recent meme. I managed to name a Mynci ReturnToMonke and painted her with a Tyrannian paint brush. I hope this tip helps someone out!

god i wish I remembered my 15 accounts from 2005 and then remembered which ones weren't frozen

Fun-fact about the Neopets Movie: In Jelly Blobs of Doom, the date of the supposedly movie actually changed three times! One time it read "2006", then it said "2008" (or so) and then it changed to "20XX"- I remember because I tried to get the gold trophy on that game when I was a lil lass.

I honestly love the "X did nothing wrong" meme specifically because it got reclaimed into a much funnier and relatable catchphrase. For the longest time I didn't even know the origins of the phrase, its usage by fandoms was my first and only exposure.

Me: *hasn’t played neopets in at least 8 years* Also me: *watches hour long iceberg video on it anyways*

bro I cannot stop giggling at "GOOD NIGHT mr coconut" great touch adding the recorder music in the background too

Gosh that pterodactyl brought back childhood scars lol I was an easily scared kid and that nearly gave me a heart attack back in the day

I had this video recommended to me and I wanted to say now that I've hit this part of the iceberg- I was one of the participants in the Neopets On-The-Go focus group! They staggered us out into smaller groups of about 6 or so, and went over ideas we had for a Neopets mobile app. Everyone was unanimous in wanting a site-specific app, and almost every active user that was part of the group had their ideas drawn up and showed them in the meeting. Overall a fun experience, and everyone who participated got paid for their time. Not so important details: we got to sit in one of the big conference rooms with the fabled engraved glass jellybean bowl on the table. I was too nervous to eat any of them.

I used to love Neopets as a kid. I do hold a grudge towards it through - when I was in sixth grade, my school was having a spelling bee and so each class was having an individual bee to send the class winner to the school one. It was the final two, me and this one other kid. My word was “gild,” which sounds the same as “guild.” Outside of Neopets guilds, I had never heard any other definitions of either words, so even after hearing the definition I spelled it the Neopets way because I didn’t know they were spelled differently. The other kid spelled it the right way so he went to the school spelling bee. Long story short, my obsession with Neopets ruined my spelling bee potential.

Was some one gonna tell me that the "x did nothing wrong" meme was from 4chan or was i supposed to find that out from a neopets iceberg video

I am SO glad you included the weird staff murder mystery! I thought I had imagined that whole thing back in the day...

The last smiley. I finally found you, after over 15 years.

i literally miss petpet park so much it makes me sad remembering that it's gone now :(

I remember the cereal at 39:50! No way I ever would have remembered it without this video.

The beer was definitely called Neorona at one point. Adam apparently liked Corona... one of his pets was actually called "oifetchmecorona" or something similar.

This video inspired me to attempt to recover my 16-year-old Neopets account. I tried emailing Neopets previously a few times during the past few years and they were never able to help me recover the birthday I used. Finally after watching this video I emailed them again practically begging for them to help me and they finally replied and just gave me the birthday I entered when creating the account. I'm so incredibly happy to have this old account again even though there's really not much on it. I'm going to start playing Neopets again and build up this old account of mine!

Man, this takes me back. When I was a kid I loved Gelerts to the point of hating Lupes( I think that's what they're called. The little wolf fellas) but somehow through extensive exploration of the site I ended up on someone's rp group/fanfic website for their neopets. I remember it was like an au where their neopets were discriminated against because they got painted with a brush that turned them evil or they were experimented on. It was an interesting story very dramatic and I wish I could access that section of Neopets again

I have never been on neopets. Used any neopets merchandise. And know none of the lore. Despite that, I watched the whole video. You kept somebody who knows nothing about this topic interested and engaged. Great video.

I would honestly kill to have Neopets: The Darkest Faerie ported to Switch (and PC and whatever else). Even if they didn’t do an HD remaster, I’d just love to be able to play it without having to dig out my old PS2.

if i dont see "neopets: the darkest faerie" on here ill cry. i still play that game LMAO

As a mere neopets casual, this video was very informative! I clearly wasn't deep into the game enough during it's hayday, but it was fun to learn new things and now I suddenly want to play it again.

if anyone else went completely nuts trying to figure out where the music in this video is from: it's Winter (The Wind Can Be Still) from Stardew Valley.

Neopets has such a long and bizarre history. I love it. I remember a lot of these - fond memories in particular of the islandberry cereal game and the lair of the beast. The Cards Against Humanity deck surprised me the most. Wtf? xD

Thank you for covering the 9/9/9 draiks. I had two of them! I remember having to wake up early for school and I checked neopets on a whim and ended up making one I gave away and one I kept. I treasured her for years until I stopped playing lol.

I'm genuinely sad that they purged old accounts without warning. I would have totally logged back in if I got an email that inactive accounts would be purged. It would have brought a lot of older players back to the site and caused a Club Pengui. 2.0

When hearing about account purges I almost had a mental breakdown...so I logged in again for the first time in like 12 years to make sure my pets were safe (they were)

Got my laptop, weed out, yt video on TV, ready for this iceberg.

Nothing about some red pets originally being more orange/pink, so they made orange and pink into separate colours and made the red pets actually red? :0 I can still remember when that happened! It's why you get items like the red chomby plushie, which is very much not red. Also it's funny that 9/9/9 Draiks are considered to be a little more valuable nowadays, because I distinctly remember people REFUSING to trade for Draiks made on that day. They didn't consider them to be "real" Draiks or something :p

oh man i was obsessed with neoschools in like 2003. 10 year old me was bummed they never happened.

Extra info about the Pikachu Eater! He was created alongside "Pikachu Seek" (The original version of Kacheek Seek), for an advertisement for Pokémon. When Pikachu Seek was removed, peopel complained because they liked the game and the amount of NPs you could make, so they made it "Badeek Seek" instead. It is also argued that maybe the revamp of Kacheek is a reference to Pikachu.

Oh my god darkest faerie my beloved... I missed a buncha these from when I was seriously playing neopets but that was my bread and butter babey. I even remember trying to get my parents to buy some beta copy of the original ps1 version or something off Ebay.

Take a shot everytime I said, "Oh my gosh, I remember that!"

Also... Why did purple pets get orange spots, but orange pets didn't get purple spots? Implied orange supremacy?

Hitler is the absolute last thing I thought I'd hear someone talking about in a Neopets video.

Back in the Petpet Park days, we (er, we, meaning Jellyneo), were constantly getting questions and bug reports meant for the PPP staff, because the target demographic skewed lower than Neopets’ and the little kids didn’t realize that our PPP help site wasn’t part of PPP itself.

My account was purged, probably during one of the big purges. I had 4 painted pets (2 Desert, one Fairy, can't remember the last one...) and 3 petpets. I was an avatar collector and had a large collection, including the Fairy Queen Quest and Rainbow Fountain Quest. Man, those were the days....

Man, I can only imagine how valuable my collection of starry painted pets from 2002 would be now.

Hey Roselilu is my quiggle! My sponge frog! How cool! He's famous! Thanks for the video, gonna go do my neopets dailies now haha

I am so glad The Last Smiley made it on to the iceberg, that was literally my favourite game on the site and I was upset when I found out it was removed. At least there's a way to kind of play it now, even if it requires obsolete technology!

As someone who joined Neopets in 1999 and played in those wild west days.... My first pets were four unis. My second account had several tigren. Yes all those human pets existed then too! The days where we could actually interact with the team were the best. Adam and Donna both had great senses of humor and since the site was originally more aimed at bored college teens, they could get away with things like literally owning Macy Gray as a pet. The uni paintbrush existed the same time as the uni pet :) I can't remember if it did anything to unis but it most certainly existed at the same time (the animated Bruce is proof of that) All my pets were converted while I was no longer playing (after 2005? 2006?), still upset about that. I'm surprised the iceberg is missing things like: New species were originally designed by players and voted on. The Tigren was an example of that and the reason it was changed to the Acara when NP was bought by a company was because they couldn't secure rights from individual people, many of whom were kids. You could put any image as your shop keeper, including copyrighted ones! Really any image off the internet. The Fleye-Buzz controversy. While NP was being purchased and changed, owners of the cute little eyeball pet with antenna were promised they would have a similar design.. only to end up with the very ugly Buzz replace their beloved pets without warning. It was a very big deal on the forums, where players expressed how upset they were. Honestly the complete site change once NP was bought was a complete disaster to those of us who had played since day one or close to it. NP lost a lot of it's uniqueness and quirky nature that day.

I'm surprised the locked door from neoquest I didn't make the list! Though it was later confirmed by Mr. Insane that there is no way to open it, for a long time the door was a pretty big mistery for neoquest players. Loved this video! Very informative and nostalgic.

i literally cried seeing the footage of key quest... its removal was why i completely forgot about neopets until now. trying to recover my accounts from all those years ago now Q__Q AND GOD I MISS PETPET PARK

Don’t... make me want to go play neopets..... in the year of our lord 2021...... what the hell... (You did a really good job love, I enjoyed the video :’) )

God, this takes me back to 2007. I miss it so much.

Nice use of the Stardew valley music. I remember Neopets. I long quit in 2014

Holy- I misread the time on the video and thought it said 17 minutes and I’m only just now realising, once I’ve finished the video, that there was just an extra HOUR , how are you so entertaining

i never played neopets as a kid since i didn't speak english at the time - and once i was old enough i'd started playing chickensmoothie and i couldn't juggle both, lol. but now i'm kind of interested in trying it out beyond just signing up for an account. it'll be hard to learn everything, but videos like this one really help with finding out about history and events i've missed out on (and is super entertaining to boot)! thank you for making it, and thanks to dcathartiq for making the iceberg!

I’m surprised poogle day never made the ice berg! I remember staying up late just to get my poogle 😭 and then because I was worried I’d never get one, I named mine some kind of gibberish from slamming on my keyboard so I’d have enough time to get a poogle

You should make a video about the Neopets black market! I remember the economy got WRECKED because of it

As someone who does a lot of digging about Neopets lore I was surprised how much on here I didn't know. Granted, I mostly look at in-universe and plot content so most of the meta stuff (besides the more infamous ones) was new to me. As far as pet death goes you don't have to look at particularly old content to find it. While he came back as a ghost, Hubrid Nox was murdered in the Faerie's Ruin plot despite being a long beloved character while looking at the Tale of Woe can give you the really dark story of Lucy. Also the cannibalism references are everywhere. Neopets is such a bizarre site and I love it for that, even if it is in decline.

Have I ever played neopets? No Am I gonna watch this wholeass video? Yes Thank you youtube recommendations

literally I was hoping Lair of The Beast showed up because I used to play Neopets and that gave me nightmares and I kinda thought it was a fever dream. i still get chills wtffff (Really good video btw.)

Man, all the weirdness of the early years really brings back memories. I can't believe it's been over 20 years since I first joined.

I would like to say I sunk *so much time* into petpet park and habitarium, I joined in the mid 2000s and played maybe until early 2010s and left my account to sit for ages. I’ve logged back in every so often and play for month or so - but the endless nature of the two other games were just so easy sink time in.

I got back into neopets a little while ago, and I did not know a lot of these things. I recently learnt about the UC pets and I found that very fascinating. At the moment, I'm currently trying to give my pets more personality through their colours and clothes. Like my Kougra, who was a gown and wig wearer, but after turning her into her Tyranian form, she wants to be more natural and primal.

This was so fun to listen to! When I played this as a kid, I didn't have any idea of all this stuff that was going on. It's cool to see it reviewed from an adult perspective. And it's great to be playing again!

If only 8 year old me had been more responsible and kept my account and pets going...I would have had so much valuable stuff now haha.

You are never late for an Iceberg! I love these videos!

I'm honestly surprised that the 2003 Neopets "tamagatchi" toy called Neopets Pocket Pet didn't make it onto the iceberg. It was this sort of big oval shaped plastic tri-fold with a neopets location in it (I had the Meridell one which had the king's throneroom, meridell city, and Meri Acres farm) The toy came with 3 plastic neopets and 5 places to put them. You could play minigames (Ultimate bullseye, Kiss the Mortog, Turdle Racing, Yeasty Bread Tomato Toss, Negg Drop, and Turmac roll) all playable on a little screen in the middle of the device, feed your neopets, go shopping, heal your neopets when sick, and they went to sleep at 8pm and woke up at 7am and messing with their sleep schedules made them grouchy. I feel like I'm the only one that remembers it.

as someone that enjoys neopets but never went after any kind of lore or actual knowledge, seeing this video in my recommended really clarifies A LOT of stuff up. Thanks!

This is a very well compiled vid on Neopets lore and facts. Good job! As a long time player of Neo, I really enjoyed learning a couple new facts about the site I never knew. :D

I've watched this video several times all the way through since stumbling upon it about a month ago. It's well made and gives me so much nostalgia, when I was studying for exams a few weeks ago it was one of the only things that helped me relax!

I didn't even knew that something like neopets existed I'm just addicted to iceberg videos

Key quests death still breaks my heart. I’m 27.

I remember loving neopets roleplay boards, Harry Potter ones especially.

Neopets will always be a huge part of my life. Sometimes I hope I can create my own Neopets-like game.

Fantastic video. Been getting into Neopets again like 20 years later and really enjoying it 🥰

Off topic but hearing the Lumina theme from legend of mana in the background made me so unbelievably happy.

22:50 immediate headcanon no idea if it makes sense: this Nick is the same Nick as from Invader Zim and for the same reason: Nickelodeon asked them to become more marketable and they just made a joke of it

I was an AVID Neopets player for many years - I'm talking from a child through to my early 20s. I haven't started watching this yet but I'm kinda scared it'll start a renaissance of my Neopets interest at 27...

god, I know about like 2 or 3 things on the first tier. Every time someone speaks about neopets it becomes clear how little I knew about the site even when I played on it. So I've been consuming as many iceberg videos for even stuff I have no familiarity with just cause they're so fascinating. And I wanted to commend your video for a few small things you did in editing that may be considered redundant but are very appreciated. First, showing off the section that you're talking about. So you start with the sky above the iceberg, and show off that section before moving on to each item in that section. Second, showing off the item by name as you talk about each one. Just little things I appreciate that make these videos easier to follow.

My entire family used to play keyquest together 😢 Bring back keyquest god damn it.

Neopets is why I’m obsessed with fanfic these days, 14 years later. Lol someone in the boards said “Hey, have you been to ThePokemonTower?” So I googled it and I’ve been hooked since. 😂😂😂

Never played Neopets as a kid, but only got plushes at mcdonalds, but watching this iceberg is interesting to watch. Almost watching a nostalgia trip.

I need to reinstall Neopets toolbar to get my life back together

I remember charging users a lot of NPs to log into their accounts and get them the avatar for the Hannah games by getting high scores. Good times.

I barely remember neopets. I played it when I was really little but had no idea what I was doing so I missed out on all the crazy stuff since I didn't play long HOWEVER I LOVED pet pet park and now, in college, I still miss it

I absolutely loved Neopets when I was young and I even got a couple of small plushies as gifts which I adored and now regret giving away to my nephews and nieces. My all time favorite neopets are Aishas and I still find them so pretty.

kat, from the bottom of my neopet heart, thank u for this video. it brings the current desolate site back to life, and allows me to relive my childhood in a way the current site just cant. much love

Girl, you're a neopets Legend. Also you're never too late to the Iceberg

dude im so glad that Donna and Adam weren’t Scientologists

Bro the Stardew Valley music is a great background noise 👍🏻🥺👍🏻 Also great video, love the Neopets related videos.

God, Neopets. That site has such a weird history and this iceberg, ironically, only scratched the surface. There are a lot of old pages (perhaps not readily accessible after the map revamp/death of flash?) that were tied to old plots but are just these weird, floating oddities now-- the parrot on Mystery Island, for instance. Old plots in general are really hard to find information on-- it took me over a decade to finally find out what the Curse on Maraqua (not Curse OF Maraqua) plot was about, because the site still had the animation of the upcoming attack but nothing else connected to it and it drove me up a wall. Turns out that there was little more to it than that animation, but nobody could corroborate that it really was that simple for literal years. Given the pomp and circumstance the other plots had (and how they were so well-documented) this just struck me as insane. I wish the iceberg covered some of those old plots-- they were legitimately amazing. Maybe not in terms of writing, but they were basically mini-ARGs, involving digging through source codes, image manipulation, cracking hex or binary codes, tracking down unlinked pages, track down user shops that were selling items that didn't actually exist... there's a unique mystique to this era of the site that they haven't bothered to recapture. I understand why -- these puzzles were incredibly esoteric, even putting aside how young the userbase was -- but god these things are so cool to look into. Fansites have archived these plots, but there are solution pages on Neopets itself (not easy to find, but they're there) that walk you through the process, too. Hearing about Meriball reminded me of Invasion of Meridell, another game that was taken down and never replaced. It was one of my favorites so it bummed me out significantly when it happened, but also intrigued by the reasoning-- there was a mysterious 'exploit' to the game that couldn't be patched out. Every so often I would try and look up what had happened, but only just now did I actually find an explanation, and it was basically that a script could be run off-site to play the game without actually playing the game, raking in about 250k Neopoints per day. Surprised the Cerpul/Tatsu/Eyrie isn't on here. It was a very weird pet evolution from a dragon, to a different dragon, to a gryphon. I came in well after it had happened (and Eyries are still my favorite pet so I've got no problem with it), but it was a pretty controversial change given that the original Cerpul was a horned-and-taloned angry-lookin' dragon and its transformation was not something most Cerpul owners were super excited about. And I'm even more surprised that the locked door in the original Neoquest isn't on here. That's still one of the game's greatest mysteries.

Just about the only thing missing from the iceberg is the "neo celebrity" Jazz_invincible and the infamous battle for 100 avatars. Back in the mid 2000's, that was the only user that everyone seemed to know about. He was very full of himself and even wrote an entire petpage essay as to why he was cheated out of an avatar and therefore, he was the first true person to reach 100 avatars (even though he wasn't).

i joined np in 2002 at 10 and had my mom submit the fax permission form that i've seen other people mention in the comments. i used to open some more hefty games to load before i went to eat dinner so the dial-up connection would have finished loading them by the time i was done. truly an incomprehensible time

thank you for simultaneously making me want to figure out my Neopets log in AND start a download of Final Fantasy X.

I miss making Guilds and shops on NP as a kid. I just liked finding themes people posted online and CP html to get cool anime images and midi songs. So many tiny gifs of sailor moon characters and that snow/falling flowers effect thing.

Spoppy II's recipe got fixed a few years ago, and discovered this past year! :)

Neopets.... i, haven't been there for more than in 15 years!! i had a bat, white bat. i loved it so much. i fed it everyday, did challenges, did so much, the community was so new back then. i loved the community, it was so freeing. This is so insanely nostalgic! ♥

I remember the blood-splattered greeting card! It terrified me as a child. Also, I’ve had this profile picture for years. It’s a mix between the green faerie with the fire faerie’s color scheme. I made it on paint in like… 2010?

as a pretty casual, very young player for most of the early days, I only knew vaguely about some of these things, but Neovision? GOD that kicks me right in the nostalgia. I remember spending HOURS watching goofy animations, and trying to convince my poor dad how funny they were lmao

thank you for this gift... I found this video by digging the comments of the recent Polygon video on neopets, desperately looking for more lore, and BOY DID THIS DELIVER! Thank you for the countless hours of research and work that went into this. I still can't believe the amount of lost media this site has... sometimes I just wonder what the lost art of various plots and old maraqua look like

The jungle_boo controversy makes me upset. Changing the age of the pet to cover up the fact that you gave yourself a super rare pet is just awful. I'm glad people noticed that nonsense and called TNT out for favoritism. I'm really hoping they stop putting off bringing back UCs. It's so foolish. It's something so small, but it would make a lot of people really happy and would likely bring back a lot of older users who stopped playing due to new art, or who lost UCs due to hackers.

awesome job! i'm too young to remember most of these (and also non-english speaking back in my peak obssession circa 2009 so i missed out on a lot) but its honestly just so great to see neopets' history archived like this