(work in progress, ignore spelling and grammar errors)
Current plans for this shrine:
This home page to document my neopets experience from the 2000's
An explore page to highlight the world of Neopia
A games page to preserve the pain of flash games
A plots page to talk about the thing that I loved the most about neopets back then
A lookup page to kind of showcase the things I earned and experienced over 20 years
A TCG page to remember all the money I sacrificed to wizards of the coast
and a magazine page for sharing my love of Beckett's odd publication.
My introduction to Neopets
Thinkway Toys Kougra
My Neopets journey began all the way back in 2002. I was with my aunt and two cousins at the Oakland Wal-Mart in California. We were exploring the toy aisles when me and my cousin stumbled upon the Neopets voice activated toys. For whatever reason they completely entranced us and we knew that we had to have them. Neither of us knew what a Neopet was, nor heard of or visited the site before, but for whatever reason these little guys were all we wanted. We begged her mom to buy us each one, and after much convinced... I got an orange Kougra (whatever that was), and I believe my cousin got a kacheek? or maybe a shoyru?
Thinkway Toys Neopets Commercial 2003
We were really young and believed that the voice activated aspect of the toy meant they could comprehend our voices. We spent many hours that night and the following day trying to translate the gibberish nonsense they would spout out. We also struggled with triggering the voice activation and I can look back now and realize we must've annoyed my aunt with all our shouting at the dining room table. It didn't matter though because we thought we were geniuses for cracking some code that we never really cracked.
The toys had the neopets.com website listed on the back, but I never really felt the need to go look at it at the time. I just really liked the toys. Over the course of that year I acquired a green kacheek, starry shoyru, and a green mynci. One of the best things was turning them all on, clapping really loudly, and watching them all talk to each other.
Entering the world of Neopia
Sometime later that year I eventually was prompted to check out neopets.com and little did I know it would be the start of something truly special. I think I was too young to have my own email address at the time, but I registered an account anyways. I really wanna say that at that point in time you could make an account without needing an email tied to it. Nevertheless without one you were limited to how much you could do. I recall the maximum neopoints I could earn was 10,000 - not that I knew what to use them for. I remember playing the flash games and enjoying it, but I would log off shortly after and not think about it for quite some time.
