club penguin

club penguin was a kids' MMO that was in service from 2005 to 2017. you played as your own customizable penguin character who could walk around the antarctic-themed world, play games, furnish your own personal igloo, take care of virtual pets called "puffles", dress your penguin, chat with other players, and become a secret agent, tour guide, or ninja. every once in a while for major holidays and at other points in the year, club penguin would host themed "parties" which involved limited-time decorations, games, and collectible items. the game was unique in that there weren't really any other kids' MMOs around at the time, so it became really popular, gaining praise from kids and parents alike. club penguin was acquired by disney in 2007 and over time the game turned into a corporate cash grab before the game shut down in 2017. sigh.

my brother and i discovered club penguin one day while visiting our cousins out of state. they were both really into club penguin and excitedly showed us the game. we were hooked. so we begged our parents to let us get accounts, and they agreed. i was iciclegirl88 and my brother was macfish. i don't have any photos of my penguin from this time, but using this, i created an idea of what she probably looked like:

iconic. anyways, we both became obsessed with club penguin, as did a lot of the kids we went to school with.

pixel chix

for those uninitiated, a pixel chix is kind of like a tamagotchi, but not really. basically it's this plastic house with a built-in LCD screen that overlays a little plastic diorama of a house with buttons underneath it. you take care of this little pixel girl and play games with her. as time goes on and the more you do different stuff, new games and items are unlocked. if you don't take care of her she "moves out" and you have to start over. there were also these little plugs on the side so you could plug the pixel chix together and have them visit each other and unlock more games. the intial pixel chix models were houses but over time they released a two story house, shopping malls, cars, TVs, and an absolutely massive three-story mansion known as the roomies house where you had to buy individual figures to represent girls who occupied the house.

i remember being absolutely obsessed with pixel chix and i had several of the pixel chix models. i vividly remember trying to get my pixel chix to shut the hell up at my brother's preschool graduation. unfortunately, like most of my childhood toys, my pixel chix were lost to a house fire before i entered fourth grade. doing research on pixel chix now, it doesn't seem like it was nearly as massive as i remember it being, but there are still a few folks who remember them fondly and have reuploaded old commercials on youtube if you ever need to get a nice little nostalgia rush.

izzzyzzz has done a really great retrospective/comprehensive history on pixel chix:

community (under construction soz)

community (under construction soz)