At first, there Adam. This is true for two things: the Earth, according to the Old Testament, and the Neopets website. In November 1999, Adam Powell and his school friend (and longtime wife) Donna Williams introduced the animal games site, Neopets, which he first designed as a way to “entertain college students.” Over time, Neopets has reshaped itself in the global and animated world that has allowed its users of all ages to adopt pets, dress up, play arcade games with them and interact on forums. At its peak, it had more than 44 million users. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the platform.
A few years after its creation, at the age of 11, I created a Neopets account on my family’s non-public computer. Underneath its whimsical facade, Neopets presented a proof of life, allowing its users to act by caring for a pet, running a shop and building connections. Through discussion forums, users were able to interact as if we were adults, regardless of our actual age. As a tween, make a song a bit like biting the forbidden fruit, a post-lapsary search. Immediately, I fed on myself. I traded genuine play dates for the chance to win a million Neopoints, canceled birthday parties to introduce myself to the Neopian Times, and caught an unpretentious British woman (for friendship!). Joy made its mark: I misspelled the word “fairy” for years because the online page stylizes it as “fairy”. My parents got involved enough about my latent hobby to take me to a hypnotherapist. It didn’t work.
These days, vaguely, like a family dream, I don’t forget to scroll through the Neopets forums, betting slot machine games at luminescent prices. What holds, what sticks to my brain like the paste on the ceiling, is one of the most insignificant and discreet elements of the site: its food. Neopets cuisine was a must for the game. Users went on a pilgrimage to a large cheese omelette on a prehistoric dish, picked up iced doughnuts from hanging trees and waded into ice cream. In a youth-friendly world, it made sense that the highest coin deserved to be expressed in the form of highly fat-saturated and cute foods, which many young people fantasized about but were not allowed to have.
As Neopets celebrates its 20th anniversary and moves from the workplace to the mobile, I took on the challenge of recreating some of its iconic food products. Everyone can be described as horrifying, a term that encompasses the mysterious, the fantastic and the incongruous. But the following is a tribute to the strange and ill-adapted food of the Neopets, which commemorates an era of pubescence that many of us possessed similar characteristics.
Corndog chocolate – r86 (rare)
For this, I boiled chocolate twice and spread the goop in a retail run. Once he calmed down, I gave up and bit. The texture as a frying left in the hot and humid air … left a lot to be desired.
Broccoli with apple – r92 (very rare)
It’s basic, but this one evokes a kind of American nostalgia. The cherries jumped like tires under a tree. I didn’t check out because the broccoli was raw and the cherries retained through glue gun threads.
Blopple – r101 (Special)
The Blopple is incredibly hard to do. You had to grow apple slices in slime and squeeze the herbal pizza dough at the base of the “sculpture”. If anyone needs to give me Phantom Thread, I’ll give you permission to give me some Blopple pieces.
Marshmallow Omelette – r101 (Special)
The omelette is a detail of Neopets iconography rooted in the spirit of all early nepianos. They presented more than 103 other types of omelette, all based on their prehistoric world, Tyrannia. I ended up looking for this one. My friend joked that I underestimated the experience, shrugging his shoulders: “I guess it’s not that bad,” while accidentally shoving snacks. I don’t care. Most desserts are egg anyway.
Marked carrot – r62 (common)
This is the tour of the group’s party. This looks great, but it’s just a painted carrot and spinach leaves.
Target Cream Cake – r68 (Common)
I think cream cake would involve the undeniable task of placing whipped cream and food coloring in a crust. A turkey pear later, my cooking was sprinkled in a thick mixture of hot milk coloring sauce. I wouldn’t propose.
Dental cocktail – r101 (special)
Finally, my glass of giant martini has discovered its true purpose. Floss Cocktail is the easiest “fairy” meal to prepare, so I chose it. It consists of sparkling mineral water, bright food coloring and a Trolls doll tail.
The Aquaberry – r160 (RARITY 160)
I’d be negligent if I omitted the Aquaberry from this series. One of the rarest pieces of the Neo-Pity tradition, its price has varied from 390,000 Neopoints to 142,000 Neopoints over time. Its actual iteration was performed by freezing a filament located in a water balloon. The description reads: “This beautiful bay is considered a parasite for many farmers because of its tendency to borrow water from other berries.”
Diving into a world I had long forgotten was disorienting, like relearning the regulations of an old card game. At the same time, the preparation of those foods took me to an area of dizzying joy, similar to what I think I will have to have felt while playing Neopets. There was an innocence and an ease of dropping chocolate balls into a corndog, or turning a glow into a giant glass of martini.
Neopets has been a mirror image of our global “real” (albeit much more colorful and tolerant). This is where many of us first learned social contracts, understanding how to exist in the world. Doing the opposite and physically manifesting pieces of Neopets in my own previous life seemed to me to be an immense age. Bringing these strange foods to life has forced me to engage more occasionally in aimless interest, and may also have caused me a small problem in my abdomen.
Designed through Jocelyn Zorn, Han Hal