For today’s Mountains Monday, I wanted to actually take a look at something which people might be less familiar with, which are some of the unreleased rooms. Although the Club Penguin team regularly used to have new ideas, only a couple of them ever ended up making them into the files!

One of those was the Fog Forest in 2014, which seemed to resemble part of the Puffle Wilds. Part of the mystery to do with this room though was that its purpose remained unclear, and there was never an official explanation given as to why it was implemented. You could actually visit this room through a special link, which was especially peculiar!

The other well-known but unreleased room was the “Welcome Room”, which was shown in the physical Club Penguin guidebook. Last month, Polo Field (Chris Gliddon) shared some concepts and designs of various iterations which could’ve ended up on the island! In the end, the “Welcome Room” proposal never really made it; although there was a room for one player when they first signed up, this was later replaced by the Map which offered introductory quests.

• 

• 

Interestingly, two other concepts shared by Chris were potential changes to the map, including a design which featured the underground elements beneath the island. These were both from around 2011, but the map never really underwent major design changes except temporary ones for parties.

• 

• 

Perhaps the most significant of unreleased rooms though, if it counts as one, was the Puffle Wilds. This was never properly considered a room, and there are no public assets beyond a couple of sketches. However, if this interests you, feel free to check out this post which covers it in more detail!

I’d like to give a huge thank you to Chris for sharing the images and concepts which he has recently – it’s been really interesting to see some of the things which never quite made it to Club Penguin! Thank you very much for reading!

Waddle on!

-Torres 126

Given all the talk about the EPF and PSA lately, I thought it’d be a little fun to use this Mountains Monday to consider the history of the two agencies! Neither were actually formed specifically to combat Herbert; he arrived to the island a few years early, having floated on an iceberg seeking a warm and peaceful land. Instead, after a perilous journey, he found Club Penguin! Much to his disappointment, it was cold and noisy; this became a grievance which made him resort to evil…

However, the Elite Penguin’s Force first mission was not to combat Herbert! In 2008, the organisation was formed under orders from the Director. They became involved in rescuing Gary after his mysterious disappearance, and defeating the villainous Ultimate Proto-Bot 10000. It’s never been known for certain what prompted this decision to split the organisations, even though they remained closely linked together. Some theories suggest it was a “back-up”, but that prompts the idea that the Director was familiar with an active plot against the PSA. Other fan theories suggest it was necessary due to avoid corruption and leaks orchestrated from within the PSA.

In May 2010, Herbert successfully managed to achieve his aim: Rookie had accidentally provided him with a PSA spy phone, and Herbert used the phone’s teleportation technology to plant a popcorn bomb in the PSA HQ. It would become the last event which the PSA would be involved in. The popcorn bomb exploded a few minutes later, irreversibly damaging all technology. It was following this explosion that the Director ordered the PSA and the EPF to be merged; all PSA agents were transferred to the EPF, and the PSA was effectively abolished.

There was never any inquiry into how the Popcorn Explosion could’ve been prevented, and it was largely forgotten about until Herbert struck again as part of Operation Blackout in 2012. His ability to destroy the EPF then resulted in the Command Room being destroyed for several years! But by then, the EPF and the PSA had already been irreversibly split.

This post was a little different, even for Mountains Monday, but I hope that you still enjoyed it!

Waddle on!

-Torres 126

Last month, due to a bug, some players may have had the opportunity to enter Aunt Arctic’s igloo when she visited! As such, for today’s Mountains Monday, I wanted to share two things which some people might remember about mascots in igloos.

The first was the way some penguins were able to enter igloos of mascots, especially in 2013! It used to be a pretty big thing back then, and it was essentially just achieved through spam clicking their playercard. Although they were almost never decorated, mascots used to enter the igloo right before logging off.

However, the other exciting thing to do with mascots and igloos from that time was the ability to have mascots in your own igloo! This was a glitch that required you to have them on your Friends List (but due to a bug, this was very easy to achieve) and you’d just need to click them when changing your igloo.

Although nobody else could see the mascots, it did lead to some very cool screenshots!

Thank you very much for reading, waddle on!

-Torres 126

For today’s Mountains Monday, I wanted to share something which wasn’t actually released on the Club Penguin website, but rather the Disney one! It was released almost exactly ten years ago, but it was retired a couple years later. The feature which I’m referring to is Photo Mashup.

This was effectively a small photo editing software online, except it only allowed you to work with Club Penguin-themed things; you could drag and drop penguins and puffles into your images, and include things such as chat bubbles or emotes.

Due to this, people were able to design all sorts of things! They included wallpapers and collages, but the ability to use speech bubbles also led to a large number of people attempting to create comics with this tool.

Although it’d probably be considered quite basic to today’s standards, especially where more accessible editing software provides much greater flexibility, this was something pretty popular and remarkable back in the day!

Thank you for reading, waddle on!

-Torres 126

For today’s Mountains Monday, it’s time to share something from the past! Given that it’s December, I’ve decided to go with Club Penguin’s holiday-themed TV special from 2014: We Wish you a Merry Walrus. It’s hard to convey the excitement there was for this back when it released; it was the first time Club Penguin had tried something like this, and although there would later be two subsequent similar stop-motions, there was something really exciting about Club Penguin coming to TV.

The plot relates to a couple of characters being sent on a mission to save the Merry Walrus, a character who resembles Santa, from Herbert. Sadly, it can’t be watched online completely for free in English, but there’s a couple of clips online.

In truth, the Merry Walrus Party which went alongside this TV special in 2014, replacing the Holiday Party, received immense criticism to the point it attracted a significant response from the Club Penguin team.

Probably the more exciting video though is one released by the Club Penguin team about the process behind getting out this TV special; it’s incredibly impressive, and even though it’s quite short, it goes into pretty good detail.

Even if the party was disappointing, there’s something really remarkable about how Club Penguin was a key feature on Disney Channel, even after its prime.

Waddle on!

-Torres 126

It’s November, and the Elite Penguin Force are preparing for one of Herbert’s plots against the island! For today’s Mountains Monday throwback, I wanted to share one of the Club Penguin shorts which Herbert starred in which shows one of his initial sinister plots.

It’s a classic released from May 2012, and I reckon a lot of people will remember it: the video is called Puffle Trouble!

Throughout Club Penguin’s history, several short animations were released – they include five cartoon shorts and a couple of music videos. Puffle Trouble is usually the most memorable of the cartoon shorts for people, but the others include classics such as Never Wake a Sleeping Sensei and Best Seat in the House.

I think it’s just a really nice reminder of how diverse the content released by Club Penguin was, and it’s just a really nice short so I thought it’d be fun to share!

Waddle on!

-Torres 126

It became a common criticism by the community that Disney didn’t do enough to promote the Club Penguin brand, and instead acted too quickly in axing it. For the last stages of Club Penguin Island, that was seemingly an exceptionally valid criticism.

However, in this month’s Mountains Monday throwback post, I actually wanted to go back to a time where Disney did massively promote Club Penguin. Some people may remember when the Disney homepage used to have some iconic designs heavily featuring different brands, whether it be movies, games or in this case, virtual worlds!

• 

• 

The images above for this throwback are two different designs of the Disney homepage. They’re actually from pretty different times too:

• Left: August 2007 – the same month which Disney acquired Club Penguin in a deal for $350m
• Right: January 2010 – additional promotion for the release of Card Jitsu Fire

It is admittedly upsetting that the promotion was never maintained, arguably even when Club Penguin needed it most, but I thought that this would be a fun throwback post. Thank you for reading!

Waddle on!

-Torres 126

It’s time for another Mountains Monday post, and as it’s the second Monday of the month, this is going to be something completely random from Club Penguin’s history! It’s actually a Christmas tale from 2013 which some people may recall.

As part of the Holiday Party in 2013, Rockhopper was visiting with a new design based on Santa! The head item was called Rockhopper’s Santa Hat, but for a short period of time, it was available for everyone. However, it was only obtainable through means of cheating with items adders, so both the main item adders at the time (sites called Penguin Lodge and CPCheats) were very careful in warning people not to wear the item in public spaces.

Penian was one of the two people, along with someone called Mike, who provided this cheating tool

The item effectively allowed people to dress like Rockhopper, which led to some massive confusion for a few days across the island. Even more bizarrely, when you clicked someone’s playercard, they would appear as if they were Rockhopper. This is due to how mascot items worked.

This bug was introduced since the item wasn’t “patched”, which would’ve blocked people from obtaining it through cheating. Furthermore, you’ll see below that the item is now registered as is_bait (the 1 means true). Initially, it wasn’t, so anyone could wear it without Club Penguin’s anti-cheat system taking effect!

{
	"paper_item_id": 1753,
	"type": 2,
	"cost": 0,
	"is_member": true,
	"label": "Rockhopper's Santa Hat",
	"prompt": "Rockhopper's Santa Hat",
	"layer": 6000,
	"is_bait": "1"
},

Club Penguin fixed the Rockhopper Santa’s Hat a few days later. On about December 28th, both cheating sites were issuing stark warnings not to wear the item in order to prevent people from being banned for 72 hours.

However, that’s the pretty fun tale of how there were so many Rockhoppers wandering around in December 2013! Thank you for reading, waddle on!

-Torres 126