No other site captured nearly as much of my childhood online like Club Penguin (Disney Channel Asia was a distant second). I definitely felt the separation between the naked/mismatched fashion worn by non-members and the members’ drip. I was so desperate, I sought out paid-to-click sites with my friend to try and make money to afford a membership. I actually made a few dollars, albeit over the course of a year and ultimately lost due to a scam. It took me a year to recover the money, and in that time, I managed to persuade my parents to finally relent and provide their credit card details for a monthly membership. Boy did I celebrate that Christmas.

I was actively perusing the “guide”/”cheat” sites, tracking the new pins, event tips, even tracking the elusive Rockhopper/Sensei/Gary/AA to get their special autographed backgrounds. The mutual interests of other kids (and grown-up millennials) on these communities also drove me to hang out on Flash-based “Xat” chatrooms. I was most active on the Jmann93 one, and felt really proud when attaining moderator status there, only to lose it because I immediately stopped actively logging on after.

One thing that the Burbacks neglected to mention, however, was also the rise of merchandise and real money-can-buy items outside of the memberships. After Disney bought them, you start to see a real mobilization of Club Penguin toys, books, and other merch. More importantly, these things generally come with an online benefit, whether it be coins, Card-Jitsu cards, special items, and more excitingly… permanent access to typically members-only clothing/pets/items. This actually provided a way for those without membership to sample the high life, and not be dependent on a monthly subscription – that is as long as you keep your parents buying the new merch. Even before I started being a Club Penguin member, and for a while after, I really bought into the merch whenever I can. They don’t sell them where I live, so I hunt for them every time I go overseas. I remember scouring every Toys ‘R Us I laid eyes on to hopefully see Club Penguin stuff, with varying success.

The books were easier and the first I got as the range of bookstores that stock them were more diverse. I later learnt that you don’t even need to buy the books to redeem the online benefit, many of those guide/cheat sites have a dictionary of words the website asks for to prove you bought the book – refresh til you find a question on the list and enter the word/s. The toys took a bit more effort to find, but I do find them in stock here and there whenever I went overseas. While I first redeemed them for proper clothing as a non-member, my tastes graduated to off-catalog items – items that were cycled out of the typical clothing catalog on the Club Penguin game, but otherwise available by redeeming a code from the toys. Later when Card-Jitsu decks came out, I got a whole booster box, which, while they don’t offer members-only stuff the way toys do, they gave you access to exclusive cards in the Card-Jitsu game, with special effects for the rare cards that you add from the physical booster packs to your online profile! I also bought the “Game Day” Wii game, but due to complications with my Wii unit I sadly only played it a couple of times and never collected my rewards online.

Given the rise of smartphones and decline of attention spans of kids today, I doubt there’d be another magical experience quite like Club Penguin again. It’ll always hold a special status as my first real internet game, and an obsession of my pre-teen days.