YMMV / Club Penguin

• Audience-Alienating Era: Started in 2013 and continued until both the original game's closure in 2017 and throughout the entire existence of Island until that game's end in 2018. Players have noticed the penguins were becoming uncomfortably too human^note penguins dressed like humans and wearing human-like wigs to the point that they look more like human teenagers with avian appendeges; keeping Puffles that look like real animals, meant to mirror humans' pets and the game was trying to be mainstream^note Product Placements disguised as Crossover events, the island starting to look like a modern community from the real world, pop-style lyrical songs, Viral Marketing on YouTube utilizing trends and memes. No wonder they complained.
• Best Level Ever: Ask any fan what the best party was and they will pretty much always answer with Operation: Blackout. On top of it beginning with Herbert actually winning, the atmosphere is extremely foreboding, you really got to feel like a rebel spy trying to topple an overlord, and the mini games were a fun challenge, with everything climaxing in learning the Director's true identity. Even up to the time the game shut down, many wore items that could be gotten from the event.
• Broken Base:
  • Many people (majority being the very prideful rare penguins) were NOT happy with once rare items being brought back by Disney, the 3D Glasses for example. Others were happy that they could finally get some of the rare items and show them all off.
  • Quite a few of the old players dislike the map changes, believing that once hidden places are becoming completely visible on the map, while other believe it's easier to get around and more friendly to new users.
  • Was closing the original a good idea?^note From an economical standpoint, yes. The game's playerbase had been in serious decline during its last couple years, as most kids these days play on their smartphones and tablets, and Adobe Flash, the engine that the original game ran on, was an aging and insecure platform. The game was costing Disney too much money to continue maintaining. Whether it was a good idea to take it all down, reboot it, and then take it all down again on the other hand...
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Klutzy and Herbert are bad guys, but it's hard not to love them, and they're front-and-center in most fanworks.
  • The Penguin Band get lots of love and some Self-Fanservice, simply because they're your average Boy Band.
• Fan Nickname: The Party Hat is known as the "Beta Hat" by fans, alluding to its sole availability during the 2005 Beta Test Party. The 10 Year Edition Yearbook even calls it "the legendary Beta Hat".
• Fanon:
  • There's an entire wiki (link) dedicated to this.
  • A good hunk of the fandom considers Klutzy, Herbert's faithful sidekick, to be a girl, even though canon calls him a boy. Parodied here.
  • Though YMMV if the term fits, the Club Penguin Army community are players of CP who... Battle. Mainly for entertainment, though, these are taken as Serious Business by the troops in them. If you ever see somebody sporting themselves as a member of the Army/Team of Club Penguin, Nachos, Dark Warriors, SWAT, Light Troops, Gold, etc., that's what they're talking about.
• Game-Breaker: In Card-Jitsu, the four Water cards with 12 power and the effect of changing the opponent's Snow cards to Water. Since 12 is the highest power a card can have, they'll tie against a 12-power Snow or Water card, and win against everything else. Cards that can reduce its power need to be set up the turn before, and only last one turn, so they can be avoided just by not using the overpowered cards on these turns.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: There are plenty of Club Penguin fans that live in Latin America, such as Mexico and Brazil.
• Harsher in Hindsight: One newspaper during Operation: Blackout said that the Blackout would continue until March 2017. On March 30, 2017, the classic Club Penguin shut down to make way for Club Penguin Island.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A fancomic which was featured in the old newspaper featured a penguin who was trying out a "snow white" color, which made him invisible in the snow and a blizzard. Years later, a "Snow White" color was introduced (albeit in a creamier tone to differentiate it from the snow) which was also promoted in the new newspaper with a penguin with the same color in a blizzard.
  • A comic in one of the Club Penguin books features a penguin putting on 3D glasses and looking at another penguin, causing him to see him as a 3D model. Club Penguin's replacement, Club Penguin Island, was full 3D.
• Jerkass Woobie: Even though Herbert is rude and (at times) cruel, you can't help but feel a little sorry for him after everything he's been through.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Tipping the Iceberg.^ExplanationA popular rumor throughout the game's run was that the Iceberg could be tipped over if enough penguins used jackhammers on one side. Even after it was revealed to be false, many players still tried jackhammering the iceberg, whether they knew it was false or not. This rumor was so prevalent that the game and its developers referenced it several times, and it was eventually made possible to do during the Waddle On Party.
  • "Shit nigga why is there so many purple penguins◊"
  • "Speak to JPG by the flagpole."^ExplanationDuring the Waddle On Party on Club Penguin Island, Aunt Arctic would occasionally tell the player to talk to the different mascots to complete the party if they took too long to do it. The problem was, the messages would pop up even if the party was completed, resulting in a majority of players seeing this message several times even though they had already finished the party.
  • "Welcome to the lair of Scorn, the Dragon King!"^ExplanationThere was a behind the scenes video of Scorn's voice actor. This line was played numerous times and it quickly became a bit of a meme.
  • "club penguin is kil. no."^ExplanationOriginating from a variation of the "John is kill" copypasta that reflects on what people were doing when Club Penguin shut down. This version became a meme of itself and spawned more variations.
  • Drill Grill^ExplanationA more obscure meme about various penguins riding jackhammers and spamming something along the lines of "Drill Grill", "r u grill?" and "X is closed" in the chat box.
  • Getting banned from the game has become memetic, ranging from photoshopped fake "bans" to joke speedruns of being banned.
  • The Club Penguin Dance^ExplanationIt has become increasingly popular for people in real life and fictional characters to imitate the in-game dancing animation that you could make your penguin do, which especially blew up in popularity after JaidenAnimations uploaded a video where her Author Avatar did the dance.
  • "You have met Spongebob! Would you like to give him a High-Five And rob him afterwards!◊"^ExplanationA fake game message with SpongeBob SquarePants and the aforementioned text on it.
  • 18 and over. ^ExplanationWhen creating an account, the game would ask players to select their age, with the highest option being "18 and over", with a penguin with baggy eyes and a cane pictured on the button. The picture has lead to jokes, mostly involving people making fun of how they have health issues at a young age.
• Moe: The Puffles are round balls of fluff who are always smiling (minus the Black Puffles) and will even dance with you.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Herbert didn't cross it when he leaked the PSA's private files and then blew the HQ up with popcorn, then he definitely crossed it when he launched Operation: Blackout by focusing all of the sun's energy on himself and leaving Club Penguin's population to die in below zero temperatures, transforming Club Penguin into a propagandist nation that required underground societies to properly rebel, and freezing the EPF's five elite agents alive, with a sixth one lined up for the player character.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The little ding that rings out when you get a stamp. Especially if it's a mascot's stamp, Extreme stamp, or an Extreme mascot stamp!^note Not to mention, if you play Rewritten, an Insanity stamp!
• My Real Daddy: Many players heavily idolize Lane Merrifield (Billybob), one of the founders of the game, and to a lesser extent, Chris Heatherly (Spike Hike), who took over as manager.
• Periphery Demographic: If Tumblr is anything to go by, at least half of the users are teens and adults. Like Webkinz, though, most serious players were children/teens when they first began, and the addiction spread to the teen/adulthood.
• Recurring Fanon Character:
  • On Deviantart, there's Daina Sam DJ, a yellow penguin with red hair who is the daughter of Cadence and Franky. Whenever the two are drawn as a family with their child, chances are that child is Daina. In rarer cases, they may have another daughter named Cadencita, who just looks like a smaller version of her mother with wings and is the older sister of Daina.
  • Bubbles is a light blue penguin with long brown hair who is used as G Billy's love interest. After Petey K, she's the most popular love interest for him.
• Replacement Scrappy: Merry Walrus received tons of backlash from fans due to his party replacing the classic Christmas/Holiday parties and having several inferiorities to them, such as no aurora at the sky, few rooms decorated, and the white and blue color pallete instead of red and green. The character himself was also considered to have come out of nowhere, having never being mentioned before, and many found him annoying. Due to his negative reception, the Holiday Parties were brought back for 2015 and 2016, with Merry Walrus only making a small cameo in the former, in a single pop-up message.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Stompin' Bob/Puffle Handler is one of the most popular ships in the fandom, despite the fact that they never interacted on-screen.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • "A Daring Quest", one of the igloo songs also used for the Medieval Party, sounds awfully similar to Frog's Theme.
  • A number of people have also pointed out similarities between the Puffle Party theme and the Coconut Mall theme from Mario Kart Wii, notably the virtually identical intros. Composer Chris Hendricks has acknowledged the song was an inspiration.
    Chris Hendricks: It was absolutely a reference to Coconut Mall, and it was too close of a reference. I try not to directly copy, and that time I completely broke that rule. That's my least favorite Club Penguin song because of that.
• Tainted by the Preview: Club Penguin Island's trailers got a lot of dislikes on YouTube. This caused all videos' ratings to be hidden, including the classic Club Penguin ones.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • After Disney bought the company from New Horizon, accusations of this came flying everywhere.
  • The PSA being changed into the EPF.
  • The Dojo became a place for Card Jitsu.
  • Restricting "free" games and the sheer amount of censorship.
  • Removal of the heart and skull emoticon was such a big deal, that they brought back the Heart Emote. Though the skull emote didn't return, it technically stayed beyond updates for areas it showed up as a non-emote, such as the ignore list.
  • The reaction to punctuation and numbers being removed.
  • The announcement that the original game was shutting down to make way for Club Penguin Island went over about as well as expected.
  • The Penguin Band changing from a country band to a Disney-style Boy Band.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The announcement of the original game getting shut down resulted in players, both old from way back in 2005 to new, expressing how much they'll miss the game and how much it was a major part of their childhoods. More than a few people who had long since left the game or 'grew out of it' admitted to signing in one final time for a walk down the memory lane.
  • A few videos have surfaced of the last minutes in different servers with dozens of penguins having one final dance near the clock as it turns to 12:01, yelling things like "WADDLE ON" and "THEY WILL NEVER DIVIDE US".
  • To top it all off, the "Connection Was Lost" bubble appears a final time. Only this time it says something different:
    The connection has been lost. Thank you for playing Club Penguin. Waddle on!
  • The successor, Club Penguin Island, met the same fate as the original by the end of 2018. In other words? The Club Penguin brand is no more. Even those who hated Island are saddened that their childhood game will be completely gone.
  • Club Penguin Rewritten, a fan continuation of the original, abruptly met a much more grisly fate on April 13th, 2022, where it was very suddenly met with a DMCA by Disney and shut down and deleted, while the servers were still active. More and more parts of the site broke down while players were still desperately trying to play and say goodbye until, eventually, the game simply stopped working, and the only thing left in its wake was a notice from the United Kingdom government.
• That One Achievement: Many of the Hard and Extreme stamps qualify. So much so that they have their own page.
• That One Level. Some of the games could be brutal.
  • Pizzatron 3000 was infamous for being one of the hardest games. Basically, the player got an order of pizza and had to fill it before the pizza reached the end of the conveyor belt. While the first couple were pretty easy, as it was just sauce and cheese, once toppings started showing up, you needed fast reflexes to match everything in time as the belt moves super quickly.
  • Catchin' Waves falls victim to Guide Dang It! as the game never tells you the best way to get ahead of the waves. And Survival cranks this up to eleven.
  • Puffle Roundup can be brutal for first time players. Basically, you need to herd a bunch of puffles into a pen while under a time limit. What makes this one hard is how sensitive the puffles are. Even the slightest movement could cause them to run away. Not helping this fact is that the puffles can exit the pen if you move in that direction.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Paige the Puffle Handler in the DS games is sometimes mistaken for a male since while she's pink, she lacks any Tertiary Sexual Characteristics and the only clothing she wears is a cowboy hat.

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