I had a Webkinz as a kid, so I definitely remember playing it.
I think the era of games like it died out years ago plus what Hylarn said, it wasn’t as big as Neopets and Club Penguin.
Get taxed. Idiot.Webkinz was huge in the late 2000s. I remember it being a fad during that time. In 2007, they had a hard time keeping Webkinz in stock
The thing I also noticed is that it seems like even in video game circles, niche, obscure games get brought up more than Webkinz. Nobody played Chibi-Robo, yet that game somehow gets brought up more than Webkinz on certain video game forums for some reason
Webkins was a fairly short lived fad and, as Haedox attested, does not hold up well at all. Chibi-Robo, despite being more "obscure", is still talked about because is widely seen as one of the 6th Gen's biggest hidden gems. Webkins was just another virtual pet fad. Played it all the time as a small child though.
Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Dec 1st 2024 at 1:14:02 PM
Once Upon A Time.There's a couple things at play, I think:
- Virtual worlds are generally not considered 'real' videogames, and tend to get left out of the conversation much the way the fighting game community refuses to acknowledge arena fighters
- These games are aggressively kiddy, such that even discussing them feels embarrassing as an adult
- Webkinz is particular wasn't relevant for very long. Even if you were big into it as a kid, that was likely going to have lasted for all of a year

I personally love Webkinz. I find it a really cute game, but it feels like people don't bring it up as much as Mario, Zelda, Sonic, etc. It was huge back in the late 2000s, but it doesn't get brought up as much nowadays