Amusing AFD, “Fond” a Misspelling, EG-PLEASE! Termites on Tikis and MORE!

Laughed at “Pogo Amusement Park!”

What a very funny and creative way to celebrate April Fool’s Day. Of course if I’m wrong about this story being a tall tale, then woo hoo can’t wait to come visit.

Pogo’s creative staff always seem to find a way to make me smile.

Marie

Oh Pogo, you absolutely cracked me up with that one! It was the best piece of whimsy I have seen in a long time, and more proof (if any was needed) that Pogo rules!

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And to all the Pogo nut cases may I wish you teacups forever filled with English Breakfast (or Earl Grey, whatever you want), foundations made of solid laughter and pens running with gold ink!

Anne-Marie

I live in Florida. Where is the park located, would be very interesting to go see and check it out with my kids… So please let us know where in Florida this park is located so we may go and visit.

thank you

Editor: The A Pogo-Themed Amusement Park…Really? story was merely an April Fool’s Joke. We hope most of you enjoyed it, and that nobody’s out there in their car driving all around Tallahassee looking for it! ;)

Dear Editor:

Yesterday I was somewhat peeved when I wrote you regarding all the canceled Amazing Mini contests and Pogo’s not putting any information about the situation on your web site.

That mood escalated greatly today when another contest was missed and I cannot even access the Winners when trying to see what won recently ! Then, despite several comments by you and other Pogo personnel that you’re NOT catering to Facebook and ignoring Club Members … I find that your Facebook page (accessed through “News” column) addresses these issues but there is still no mention of them on the Pogo website for us Non-Facebook members.

This situation is rapidly becoming very frustrating and I’m beginning to see why so many comments are posted in Forums, etc. about hesitation to renew membership.

PLEASE !! Have some consideration for those of us who choose to avoid Facebook and simply enjoy the friends and games available on Club Pogo.

Thanks once again.

PsiPhiPhan

Editor: My apologies – we did not do a good job of informing our players of what was going on. Unfortunately, the Amazing Mini Hall of Fame broke last week, which forced us to cancel 3 Amazing Mini shows in a row. We’d hoped to get the Hall of Fame fixed quickly, and while we did update the Pogo Calendar, in the midst of many other issues we were working on addressing, we neglected to post a Pogo News story about it.

The good news is that the Hall of Fame is back up, and as I type this, there’s an Amazing Mini event happening right now!

So I’m playing my Word Whomp Weekly Challenge and happened to actually READ my progress. It states, and I quote, “You’ve fond 12 or more words in a game….” Fond! Cute!

Sometimes that spell check really doesn’t work.

Editor: Yup! It looks like we messed that one up, and in a word game, no less!

Dear Editor,

I want to thank the artist for the Easter Badge it is very cute. One thing I also liked about it is the icon. Several members on the Forum mentioned the fact the Badges are really cute, but the icons are awful – part of an eye, finger, or obscure part of the background.

It seems to me and others that we prefer icons which compliment the Badge. For example in the Animal Babies Premium Album, I really loved the Badges and bought the album specifically because it had an animal motif and I love animals. But the icons that went along with the Badges were disappointing. I would like to have seen an animal face or animal icon. Please pass this suggestion on. More animal icons please!

Despite all the recent problems with recent changes, embedded games, badges not working etc… I still love Pogo. Thank you Editor and everyone at Pogo for all you do to bring us Pogo.com;

Your fan,

Spurt81

Editor: Glad you like the Easter Badge! And thanks for your feedback. I’ve passed it along to the artists for their consideration. :)

Hi Tahd,

As per your request, I am sending this email to let you know how the new Pop Up for embedded games works for me. It took about 1 minute to set it up on both FF and Chrome and it works PERFECTLY! I enjoy watching movies and videos while I play Pogo and this allows me to do that again. Thanks so much for all your help.

P.S. We miss having you as a judge in the Amazing Mini events!

Editor: Thank you so much for your feedback. It seems like the instructions gave us a bit of a mixed bag of results. About half the people who wrote in found them helpful and were grateful to have a simple way to have the games pop up in a separate window every time they played, and the other half either had trouble making it work, or felt they shouldn’t have to do go through the motions on this.

In case anyone missed them or would like to try it again, here are the instructions:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Google Chrome

I’ll be back judging Minis on Monday – hope to see you then! :)

I’m honestly really curious as to why Pogo even decided to switch to the “embedded” format.

I’m assuming they have never heard of that saying “If it’s not broken, then don’t fix it.” NOTHING was wrong with the pop up window. I see absolutely no reason at all for the switch over.

The method to “work around” the embedded is not really different. It’s not the same as the original pop up window as it used to be. If Pogo had any common sense, they would keep things the way they are and make everything back to the pop-up screen.

Editor: Believe me – I recognize that a LOT of people do NOT like the embedded games at all. They’ve definitely made their opinions known in the Editor box, with our Customer Experience Department, in the Pogo Forums, and by posting their thoughts on Facebook.

You ask why we did this. We didn’t just blindly go and decide to embed the games. We actually did a lot of research before the implementation, and the end goal is to move Pogo and Club Pogo into the future. Ultimately, we want the Club Pogo experience to be more cohesive, and we want the games to have greater depth.

Before we all get lost the oodles of complaints and issues, let’s not forget that these new pages actually have some cool features. And while we are seeing a ton of complaints – we’re also seeing that many of these new features are being used.

Like what, you ask? Well, let’s go over a few –

• Challenge Information – All that information is right there at your fingertips. You can activate Challenges right from the Challenge Tab.
• Direct link to Forum thread – Now you can quickly see what people are saying about the game you’re about to play.
• Updated How to Play – Now you can actually read how to play the game without having to click between subjects.
• Sleek design – Yes, I know many, many, many people prefer the old standby, but it is very dated looking and the new pages do look a lot fresher.

Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t issues – there are, and we are aware of them, and we’re very sorry for them. In our releasing of the embedded game pages, we’ve learned quite a bit, and we are changing our processes so that we have fewer problems with future releases. Until then, we’re addressing them as quickly as we can.

Hey Tahd,

You forgot to address one thing in last week’s letter from k about having a Badge already activated and not seeing the second “activate” button for the Daily Challenge.

I encountered this as well and in my case there were two things I could do. 1 – In small blue text below the Badge I’m working on it says “show all Challenges” I clicked that and it showed the Badges I was working on plus the Daily Challenge so I can activate it. 2 – I could also go to the “Challenge” tab and activate it there.

I hope this helps ;)

Dark

Editor: Ya know, I didn’t fully comprehend what she was talking about last week until it happened to me this week for the Vaults of Atlantis Daily Challenge. I activated it on the Homepage, but couldn’t figure out where to activate it elsewhere until I read your letter. Thank you!

The “double activation” issue is something we will be addressing in the future, as it is really annoying, but I thank you for bringing this to our attention.

I have always wanted to know what POGO stands for.

Thank you.

Club Pogo Member

Jeffery

Editor: Believe it or not – it doesn’t stand for anything. I’ve had people claim it stands for “Professional Online Game Organization” and “Play Our Games Online”.

Honestly – we chose Pogo in 1999 because not only was it cute, it was also one of the last “.com” names available, anywhere. We had to negotiate a deal with the folks who owned it, the Walt Kelly estate, the author of the original Pogo Cartoon. We came close to calling it “Marbles.com”, but thankfully we went with Pogo. Short, simple, easy to remember. You can find out all sorts of juicy information about Pogo in our 5 Part History of Pogo series we did a few years back.

Hey, Tahd!

I’m worried about the Tiki Brothers. Are they/he still alive? Are they OK? They haven’t contracted termites, have they?

Editor: Thank you for the laugh. I asked Bret, the author of the Tikis, about this and he responded with “Yes… the Tikis have a termite. It’s called a three-month old!” But – fear not – Bret promises to get some sleep tonight, so they’re coming back very soon! Look for something later this week, or early next!

Have something to say to the Editor? E-mail editor@pogo.com. Please note – if you are having any customer support or technical support related questions, please contact our Customer Experience Team