Welcome!

I've been playing Webkinz since I was in elementary school, though I stopped playing all the time around high school and only picked it up again around the end of college. nowadays, I play on-and-off, but the game holds a special place in my heart that I feel is worth devoting a section of my website to. honestly, I had more fun making these pages than I do playing the game most of the time, you can read more about that in the story below.

My Story

when I was about seven years old, around the tail end of the summer between first and second grade, a friend at the Girl Scout cookies booth we were manning told me that she was going to get a new Webkinz at the end of this. I didn't know what a Webkinz was, so she explained that it was a toy that you could play with on the internet in a virtual world. I never heard of something like that before, but my dad said yes when I asked if I could have one too. I spent a while making sure I picked one that wasn't too smooshed in the face and decided on a Gold and White cat that I named Tangerina.

I didn't actually know what the internet was at seven years old, so I just thought Webkinz and the internet were synonymous for a while. my favorite thing to do in Webkinz, both then and now, is customize the rooms. I also like dressing my Webkinz up, but I have some rules about how I go about that. I don't like giving them pants or shoes... they're animals! they don't wear shoes! I sometimes make an exception for shirts, but it depends.

my dad was a big part of my experience with Webkinz. while he was at his blue collar and had some downtime, he'd play Goober's Lab on me and my sister's accounts, so when we logged in later, we'd have a bunch of Kinzcash without knowing why and get hype. he actually played it so much that Webkinz got banned on the company wifi.

I started losing interest in Webkinz as a teenager, partly because I didn't have anyone to play with me. my bio mom was fixated on donating things, so I ended up donating most of my Webkinz, including Tangerina, without thinking much about how I'd feel later. I wasn't forced to do it but it was heavily implied that I should.

fast forward to college—I found out that Webkinz no longer requires you to buy a new plush yearly to play. I couldn't remember my old account information, so I made a new account and chose a Sun Fox as my starter pet, who I named Kyoko (after the character from Madoka Magica). there's a lot of features that I couldn't access without having a pet I paid for. after a certain point, it was only a then-child headmate (we'll call her P) that'd play, either by herself or with Frey. I got a Webkinz with a code as a birthday gift (though it was actually Frey and P's birthday, not mine) and all those paid features got unlocked again.

all the way until I was living in a subsidized apartment, Webkinz was a hobby that only child parts and Frey engaged with. P was a teenager by then, so it was the younger kids that'd play. one of the results of slowly going from multiple to median is that interests become shared, and since the kids didn't have to be explicit in control to actually enjoy playing Webkinz, I just started playing it myself. I bought a deluxe membership, a pet that was virtual only, and a bunch of items that had to be purchased with real money, much to my friends' chagrin. I probably shouldn't have spent seven dollars on single virtual items more than once, but I get a free random bucket of popcorn daily so who's the real winner here? (it's Ganz, Ganz is always the winner.)

there aren't a lot of Webkinz I have a big pull towards, but as I added a few more Webkinz to the collection every so often, I started noticing the hole in my heart where Tangerina used to be. a Gold and White Cat with a code isn't hard to get, so I bought her from an eBay listing. she came without a W on one of her paws and it made me sad, but I felt better after crying about it one time. I can live with the fact that this Tangerina is a new pet, not the original. I prefer to give my Webkinz medium-sized bedrooms so I condensed her old room design (which was the biggest size) into a smaller space and I honestly like it better that way. after that, I kind of just... felt satisfied? and then I stayed feeling satisfied because restoring that part of my childhood gave me closure.

I still occasionally log onto Webkinz to tweak rooms, do dailies, and check on my pets, but the pull it used to have on me just isn't there anymore. I think part of that isn't just about me growing out of it, but the fact that the game is very different than it used to be. a bunch of features are broken and can't be fixed because the Ganz team can't develop in Flash anymore, and a lot of the rest is locked behind a deluxe membership paywall or obtained through microtransaction hell. it's not a huge deal though, I still got my closure and my life doesn't have to revolve around a kid's game to be happy. kind of a bittersweet ending, but that's life ain't it?