Pink Poogle Toy Forum

In October of 2004, while McDonald's was promoting Neopets plushies in their Happy Meals, a story on the Australian news show Today Tonight featured a nine-year-old boy claiming that the site requires one to gamble in order to receive enough Neopoints to feed one's Neopet, else it is sent to an orphanage. While much of this is factually incorrect (gambling is not required, nor are pets automatically sent to an orphanage if they are not fed) it is true that the website has a rather extensive collection of games of chance that are directly based on real-life games like blackjack, poker, and even lottery scratchcards. Neopets has prohibited users under the age of 13 to use most games that involve gambling. This article sparked a nation-wide controversy as concerned parents voiced their complaints about the website, prompting McDonald's to pressure Neopets into temporarily blocking Australian accounts from accessing games of chance for the duration of the promotion, which ended on November 5th. When this happened, a flurry of complaints appeared on Neopets itself when even Australians able to legally gamble could not access any game of chance on the website. Complaints quickly died down after users realized that by merely changing the country setting on their user preferences the temporary ban could be bypassed.