Put down the frog: There's no need to do anything rash.
That'll apply to you, reader of a very specific age, if you were thinking of throwing out your old Webkinz—the toys-to-life plushie that was springing into browsers circa 2005—because the classic version of the game hasn't been playable on browsers in ages. Last week, Webkinz developer and toy company Ganz announced that the game is slated for a return to browsers later this year.
You might not know it if you weren't in the demographic during the plushie line's heyday, but these things sold like hotcakes in the mid-to-late 2000s. Peaking at 3.2 million unique players in a single day in 2009, Webkinz was raking in the dough digitally and physically before Skylanders was a twinkle in anyone's eye. It's not quite the sensation now that it was back in those days, but we are right on schedule for everyone who grew up with it to wistfully look back at the games of their childhood.
If you were a real Webhead, you could technically play Webkinz Classic this whole time, but it was in an app that lacked certain game modes and features, like the Curio Shop and the Employment Office. When Flash died, a lot of its associated games ended up on the Flashpoint emulator; but seeing as Webkinz was a whole online activity center with plushies registered to each unique account, proper preservation would be a more complex undertaking. You could also play the modern, updated game—Webkinz Next—but as someone who grew up with a quarter-bookshelf dedicated to my beloved digital critters, I don't see how that's gonna help me yearn for the days when I didn't know how to read a tax form.
Ganz noted in its announcement that rebuilding the browser version of the game was a bigger undertaking than you might think:
"Back in 2005, we launched Webkinz as one of the first fully featured Flash web sites. Flash wasn’t just an animated element, or a game embedded in the page, it WAS the game … our overall goal is to get Webkinz Classic to a point where we can begin developing all new features and finally fix features that have been missing for too long."
It was through my wistful rediscovery of the Webkinz site that I learned a lot of fans are swooning over this announcement, much like the surge of excitement Neopets saw in 2023 when it ditched NFTs and freed itself from "corporate baggage."
On the Reddit thread where the Webkinz announcement was shared, posters like BrightFlower7081 commented: "Stop why did this make me wanna cry????? It feels like they are putting work and time into our little game and I'm less scared of it just fading into oblivion." Ambivalent_Oratrix concurred: "I am about to CRY MY EYES OUT!! This is like the BEST NEWZ ever!!"
As it turns out, Webkinz is still beloved by a niche that grew up with it. A recent Reddit poster came into possession of a decked-out legacy account through a relative of their employer and lit the forum on fire, saying "I’d like to thank not only God, but Jesus Christ himself, and also my boss."
If this is all exciting to you but you don't like the idea of scrounging around eBay for an unclaimed plushie, you may yet be in luck. The Webkinz Instagram account replied to a request last week for the return of classic plushies with a cheeky thinking emoji. Speculation has already spread like wildfire, with Redditors like JennyDoveWebkinz eager for the toy line to return and others like LuViKinz declaring a "Webkinz Renaissance."
Ganz said in its announcement post that "beta events" should be coming soon to test the new version of the game, and that more details would be announced soon. It capped off the post with a hearty thank you to the fans that have stuck around over the years, saying: "We appreciate every fan who has enjoyed our plush and our virtual world over the past 20 years and this project is just one of the many steps that we will be taking to ensure that the next 20 years provides even more joy and fun to all our players, new and old alike."
