I was going through my folder of neopets images and suddenly realized that the vast majority of it can no longer be found anywhere on the internet, so I thought I'd upload this little treasure trove to my webspace and share with you some of the strangeness you may have long forgotten or missed out on entirely.
Feel free to post your own old stuff if it isn't too easy to find.
-When Mystery Island was first introduced, a poll was held to determine a new species. The Kougra wound up winning, and this great little cricket/cockroach came in last. It was later reworked into the bug brothers event.
...As well as an unreleased battledome opponent. They changed a
lot for Smug Bug Smite.
-This other bug was the original garden shop keeper. It was once quite normal for shopkeepers to be non-neopets. There was speculation that this would become a new species for a while, but it was replaced by a neopet in only a few days.
-These creative weirdos were listed as "tyrannian" pets and selectable as shopkeepers, long before Tyrannian became an actual pet color.
-The second mushroom creature here was once the shopkeeper of the Apothecary, a retired Haunted Woods shop that only sold magic mushrooms. The other, fatter one existed only on this card.
-Marvel as how crappy the gallery of evil used to be. I miss the daddy grub. This was back when there were only a dozen food items, the wriggling grub was one of the only "gross" ones and the handful of monsters you could encounter were a much bigger deal.
-The original Gwontek melon. Changed for reasons that should be obvious.
-The FREAKING AWESOME unreleased version of the Mutant Aisha. I still want this pet so. badly.
-The similarly awesome unreleased Mutant Bruce, which was deleted from the server about two years before they finally uploaded the current version. I like both, but would have loved to own this one as a replacement for the original mutant chia, which I talk about in length
HERE.
-Unreleased mutant korbat. Not sure what the artist was going for with its shaggy canine-like body, but I once again found it much more interesting than what was ultimately released.
-The only unreleased mutant that I think was a good decision. This would have actually been our mutant scorchio, and the demonic appearance really doesn't scream "mutant" to me. I'm not sure if the current mutant scorchio does either, though.
-This old mutant actually WAS released, the original mutant Usul...a wonderful one-eyed, one-eared bag pestilent flesh. I sorely wish I had saved the rest of its poses, as they were very nicely done. You can tell it's the same artist as the unreleased bruce.
-This is the only other image I can find of the mutant usul at all. In the top left you can also see the old mutant Kiko.
-Why was it a big-chinned, devil-eared tadpole with gloves? Who knows, but it had a fair number of fans. Wish they'd bring it back in petpet form, or something.
-A "joke" option from the Gelert revamp poll. I'd love one of these as well.
-Some of you may remember when the Darigan Korbat enjoyed a very brief period of resembling Lord Darigan himself.
-These three very closely resembled popular video game enemies until they were subtly changed. Subtly, except for the chompark.
-This monstrosity was once the robot acara. Back then, the Acara was just a head with legs.
-The cool-looking "tomb monster" from a site promotion. For signing up with one of neo's sponsors, you would receive a key to open one door in a "tomb," finding either prizes or the monster.
-These images were shown on the short-lived "Virtupets.com," which introduced Dr. Sloth and promised us all that we could sign up and start adopting their pets. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a prank concocted by Neopets as part of their space plot. The regular mutant grundo wound up the only "virtupet" we would ever get to own. My favorite here is the red slug thing.
-This image was used in the news page when they first released the Haunted Woods and I believe it was a shopkeeper for a while. Does anyone have any of the other haunted woods characters, like the mole man and the spiders?
-Unreleased mutant faellie and blobagus.
-The fake "preview image" of a new neopet species. I think it wound up being the xweetok or yurble.
-Yet another non-pet shopkeeper, a creature called "sludgy" before we ever had a petpet of the same name.
-An image posted in the news and featuring two unreleased, unnamed petpets. I love the spider-faced one.
-Before it was released, the ghost chia had a case of fuzzy warts. I guess they thought this wasn't a ghost-like trait, but I thought it was neat. It added some nice ghoulishness. Sadly, I lost my only image of the unreleased ghost Jetsam, which for some reason had wavy grey hair on its head.
-Finally, the revamped purple Grarrl, colored like a certain famous purple dinosaur for just a day or two as a bit of a joke.