From “Nothing to download”
to “5 GB hard drive space”

The October 26, 2005 capture is mostly white. The logo, CLUB in white and PENGUIN in yellow, sits on a blue strip with Waddle around and meet new friends! at the right. Under the button, a short text lists what a penguin can do: chat, play games, use emotes (emotion icons), and wave, dance, sit, walk or throw a snowball.

The next paragraph is written for parents. Chatting and gaming are the two most popular online activities for kids, yet most virtual worlds are focused on an older audience. The founders wanted a fun, online world that we’d be comfortable letting our own kids visit. A link follows, Parents click here to learn more.

The footer names the small company behind it: New Horizon Interactive.

The penguins are older than the site. Lance Priebe, one of Club Penguin’s creators, writes that the idea came in the winter of 1999 as a multiplayer strategy game with penguins. In July 2000 he launched Experimental Penguins. Players named a penguin. They chatted. They explored four rooms. A year later he shut it down because he couldn’t keep paying for the servers, and Penguin Chat followed in January 2003.^[1]

The team that built Club Penguin was tiny. Priebe’s first hire was Chris Hendricks: I asked him to draw and animate the penguins, design clothing, construct furniture, compose music, and program mini-games. He did all of it. Priebe’s brother built the database and support tools remotely from Belize.

Club Penguin went live on October 24, 2005, two days before the capture above.^[1]

By December 2006 the white page is gone. Blue and yellow fill the screen, with a big PLAY NOW! button on the right, a small picture of the town full of penguins, and buttons for Gift Cards and Fun Stuff. Down the left run panels for parents, help, membership and the shop, which says Now you can take Club Penguin with you!

The sidebar collects trust. One box says Club Penguin is proud to be awarded the "Editors Choice" award from Children's Technology Review Magazine. The next claims a rarer prize: Club Penguin is one of the few sites that has ever qualified for the Better Business Bureau - Kid’s Privacy Seal of Approval.

That year the game grew fast. Priebe writes that it launched on Miniclip in March 2006, at the time the world’s largest online game site, and had over one million penguins by that month. The servers couldn’t keep up. I completely rebuilt the game three times that year.^[1] The game’s own login page, archived on February 22, 2006, already names the partner.

In the December 14, 2007 capture a new line sits under the logo: Part of the Walt Disney Company, with Disney in its familiar script. The small print changes too. The 2006 footer ended with New Horizon Interactive; this one says Club Penguin Entertainment Inc. © 2007.

Disney announced the purchase on August 1, 2007. The most the deal could reach was $700 million: about $350 million up front and up to $350 million more through 2009, depending on how earnings grew.^[3] The press release counted what that bought.^[2]

Membership paid for the extras. Anyone could play for free for an unlimited time, Disney explained, but furniture for an igloo was among the things only subscribers could buy. Co-founder Lane Merrifield added a personal link: As a former employee of Disneyland, I’ve always had a great respect for what Walt created.^[2]

The homepage’s list of promises changes as well. Lots More! is gone and Moderated environment takes its place. In the sidebar, above Penguin Poll and Gift Cards, a new button says Coins for Change, with a small NEW tag.

The May 28, 2008 homepage drops the columns. A wide picture of a snowy island fills the top, with penguins on it and boats in the water around it. Below sit five cards, each with its own penguin: Fun Stuff, Membership, Online Shop, Help & Support and Parents. The word Disney now floats above the logo.

Fun Stuff offers new desktop wallpapers, coloring pages and the latest comics, and Help & Support is Updated weekly. The links to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy carry an asterisk, explained at the bottom: * Updated on April 15, 2008.

The island is still there in our 2009, 2010 and 2011 captures. By June 2009 the Online Shop card reads Toys, From clothes to books, games and toys. Disney had already listed plush puffles, the game’s pets, among its merchandise when it bought the company.^[2]

By June 2010 a menu runs across the top (Membership, Community, Parents, Toys, Help) next to a Play Now! button. The page’s code also has an image link labeled Get Adobe Flash player, because the island is a Flash scene. Our January 2011 capture still opens on it.

In the June 17, 2012 capture the island has made way for a city. Flames burn at one side, and penguins dressed as Marvel heroes pose under the words Marvel Super Hero Takeover. The five cards stay below, but Fun Stuff is now called Community.

The June 2012 menu includes Mobile, and the page’s code lists five language options: ENGLISH, PORTUGUÊS, FRANÇAIS, ESPAÑOL and DEUTSCH. A small button reads Activate Membership Card. The page’s code keeps a line about another event, Medieval Party May 17–29, which isn’t on the screen in this replay.

In our 2012, 2013 and January 2014 captures the top of the homepage promotes an event: superheroes, then a ninja game, then a coin drive.

By June 5, 2013 the top of the homepage is a slideshow with three numbered slides. Our capture shows the first: Starting May 23, NEW Ninja Game, Card-Jitsu Snow, with ninja penguins in a snowstorm. Two boxes below speak to members, Members can get more Power Cards with special moves and New Card-Jitsu Snow Game. The code has a third pitch, Be part of the action at the Puffle Hotel!

Ninjas were an old wish. Priebe writes: It had always been a personal goal to create a game with Pirates, Spies, and Ninjas. Never thought they’d all be penguins.^[1]

The small print has moved again. The footer reads Club Penguin™ Disney Canada Inc. © Disney., there are TRUSTe and ESRB badges, and the Quick Links include Global Citizenship. The browser tab turns the old title around, to Waddle around and meet new friends | Club Penguin.

The capture from New Year’s Day 2014 catches the coin drive. A heap of gold coins fills a cart by a toy train, under the words Let's Change the World! and Donate Your Coins Dec. 19–Jan. 1. A purple box below offers a video about it, and a green one says Members can buy Holiday Trains and drive passengers. The menu adds Apps.

Coins for Change started in 2007. In Disney’s words it let kids donate virtual coins earned in the game to support causes that matter to them. In December 2012 a Disney citizenship director described one of those causes: since 2010 the program had helped fund a watershed project in a drought-prone village in India. The same interview counted more than 175 million kids in the online community.^[4]

In 2005 the homepage had sold coins as the way to dress a penguin and furnish an igloo. In 2014 it asked players to give them away.

The June 2015 homepage is pale blue and nearly wordless. Welcome to Club Penguin arches over a crowd of penguins and puffles, with a Watch the Video button in the middle of the picture and a yellow PLAY NOW! below. The menu, the cards and the slideshow are gone.

The browser tab has a new title, Club Penguin | Disney's #1 Virtual World For Kids. The footer has grown into a legal address: The service provider for this site is Disney Canada Inc., located at 500-1628 Dickson Avenue, Kelowna, British Columbia, then a company registration number and an EU VAT number. The page’s code lists six language options now, and the last one is Русский.

A year later the picture is the same, and an Unlock Items button has appeared beside it. The code’s language list is down to four: English, Español, Français and Português. German and Russian are not on it.

Our January 1, 2017 capture looks like the 2016 one: the welcome picture, PLAY NOW! and Unlock Items. Four weeks later, on January 30, the Club Penguin blog posted Important Announcement Regarding Club Penguin on Desktop and Mobile Devices. It said we’ve made the decision to discontinue the current Club Penguin game on desktop and mobile devices on March 29, 2017.^[5]

The post set out the rules for the end. From January 31 memberships could no longer be bought and recurring payments stopped, while paying members kept full-unlimited access until March 29.

A party would start on February 1: We’ll be celebrating the first 11 years with you. One of the first comments under the post reads Bye CP! Waddle on!!! :(^[5]

TechCrunch reported on March 30 that the new Club Penguin Island had launched for mobile devices only, as a total rebuild of the game, featuring 3D graphics, and that old coins and items would not carry over: even if you spent the last 10 years amassing coins and virtual items in Club Penguin you’re going to have to start over again today.^[6]

By December 1, 2018, clubpenguin.com redirects to clubpenguinisland.com. The flat cartoon penguins are now 3D characters with hair, jackets and headphones, gathered around Waddle On Party and an orange PLAY NOW button with a download arrow. Twice the page warns that By clicking Play Now you agree to the Disney Terms of Use. The tab reads Disney Club Penguin Island | Disney Games for Kids.

Scroll down and the page shows how far the game had moved from the browser. A box says PC/MAC AND MOBILE PLAY TOGETHER!, a list gives the minimum requirements, and a strip offers version 1.13 for Windows and Mac. The box next to the requirements is a farewell: We're wrapping up the story of Club Penguin Island and leaving you with some awesome surprises, including FREE MEMBERSHIP and ONE MILLION coins!

This is the last homepage at the address in our captures; the ones we selected from 2019 on show no usable Club Penguin page.

2005 · Free2018 · Island

◀ ▶

The 2005 homepage made four promises in a blue box, and one of them was Nothing to download. The December 2018 Club Penguin Island capture listed seven requirements, from RAM: 4GB to 5 GB hard drive space, above two download buttons.

The coins made the whole trip. In 2005 they bought furniture for your igloo. In 2014 the homepage asked players to donate them. In 2017, TechCrunch reported, they couldn’t be carried over to the new island. And in December 2018 that island’s homepage was handing out ONE MILLION coins as a goodbye.