Neopets Caption Contest

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaptionContest

Go To

Neopets

You're flipping through a magazine, and there are almost always captions under the pictures (save for ads), but some magazine editors admit they can't do the best at them. So they offer the readers a chance to do better, usually challenging them to 'Beat this caption.' So if you can write a better caption than the magazine writers, it'll appear in the next issue, and maybe even win the contest. Any further prizes are optional.

Advertisement:

Neopets Beauty Contest

Neopets History. Neopia's been around for quite some time, and it has quite the storied past. Relive some of the olden days by perusing through our history exhibits below. Did you know that on March 23, 2004, Sponge was announced as a Lab Ray only colour? Or how about that the first photographed Caption Contest was released on July 7.

Neopets valentine petpets 2017. Of course this doesn't just end with magazines. Web sites have them as well. They tend to be popular on forums.

A Sub-Trope of Audience Participation, Caption Humor.

PLAYING WONDERCLAWTo start the game, you need to draw your widget from the top, right-hand corner of the screen to the machine:At this point, you will also be asked if you want to use one of the Power-Ups. Large Claw Wonderclaw Power-Up — This Power-Up gives you two prizes from the machine instead of one.This is where your basic strategy comes in. Neopets wonderclaw.

Neopets quit battle free. Nov 18, 2012  You cannot easily quit a battle. I tried it once but when I was going to heal at the Healing Fairy, she refused to heal me. Luckily in about 1-3 days she will accept you again. Asked in Social.

Compare Lets See YOU Do Better, Official Fan-Submitted Content.

Limited and Restricted Neopets. The Neopets site boasts 55 different species of pet for you to own; to obtain a few of them, though, you'll have to work a little bit harder than usual. In particular, getting a Krawk, a Lutari or a Draik can be a bit tricky - so much so that we've given them their own guides. Neopets jetsam morphing potion. Neopets.Com - Virtual Pet Community! Join up for free games, shops, auctions, chat and more! The Jetsam is a smooth-skinned Neopet with both a long, powerful tail (used both for swimming and balance) and two lower flippers that can serve the purpose of feet. They are easily recognisable as the only fish-like pet to walk in this manner, and for their large, sharp teeth and heavy-set eyebrows.

Examples:

Caption Contest Neopets Jellyneo

open/close all folders
  • Have I Got News for You has this round (almost) Once an Episode with odd-looking photos taken from news stories.
    • A 2003 episode ground to a halt just before the end as the guests, Ruby Wax and Glenda Jackson, appeared not to understand the concept, with both of them asking what the 'real' answer was and Jackson complaining that Wax's team had been given a photo and hers hadn't (prompting Guest Host Martin Clunes to shout, 'Well, if you'll WIND YOUR NECK IN we'll get your picture out!').
  • The Sci-Fi Channel, back when they first started airing the eighth season of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000, had 'Caption This!', a 24/7, MST3K-themed caption game based on screenshots taken from a live feed of whatever Sci-Fi had on at the time. Not really a 'contest', per se, as all what really happened was that the captions stayed up until they were flushed out by new ones in time, but still the same general idea.
  • On The Office (US) Pam puts up a funny drawing she made of a Sabre printer for a caption contest in the office. The other employees make suggestions which insult Sabre products, much to the chagrin of Gabe, the Sabre company's representative and he bans the contest.
  • In the second series of Green Wing Statham wins an online caption competition on the Consultant Radiologists International website. Under the picture of an X-Ray he puts the caption 'X-Ray Charles' and wins with 100% of the votes (which turns out to be seven). He's extremely pleased with this and boasts it around the hospital, annoying Joanna who decides to return him to his miserable former self which results in him murderering her dwarf cousin, the two of them fleeing the law and eventually commiting double suicide.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): In 'The Fever', Flora Gibbs enters a caption contest and wins an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas.
  • Maxim magazine.
    • A good one was a picture of a guy with three dozen cigarettes in his mouth. The winning caption was, 'Huey Lewis will do anything to get attention these days,' but just as good was the runner-up, 'In vain, he tried to postpone his execution.'
  • The New Yorker runs a weekly caption contest.
  • Dragon Magazine had a few of these with black-and-white single-panel comics in its later years.
  • Satirical magazine Punch ran a famous and long-running competition to find new captions for old cartoons featured in its pages a century earlier..
  • 'Nickelodeon Magazine had a caption contest at the end of each issue ('Say What?').
  • The serious technical weekly publication Electronic Engineering Times featured a weekly 'Immortal Works' feature. A famous piece of classical artwork was shown, and readers were asked to send in captions related to electronics, computers, or engineering in general. The winners would be 'immortalized in genuine print'.
    • Back in the days when there was a personal computer manufacturer named 'Wang', readers went to great lengths to fit it in to their captions.
    • All-time winner was for Pietro da Cortona's 'Rape Of The Sabine Women': Woman at upper right: 'Hey, Louise! I'm looking right at his Wang and it's this big!'
  • The British Army in Germany in the '80s used to issue a magazine teaching their troops about Warsaw Pact forces, and it sometimes ran these contests. One picture showed two soldiers riding in a ridiculously tiny armored vehicle — it looked smaller than a jeep (not a Humvee; a jeep). The winning caption had one of the riders complaining that their vehicle had been a full-sized tank, until the other guy made a witch angry..
  • An Australian military newspaper had a contest like this, called 'Say Again, Over'.
  • A gun magazine had a contest showing the inventor of the Silent Partner bullet-resistant vest doing his famous stunt where he shoots himself while wearing the vest. The photo was of him doing this with a .44 Magnum with captions like 'Guns and dyslexia don't mix'.
  • Private Eye does this occasionally, possibly because there are some obvious jokes they'd rather blame on the readers (one example involved a photo of the then chief schools inspector, known to have had a relationship with a former student when he was a teacher, pointing something in a book to a schoolgirl).
Advertisement:
Newspapers
  • The Age, a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, runs a weekly caption contest called 'The Adventures of Naked Man' in which readers have to caption an illustration similar to those found in Boy's Own style adventure, except one of the participants is naked.
  • Nancy Cartwright had a caption contest in the newsletter she sent to her fans. The earliest ones involved Bart or other characters from The Simpsons, but later the contest pictures were drawn by Jim Meskimen.
  • The Funday Pawpet Show runs a weekly caption contest (when they remember to find a picture), the results of which are displayed along with the Art Jams, Pawtweets, and 'Garrison Skunk's Top 40ish Quotes of the Week'.
  • PointlessWasteOfTime.com used to do something like this: Wong would post a picture and challenge people to come up with captions. This has since been taken over by Cracked.com after the merger.
    • This was also a regular game in the short-lived online Spinoff of the late 1990s.
  • The BBC.co.uk Magazine section runs one now and then.
  • Neopets does caption contests every week.
  • Eggycaption's Journal offers up a pic for captioning (nearly) every weekday.
  • Cracked holds a daily Craption contest: whoever comes up with the stupidest caption makes it to the home page.
  • One female troper was one of the winners of a caption contest for Secret of Mana Theater. It had two categories, pure text (which she won) and Photoshopping.
  • The webcomic Bruno the Bandit has them sometimes, for the single strips. (Most often, cartoonist Ian McDonald will deliver them later by himself.)
  • I can has cheezburger? chooses its daily LOLCats with a caption contest: the visitors write the caption in the Lolcat Builder, and the best caption is featured in the home page.
  • Star Wars fan site TheForce.net had a caption contest in its humor section, but it hasn't been updated for a while.
  • Harry Potter fan site MuggleNet.com has a weekly caption contest. Warning: May be filled with in-jokes involving Hufflepuff House and GEICO.
    • 'Weekly', of course, meaning 'whenever Eric gets around to updating it'.
  • In the 'online forum/blog' variant, Fark will periodically offer farkers a chance to caption an odd picture, usually one featuring erstwhile dignified and newsworthy persons. (We're looking at you, Mr. President.)
  • Twin Skies, an under-production MMORPG by Meteor Games, had one before it went back under the knife. It used screenshots of tests of the game.
  • The Adventure Game Studio forums used to host regular 'Caption Contests', where one user mashed a couple of completely unrelated pictures together and then challenged other users to make a (vaguely) coherent comic out of this.
  • mezzacotta's infrequently-updated strip Awkward Fumbles is basically a Caption Contest webcomic. Comics are drawn with word balloons but no dialog, which other readers submit.
  • The Daystrom Institute Technical Library (a Star Trek fan site) has a monthly one, involving pictures of all Live ActionStar Trek series in rotation.
  • Trek BBS also has regular threads on the subject.
  • 'Caption This!' mentioned above lasted until the reruns stopped airing in the mid-2000s, it inspired numerous other websites started by loyal participants knowns as 'Cappers'. One such notable site is Hipsoda's Caption Crack
  • This is the focus of the last Breather Episode of Adventure Time, entitled 'Blenanas'. The in-universe magazine BLE has one of these of a caveman with a saber-toothed tiger biting his leg while lying on a therapist's couch. Finn's caption for it is 'OUCH! HEY THIS ISN'T HELPING!' Finn is determined to prove his caption is hilarious, but the only one who agrees with him is the Ice King, who was laughing more at the picture and has his own caption. 'Hey, Doc, I've got a caveman in my teeth!' The winning caption? 'I'm going to write you a prescription for one giant club.' Finn and the Ice King didn't find that one funny.

Alternative Title(s):Beat This Caption, Caption Competition

Index

Neopia's been around for quite some time, and it has quite the storied past. Relive some of the olden days by perusing through our history exhibits below.

Neopets Caption Contest

By Year

Did you know that on March 23, 2004, Sponge was announced as a Lab Ray only colour? Or how about that the first photographed Caption Contest was released on July 7, 2010?

Neopets caption contest guide

Neopets Caption Contest Guide

All that and more is documented in the year-by-year timelines below.

Caption Contests Online

More History

There's more to Neopian history than just dates. Check out the sections below to read up on old characters, old games, and some scrapped Neopet colours.

Flash Preservation

As Flash comes to the end of its lifetime in 2020, we are doing what we can to preserve Neopian content that has been created in Flash. Below, you will find various collections of old Flash-based content that have been converted into modern formats for your viewing enjoyment.

For more information, see our guide to the End of Flash Support.