I loved Bearville, I used to play it all the time, I miss it.

While I disagree with the ripoff title (it's a word that does come off a bit hostile, no offense!) I loved everything about this video. Doing the proper research, and such. THANK YOU! By the way, you should consider making a video on MMORPGs like FusionFall, ToonTown, etc.

i was totally obsessed with lps as a kid and i remember playing the online game, i still have the plushie and i remember being so disappointed when i couldn't play it anymore :(

I don't consider LPS to be a webkinz rip off, but both are awesome in their own way. I'm a big supporter of Webkins and concepts like it, and I wish they never got rid of flash. It's nice to have a little stuffed animal that you can hold and hug, then go online into a new virtual world and play with them. Like, for a little kid that must be like a dream. I had a few webkins as a kid but i mostly just played with them in real life, but I think my mom and I went online once too, and played with my unicorn webkinz. Also Build-a-Bear shops have a nice concept too, because you used to be able to make your own bear. I support it all. I think kids need stuffed animals and toys as well as computer games. Can't have someone digital games and apps and no toys, and no one nowadays wants to live without internet and apps. You need the perfect balance

I used to play build a bearville & LPS online!! lost memories unlocked!!! awesome video :]

holy cow the rescue epets plus was a blast of nostalgia i almost completely forgot about! so glad you brought that up thats so wild

I never had Webkinz, but I LOVED all those sorts of MMOs and definitely got into LPSO. Great video as always!

i loved build a bear ville as a kid equally as webkinz, i had so many build a bears and webkinz because i loved both of those games so much

I remember getting a few LPSO plushes, some Beanie Baby 2.0 plushes, and a Shining Star plush as a kid. I remember wanting them because they were like Webkinz but I ended up playing logging in once or twice on each site and never touched them again. Still have all the plushes and I think all of them are very cute but the sites never captured my attention enough. Been playing Webkinz for 15 years though. Great vid!

This was a great nostalgia trip as I played a handful of these as a kid circa 2010. Except, I *KIND OF* played the Littlest Pet Shop one? Except I specifically remember it being called LPS "VIP". All I remember is my plushie looked a bit different than the LPSO ones (I had a yellow tabby cat with blue eyes and orange patches with a different texture on them). I don't remember a whole lot about the game other than a ddr style mini game; I played that one the most because one of the dance moves your pet would do would have its head banging around and I thought it looked funny. All I remember other than that was that one day I just couldn't find the site anymore. A family member actually gifted me a LPSO yellow cat, but I never got into it. To me, the plush didn't have the same charm. This is also one of the only places I've seen mention the Ty 2.0 which I also played fairly regularly back in the day. You worded it best: It was close, but it didn't quite meet the charm of Webkinz. I vaguely remember some sort of mall food court you could visit, a window-washing minigame with recognizable stock music (I think the republican elephant and democratic donkey are somehow a part of that game), and a birds-eye 3D chatroom Club Penguin style (specifically a halloween-themed room) with a jukebox feature on the HUD full of 2009 hits like Rascal Flatts "Life is a Highway" and Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling". And yet after all this, Webkinz is still a live service, and I, in my twenties, purchased a classic, in-tact webkinz to play it for old times sake. It's still fun. I never recovered my old account with 30+ Webkinz before they wiped their database, but I have an eagle named Snork and a bat named Meatball now. Life is good :)

I had practically every franchise in this video except Build-a-bear. I even had Nakamas too(made by Ganz like Webkinz, but more focused on crafting and the sock animal aesthetic). All these games should've been preserved, but now I'll never know if they were as good as I remembered.

a site i remember.. petpetpark and moshi monsters .. i believe moshi monsters may still be around but pet pet park has closed their doors

So much lovely nostalgia, also I love all the cute bootleg plushies, very nice work lol xD

The first virtual plush game I got into was LPSO. I loved the art style and mini games. There were lots of awkward kids (like me) playing LPSO, so the social aspect was really fun. When LPSO closed, I got into Webkinz.

When I was a kid, I remembered being obsessed with a song on the Shining Stars website and I’ve spent so many years looking for it to no avail 😭 loved the video 🩷

Omg completely forgot about littlest pet shop plushies and rescue pets 🥺 buildabearville was so magical like especially during the holidays!

I love the side by side comparisons! Very impressed that the LPS plush can stand up was NOT expecting it that! The tush tag is also cute but how did they prevent people from stealing them in the stores? Was it sealed like the others somehow? also RUSS MADE THE ORIGINAL TROLL DOLLS??? I also COMPLETELY forgot about the 3D epets!! I love that you explored the companies more! Awesome video!!!

I totally remember Beanie Babies 2.0. and that food court! Edit: My cousin and I actually went to Build A Bear one time when we were kids and made an ice cream scented bear.

I really enjoy your content. Well put together, your connections makes sense and there’s SO much great information in this video! Keep up the good work, im now a forever fan 🥳❤️

fun fact i actually still have my LPSO plush i got way back when the game was still open,, i think it was the ladybug plush and surprisingly it's still in good condition after all these years

OMG I loved my epets so much! I had a border collie named Rocky and I wrote his name on his collar. I remember cutting the thread on the front paws bc I didnt like how they were sewn together 😂 I remember the commercial making me the most hyped I'd ever been as a child, and literally begging all of my relatives to get me an epet for Christmas! Love the vid, lots of nostalgia

This makes me so nostalgic and kind of sad like mobile games and the wide variety of options available now to kids on tablets, phones, etc is just so shallow compared to the well thought out and carefully designed online worlds from the 2000’s

I thought Rescue Pets was a fever dream!!! Thank you so much for making this video, been looking for years

This video was fantastic, i've seen a few videos on similar subjects from bigger creators, but yours is by far the most in-depth & informative! Also, the way you deliver your words just scratches my brain right. You deserve all the love & def ALL the subscribers!

Wow! Great video! This type of content if my cup of tea~ hehe I really like that you actually bought and show the toys mentioned and do compare them! So interesting!💖💖💖

I completely forgot about Rescue Pets omg- Definitely earned a sub!! Loved the video full of nostalgia

I played nearly all of these, I’m so glad you made a video about them! I miss LPSO and Shining Stars and I’m like the only one I know who remembers them

Thank you for making this video it was super cool! I had almost all of these these toys as a kid, but had zero idea the beanie babies with that plastic on them were connected to an online game.

great video!!! i played all of these (besides the rescue pets) and webkinz, so this was a super fun watch :D

I was OBSESSED with Beanie Babies 2.0. It helped that my prized plushie was a Beanie Baby, normal.

I think I used to have a beenie baby 2.0 but I had no idea the website existed. I think I had the giraffe.

u don’t know how happy this video makes me!!! i grew up with beanie babies 2.0 and bearville. even if they were clones, i miss those games so much. i used to spend hours playing 2.0 and was devastated when it shut down. seeing u taking a deep dive into these virtual worlds makes me ecstatic! thank you so much!!

I vaguely remember playing the LPS one (I had both the cat and the penguin and probably still have them buried in my plushie boxes somewhere). All I remember is logging in one day and my pet refusing to move no matter where I clicked (possibly due to my free trial expiring, not sure) and not logging in ever again after that.

i hope your channel gets more popularity

russ also apparently either cofounded or made wholely another virtual pet named seapals which looked a lil like beanie boos but they were sea creatures and also finger puppets. the site was in borked 3d and peaked around 09 according to my friend. didn't last cuz it was too niche only other thing i can recall is the myepets 3d pets looked no different than the regular ones only the tags and the box sucked becuz the 3d was butt ugly. my friend wanted to play more but lost their password and mga's customer service was more abysmal than webkinz's if u can believe that. they sort of brought it back with a rebooted line of electronic versions of the old plushes with a 'modern' look through a sub-brand. Thats as new a response ur gonna get regardin myepets. There were different versions of the LPS plush, the ones i'm aware of were a paper code attached via plastic on the collar that you had to loosen and then snip off. The other stuff still holds up tho in terms of miscellaneous webkinz bootlegs not mentioned here, i'n only aware of 'mushabelly university' tho i can't find any online resource on it. They're huge, round, things, in my friends case it wuz some kinda green alien. Squeeze and they say gibberish. They made a whole line of aliens and the site had room building and clothing and playing games and food. No records beyond an old link and some of the plush as photos online.

This is such a well put together video, you don't have enough subs!

I miss Beanie Babies 2.0 so much, I miss all my friends and everything about it

Really good video!! I used to play a couple of the ones you mentioned, and I still have my old plushies for them. I played Shining Stars super early on into its launch because a family friend worked at Russ Berrie and she gifted me the orange cat, but as much as I enjoyed it I do remember it lacking a little in gameplay compared to webkinz. I also had a pink+white striped cat for beanie babies 2.0 and I think I had another cat for Rescue pets my epets? (which I'd totally forgotten about somehow until I watched the video!!) There were a couple more I played back then too that weren't on the list that I think were pretty neat too! One was another from Russ called seapals, I also had a plush purple fish gifted to me from the same family friend but I dont recall too much about the game. The plushies are smaller and work as finger puppets and they have an embroidered logo. There was another that was a big part of my childhood too called Kookeys!! I remember around 2007-8 I bought a penguin plush at a tiny local store and was given a calico cat plush for free with it. I still see the plushies being sold on ebay and stuff, but there's very little info or documentation left of the site that I could find, though I can remember quite a bit of it. There were a lot of things different from webkinz but it was still pretty fleshed out and probably my 2nd fav that I'd played, maybe tied with shining stars. Some things were like... different areas where you could buy houses for high prices, there was a college I think, and there was lots of background music and a main theme. I remember it got revamped a little somewhere in between it's lifespan up until around 2011 ish iirc? And I think it shut down pretty quietly, I was surprised to find the site entirely gone nowhere to be found when I went to log in one day. Also iirc, while trying to find more info some time ago I'd read something like that it was already in the prototype stage when webkinz came out, so I'm not even sure that the original plan was to hop onto the trend. I'm super happy someone made a video on this topic!!! Sorry for the long essay of a comment, I just always found it really interesting! I still play webkinz all the time and if the others like it that I liked were still around I'd definitely play them too. I'm glad webkinz is still going strong (though I really wish they didn't discontinue the old style plushies) but it's a shame there's no other site really like it left anymore from what it looks like. :(

The thing I remember most about the beanie babies one is that they played a high school musical track for whatever reason. I’m not sure they got permission for that either.

love this video ^v^ and im so glad i saw it cause i had no idea there were people working on remaking LPS online.. as a kid i brought one of the plushies for it cause i was so into virtual worlds but the site shut before i ever got to play with it..

Had Pico as a child, a lot of the plush toys I had I wasn't aware they were even connected to any game I could've played (including my Webkinz toys) Also assumed Pico was just a fancy girl with the pink fur being a scarf

Okay but does anyone remember koo-keys??? That's probably the most obscure webkinz clone, definitely lost media by now, but I have 2 of the plushies so it was definitely real. Aurora, I believe?

So, it does seem like usual trend rival where if something becomes really popular, other companies would want to make their own. I do remember playing what feels like a different version of Littlest Pet Shop online site as well as Bearville, which both were very fun, even if the former was hard, mainly because it was one of my first online games and I wasn't used to how it worked. It's good how the popular thing have influenced many people and creating their own, some turning out to be as good as the one it took the idea from and others are obvious rip-off cash grabs.

Such a great, informative video! I have one of those beanie baby plushes that I got from a friend, I had no idea it was associated with a website!

My daughter, who is Autistic, recently asked me to start playing her Webkinz account. It is still fun.

This was well put together. I never knew about any of this. Do you introduce me to a new world

I still have my shining stars white cat but I never played the online game. I also have my beanie baby 2.0 pink and white cat, golden retriever, and black spooky cat, and I also played the online game. AS WELL AS my LPS VIP Pink cat, I had a ton as a kid but I donated the rest other than the kitty which I also played the LPS VIP game. OFC all my webkinz too hehe. These games were my childhood LOL

i remember when Littlest Pet Shop Online was out and really wanted to play it. my parents got me the exact same penguin plush and tried to help me register it on the game, but no matter what we did, it just would not work. i don't remember why, and i don't think we ever understood why it didn't work, so i was never actually able to play the game.

I have a shining star plush, but never knew what the little star was, thats so cool to know where it came from!

I loved and still love webkinz and I remember briefly dipping my toes into shining stars and myepets, not the same

Dude I had this frickin Dog Caterpillar plushie from Webkinz and I’ve never found it since and nothing is online and I honestly am questioning if it even EXISTED. I miss that plushie.

I grew up with each and everyone of these. I was just a big fan of toys to life pets as a kid and tbh i believe to this day webkinz is the source of my plush addiction, im still happy to have grown up with all these plushies and sites. another one i remember was a site called mushabelly university or something like that. they were these big round plushies that had a voicebox in the paw. They also had a whole online world which i cannot find any info about anymore. I remember having the elephant.

Webkinz was my absolute favorite, but admittedly, I had and played with every single one of these other toys.

Shining stars was like Webkinz but with the monetization to the max. I got a single Shining Stars tiger, and you got access to this one platform, but if you wanted to explore elsewhere you needed to get past barriers that had pet requirements, so for this area you need to buy 2 pets, this area 5, this area 8 etc. etc. Essentially if you didn't have a bed covered in shining stars plushes, you were gonna get walled off pretty fast. There wasn't much to do in the game either, I quickly just went back to my webkinz

My older sister actually had a Shining Star plushie (it was the snow owl), but no one in the household knew about the website and game.

As a webkinz addict and a child who lived under a rock i have recently been looking for webkinz everywhere. mostly in Goodwill's in my town. but today i found a shining stars plush, a frog. one of my favorite animals. i was gonna try to see if the code worked but was sad when the site was unavailable. but the frog is still adorable.

From a beanie boo colecter, I never heard of Beanie Babies 2.0

Interesting and informative video. I like the detection some of these people have, working to remake something they loved! Though I feel like "ripoff" wasn't the right word to use here. Calling them "copycats" would have been more accurate.

my webkinz lion staring at your webkinz lion:

This is the equivalent to “We have Web Kinz at home.”

I played Build a Bear ville when I was younger. I loved it!

Ms. Birdy is finally fixed! She now has no very opened eyes!

Beanie Babies and Bearville were my childhood, too!

I played LPSO when it came out and played for its entire lifespan, I remember I was so fucking sad when it shut down I had this dancing LPS dog toy that had a code and the code pretty much gave me a permanent membership on LPSO

I remember shining star! I had the beagle. As a kid, my brother would ride his bike in the back yard and I'd throw the beagle at his wheel so it would get crushed. We even had a song we sang everytime we did it.

i love this video so much

I have a shining stars toy which was a gift from one of my old friends when I was eight.

I was watching the shining stars part and when she was showing the feet I realized that I had one and dug through my plushies and found my childhood favorite stuffed animal I didn't even know that there was a website to it until now.I even checked the tag to find shining stars on it.

I remember shining stars. I had no idea where my star was, and my mom still has one with an intact and unredeemed tag/code. I don't think I even knew it was a game

i had no idea shing stars was mostly lost media now- i played it alot as a kid and still have the plushies and i sometimes see them second hand :p its nice when i hear them getting mentioned anywere cause i swear it feels like i was like the only person who used the site loool

seeing shining stars uncovered some BURIED memories hahaha. thanks for the thorough and interesting video~!

I remember collecting Webkinz when I was 7 years old!

Lps literally started in the 90s

I had shining stars! Specifically the lab and beagle, I never saw the ads since I was given them as a gift. I remember also having a lion and bunny but I lost the bunny. I still have my lab one to this day. I also remember I cut off the bow so It has a scarf I made for it when I was younger

The 3d version of my epets looks like a roblox game

LPS had LPS VIP before LPSO. I had some LPS VIPs, but really didn't play the online games that much. I assumed LPSO was the same as LPS VIP just with different plush designs. All I remember from LPS VIP is that you sign the plush up on the website and play some flash games has that pet. I don't remember if it was a virtual pet game tho.

i remember playing beanie babies 2.0 almost as much as webkinz! when they made the switch to 3D avatars, they changed just about everything else on the site at the same time, and not only were the avatars really creepy looking to me, but it just wasn't the website i had grown accustomed to :( all of the things i had grown to like about the site were gone and my pet wasn't cute anymore, so i had no reason to continue playing. which is a shame, because the website definitely had its own charm. one of the things that stood out about the site is that there were different 'radio stations' you could listen to while playing, so whenever i think of this game, i can't help but hear 'drive' by incubus in my head lol

I had one of those Beanie Baby 2.0. It was a Pink Cat.

I used to have a Shining Stars dragon when I was a kid and now seeing all of these again makes me feel pretty old and I am only going to turn 27 on September 22nd this year. Good god this is awkward for me but it is good looking back to all of this.

I loved the build a bear game I had a brown dachshund named Brownie I played it before I even got into webkinz

I never got to play buildville, but not because I didn't have a build a bear, but for some reason after I made my account with my build a bear, I was unable to get into it. I was so upset. I love webkinz, but Webkinz deleted my account just because I hadn't touched it in either 6 months or a year. They're guidelines about it i found confusing. I'm still pissed about it.

I HAD A SHINING STARS PLUSH ... i didn't have any idea that there was a website. Or it was already closed

For those who use subtitles, I've added subtitles for this video. 😀

Imagine if a dog you got from your animal shelter could be signed in online 🤣

OK BUT I HAVE TONS OF SHINING STARS- i didn’t know there was an online website-

I am a adult and I Played on webkinz along with my kids ,I bought them lots of them along with myself; i do miss playing the games .

I've never heard of Webkinz but I did own one of the TY dogs, always wondered why they had this stupid plastic logo on their butt. No clue that there was a game. I had the LPS cat plush and knew about the game. You could play it for exactly one year than had to buy another plush to keep playing...also it had some VIP sections that required extra money monthly or so. My mom deemed it a scam, rightfully so in my opinion. The plushies had plastic collars though. And the game looked completely different than the one in the video. Friend of mine had one of the Resque Pets and I really just wanted one plush because they're cute. We never found them anywhere though. The only game I played for quite some time and that's forever stuck in my memory is UB Funkeys. And I had this Bella Sara online game. "Magical horse" cards you could buy pretty much everywhere with codes adding the horses into the game, but they weren't really needed to play it.

Omg Shining Stars! I had a really soft snowy owl. Naturally, I named her Snowy. I also had an absolutely horribly textured monkey. Man, the site SUCKED tho. Like, it was cool that they told you where to look to try to find the star. But the areas and the games pretty much sucked. All I remember is being bored on the website.

I only know the shining stars because someone I knew had some kind of DVD movie or some kind of weird short special about it and that's my only interaction knowing of shining stars that and I only heard of the Build-A-Bear every once in awhile depending if we had cable or not and that was pretty much it but these other ones sound pretty interesting I'm not going to lie

Even though I loved Webkinz, I was also a *huge* fan of the Ty Girlz! I loved choosing my own music and the around the world aesthetic. When I wasn’t changing my characters’ clothes, I was trying to earn money in the arcade.

i had the unicorn shining star stuffed animal, i also remember making an account and never going back on. rip shoelace the unicorn

I bought one of the littlest pet shop online plushes (an orange cat) at a second-hand store and I never knew it was connected to a game!

I had the LPS toys. My sister had the monkey. I had the dog, the horse, the butterfly and the spider. But my mom got them for us because we asked for more and my sister’s monkey she had it since she was three

I'm surprised that Code Lyoko never had a Webkinz-styled online game.

I had a Shining Stars penguin before anything else because Webkins were too expensive. At least that was my mom's reasoning. It was ok, but pretty lackluster. I remember the space world had a "COMING SOON" expansion that my brother and I would check on every once in a while. The site's closure came sooner. I know I had a Beanie Baby online but can't remember the kind. All I really remember is a typing-practice game that I spent most of my time on because school kept keeping me in from recess since I couldn't pass their typing program. Build-a-Bearville was probably my favorite buy-to-enter online world, even after I finally themed a Webkins birthday party so I could finally have Webkins. The world felt really fleshed out and my house had a cool rooftop garden that I took care of. They had a lot of seasonal events that I got excited for, and I still have some of the original songs stuck in my head. I think the biggest reason I liked it was because my avatar was an actual person and the site wasn't "scandalous" like Movie Star Planet. If I wanted to play with animals I'd log off and go play quarry with my magnetic-feet-LPS.

Another one what I have never seen anyone talk about is a line called KooKey Cats or something like that

I played all of these except for Rescue Pets, and I have very distinct and vivid memories for each.

I wouldn't call them rip offs but I did love bearville

I remember playing LPSO together with my cousin when we were kids. Now i am 18 (19 soon) and she is 20. Good times back then

The only one I remember was shining starts I played that one a lot