6 Tips for Making Valentine's Day a Success

1. Make it pink. Pink is a festive color not just reserved for the Kadoatery-Mew! avatar anymore. Even if you spend your days laboriously training your Neopet in the Mystery Island Training School, Valentine’s Day is the day to let the girly stereotypes fall! Pink is festive, bright, and cheery – all words you want you and your neofriends to experience on Valentine’s Day. Variations of pink are also acceptable, such as faint pink (if you just cannot let yourself dive into the spirit of Valentine’s Day but want to at least make an effort) all the way to neon pink. In addition, red is also a welcomed color on this holiday. However, make sure the red is not too ominous – we wouldn’t want your neofriends to think you are channeling Hubrid Nox!

2. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate! Where would Valentine’s Day be if it were not for the treats that are so fun to eat but so bad for our teeth? Do not fear, for you can indulge in candy for this one day out of the year! (Oh, and Halloween. But that’ll be our secret.) Fortunately for you, Neopets has a variety of chocolates for this occasion! The Chocolate Factory in the Neopian Bazaar stocks many types of chocolates and candies. One word of caution: do avoid giving your neofriends chocolates in the same shape as their neopets. There is nothing more awkward than biting off the tail of your Dark Chocolate Skeith just as your Skeith walks into your Neohome.

3. Send a card for those thoughts you cannot express. The Neopets Greeting Card area is chock full of lovely cards to send your neofriends! Whether you prefer the baby Lupe who has painted “I Luv U” on a canvas but gotten most of the paint on himself (we know how those baby Lupes get, after all) in the “I Love You” section or the more generic “You are my pal” by Sophie in the ”Friendship” section, to anything and everything in between, your neofriends will appreciate the thought and time you took to remember them.

4. Avoid sending the same items to multiple neofriends. If your neofriends and their pets talk to one another, and surely they do, there will be some uncomfortable silences when all your neofriends have realized you went to the Shop Wizard, asked him for the same items, and then bought multiples of the same item with very little thought as to the type of person they are. Valentine’s Day is about celebrating your friendships with people, and what better way to express that you care than by customizing the gifts for each individual? Do you have a neofriend that likes to battle? If it’s in your price range, perhaps they would like a Ghostkerbomb or a Freezing Potion. Do you have a friend that likes to play games? Perhaps they would enjoy the Aisha Board Game or Baby Aisha Ball-In-A-Cup Game to occupy their time.

5. Learn how to stretch a neopoint! Speaking of price ranges, now would be a great time to bring up the point that a good gift is not necessarily an expensive one, nor is an expensive gift always a good one. For example, maybe your friend collects the stamps given out in some of the Key Quest games which run a few neopoints on the Shop Wizard. Will they appreciate a gift of a Happy Anniversary Negg, for example? They will obviously accept the gift, but gifting them those stamps will show them that you are vested in their interests and thought long and hard about what they want. As corny as it sounds, good gifts do come from the heart – which is great, considering one of Valentine’s Day’s themes is “hearts.” However, by all means, if you can luxuriously spend neopoints as if you were the Wishing Well* incarnated, do so!

5a. Be creative. Being creative and learning how to stretch a neopoint often go hand in hand, which is why being creative is an offshoot of number 5. Think about activities that your neofriends enjoy doing on the site, and try to find a gift for them based on that. Sometimes that’s easier said than done, which is where the creativity part comes in. Maybe your friend is an extreme potato counter. He can count potatoes in his sleep. Maybe on Valentine’s Day, you can buy up all of the potatoes you can find and flail them to his inventory. We’ll see how well he can count them then! Another example is friends that like to play Neoquest. You might be asking yourself – how can you relate Neoquest to any sort of gift on the site? After all, Neoquest is a non-flash based game. Well, you are in luck, as the Plushie Palace sells certain plushies based on Neoquest characters. Once again, this will show your neofriend that you are in tune with their hobbies and have thought about them before selecting a gift. Finally, maybe you and a neofriend have some inside jokes based on the site. Let’s pretend that your neofriend was playing Maths Nightmare and lost the game because they said that 5 + 5 = 11. You might send them books about math in their title as a way to remind them of the incident (but don’t get too mean!).

6. Have fun! As much as getting a good gift is important, you should not forget the point of Valentine’s Day. It is a time to celebrate friends, new and old, and a way of expressing your celebration to them. It should be fun to pick out gifts, not a tedious task or chore like tending to your Neogarden (for those of us with not quite green thumbs, of course). As long as you enjoy buying the gift and it contains some sentiment to the receiver, you will do no wrong.

*Note: This is no way an endorsement of the Wishing Well avatar.