The Problem With Purple
Written by terragainsborough

I love purple! It's my favorite color. You could even say I'm obsessed with it (which I am)! That's why I'm upset about the current state of the purple pet and petpet paint brushes - they don't paint your pets purple as advertised, but instead purple with orange spots.

When I first started playing neopets three years ago, my friend told me I could paint my pets colors other than the beginning four. "Can I paint them purple?!" I asked her---to which she replied that I could, but that I'd need a paint brush.

I played neopets almost non-stop for the first few days until I had enough neopoints for the coveted purple paint brush! I rushed over to the rainbow fountain to paint my uni! But, when I got there, I found out I couldn't paint my uni purple. My friend told me to look up the list of paintable pets and I did. My eyrie could be painted purple. That was pretty cute. I went ahead and painted my eyrie. He was so adorable! I just loved him!

That's when I decided I wanted all my pets to be purple. At the time not many pets could be painted purple. Later the neopets team began to introduce many purple pets, but I was troubled by one common theme. Almost every single pet released after I joined that could be painted purple had some orange in it. "Orange?! Yech! Orange doesn't go with purple!" I kept saying to myself.

Every time a new pet could be painted purple, I would get my hopes up. But, alas, the orange continued to invade purple's territory. I wanted my pteri to be purple, but I couldn't stand the unsightly orange spots. I still wanted my uni to be lavender, but that orange mane?! I didn't think so.

The only purple pet color without orange released after I joined was the acara. My fourth pet happened to be an acara so I could finally paint one of my other pets purple! Unfortunately on May 19, 2004, both the purple acara and eyrie developed the contagious spots. I immediately repainted them both, at a great cost. Before May 19, forty-four pets could be painted purple. Of all those, only six didn't have any orange in them. Currently forty-six pets can be painted purple, but they all have orange spots.*

I looked at all the other solid color versions of neopets. Almost all of them contain the solid color and any colorations that stay the same for any painted version of a pet (such as the tan fur of an usul or pink paws of an acara). Back in April, the neopets team noticed that some of their red pets looked a bit too pink or orange and created the pink and orange paint brushes to fix the problem.

I realize that not everyone agrees with my opinion. Some people like purple and orange together. But if I wanted a purple and orange pet, I'd paint it with a split paint brush! There are currently twenty-three pets that can be painted with the split paint brush. Twenty-two of those overlap with the purple pets. I think there wouldn't be too much of a problem for the purple and orange lovers.

Right now the purple paint brush is ranked as the seventh most popular paint brush. This number surprised me at first, but then I decided to compare some other stats of the purple paint brush. It has the fifth largest selection of pets that can be painted a color; only five neopets can't be painted purple. Right now it costs about 90,000 NP making it the cheapest paint brush after the four original colors you can paint a pet. The fact that such a wide variety of pets can be painted purple relatively cheaply are some reasons why it is such a popular choice, not just because people like the way it looks.

I talked to a few people to find out their opinions.

I asked each person a series of three questions.
1.) Do you think purple and orange look good together on pets and petpets?
2.) Do you think purple paint brushes should paint pets and petpets only purple and without orange?
3.) Have you ever wanted to paint a pet or petpet purple, but didn't because of the orange?

karismarie (college art student) answered:
1.) No! They look awful. If Neopets really feels the need to put another color with purple, they should go by some sort of color system. They could have picked another "cool color" such as blue or even its complimentary color, yellow. There's no logical reason for picking orange. It looks terrible.
2.) Why not? Green makes them green. Red makes them red. Heck, orange makes them ORANGE, not orange with purple spots.
3.) When I was looking for colors to paint my pet, Hadean, purple was immediately tossed out. Not because I didn't like purple, but because of the orange stripes. It looked really bad. Hadean even threatened to attack me if I came at him with a purple paint brush. So I would have to say yes.

saphire_angel_1324 answered:
1.) No, I love the purples they use, but the orange seems a little weird to me.
2.) No, I think they should add another color to make it look good, but something that goes with purple. Not orange.
3.) Yes, I wanted to paint my babaa purple, but I decided not to when I saw the orange spots.

cardcaptor0sakura190 answered:
1.) They look good together in real life, but when put on a pet it looks weird.
2.) Yes, I think the purple paint brush should just paint your pet purple.
3.) I was going to paint one of my pets purple, but I didn't like the orange.

sarkastikat answered:
1.) Well, yes. I have to tell you the truth that I do think purple and orange look good together on pets and petpets.
2.) Yes I do. I think it defeats the purpose to have a purple paintbrush when there's another colour in it.
3.) Yes, I have.

aliensquirrel31 answered:
1.) No, I hate the orange plus purple.
2.) Yes, I would like it to have no orange.
3.) No, because I've never had a purple paint brush.

kaleighliz answered:
1.) On pets they look alright, but on petpets, I don't like it.
2.) I think that the orange could stay, but they should change the name of the brush.
3.) I considered painting my Meekins purple, but didn't like the orange spots on it.

An anonymous participant answered:
1.) I am not partial to purple and orange. I think that basically, if you want another colour it should be yellow with the purple...
2.) Yes, it should be mostly purple. We didn't pay to have the orange.
3.) Yes. When I was painting, I considered purple, but I hated the design colours for the Cybunny, and that was the only pet that I could paint purple...

As you can see, more people want plain purple pets or pets with another color other than purple and orange pets.ยช Even those who like the color combination think it should be changed. The number of people who would be upset at the change is far fewer than those who would welcome it. And for the people upset, there's a good possibly they could paint their pet split anyway.

One all too often event that I hear is people painting their pet with the purple paint brush assuming that it will be solid purple. When they see the spots they become very upset and realize they've just wasted precious neopoints on something they don't want. While I encourage all Neopians to check the rainbow pool to see how your pet will look first, a lot of new players don't know that it exists. Another sad story is people writing to me and saying they've got to start saving up neopoints to repaint they're pets that have had orange spots added since they painted them purple. My heart goes out to them and I all I can say is play lots of games.

The purpose of this article is to hopefully have a poll on the front page about what to do with the orange spots. I'm confident Neopians around the world would majority vote to get rid of them. If the Neopets Team decides to get rid of the spots, some possible options for them are to increase the numbers of pets that can be painted split or to make a purple with orange spots paint brush.

I know that the Neopets Team are receptive to change, a most recent case being the change of the kougra. After many player complaints they had a poll to see what the new kougra look should be. I hope that they can do the same for purple pets.

If you'd like to sign a petition to get rid of the orange spots, then please neomail me at terragainsborough.

*Out of the thirty purple petpets, seventeen have no orange. I interviewed forty-four people. Over 70% of the participants don't like purple and orange pets and petpets. Over 77% of the participants think the paint brush should paint only purple. Of the 33 participants who had thought about painting a pet purple, 67% declined because of the orange.

Special thanks to:
aliensquirrel31
rammer2jammer
anti_avril_51
average_neoguy
blackbutterfky333
brad_o_12
cardcaptor0sakura190
cute__lilgurl
daisy2121
dameagatha
dogloverforever18
edragon2
evil_neopians_guild
foxy_fae_is_me
hc_hug
hc_huggle
jamileigh17
kaleighliz
karismarie (for getting me started on neopets and for giving me the idea for this article!)
linwer
lizz11221
marshmallow_08
neofreak_83
purple_soul101
rainbowsong21
saphire_angel_1324
sarkastikat
serenitygurl250
theartistsway
toongirl15
tweak186
varekai_13
venus100561
and everyone else who participated!



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