 An In Depth Analysis of Editorial Goodies
by welikedots
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Greetings Neopians, *Tosses cookies*! Today we’re going to analyze the many sweet and salty goodies thrown, tossed, handed, and dropped on the editorial staff every week. If you’re not familiar with the editorial, I highly suggest reading through the backlog! Every Neopian times issue, a dedicated staff member will read Neopian questions and comments, and select a few to answer. It’s a great way to get clear answers, and a fun time all around. Most questions are pertinent to the times at hand, and are a really great way to get a look into what living in Neopia in years past was like! Over time, a pattern of throwing treats the staff member on deck has emerged; and while we definitely don’t condone bribery in any form on Neopets *cough*, slipping the editor a cookie is a fun and common occurrence. According to the current editor themselves, Scrappy could “literally eat everything in Neopia,” (editorial, issue 781) and will definitely “stop working if we don’t feed them” (editorial, issue 782). So, we think of these treats as less of a bribe and more of a pleasantry. With hours slaving over a hot desk full of questions, we don’t blame her! With that in mind, I’ve analyzed all of these treats (non sweets included) to bring you a detailed report of the first half of Year 19!
Treat Variations Count
Cookie clockwork yooyu-shaped, double chocolate chunk, buffet of, 19
Candy Cotton candy 3
Cake Birthday cupcake, muffin 3
Drinks Lemonade, coffee, borovan, fruityputity smoothies, sweet tea 4
Brownies
2
Other Flowers,ramen,camping food, blanket, frozen tuna, cheopple, bone, marbles, confetti 9
As an overall trend, cookies take the whopping lead with 19 total instances! They’re followed by an even spread between candy, cake, and drinks of various sorts with 4 cases each. Brownies come in at the bottom of the list two 2, but are noteworthy for having two occurrences in the past month of Relaxing, versus the three cookies. Still impressive, Mrs. Brownie, considering the strong crown cookies wear (maybe they’re easy to throw?)! Looking back on the year, there seemed to be a small, but noticeable treat drought during the end of the month of Running and the beginning of the month of Eating. This dry spell correlates around the time of our editor position swap from our dear Country Queen to our equally dear Scrappy! Is this a coincidence, or maybe it just took some time for Scrappy to rev up into the true spirit of the month of Eating? The general trend of treats has gone up from the first quarter of the year with fourteen total occurrences, versus the second quarter of the year with twenty one! *Phew, takes a breath* Now let’s look at the methods of giving! By all means it was harder to categorize these, and I just grouped them with like actions. The categories being handing, throwing versus raining/falling, and other! It’s harder to analyze the actions taken since they tend to be more varied, but I thought I’d include them for the sake of completeness!
Method Variations Count
Hands Gives, brings, offers, presents 10
Throws Tosses, send 9
Rains Falls from the sky, sprinkles, showers, drop 5
Other Gently set, have, left 3
Overall, it’s most likely that something will be “thrown”, with 8 solo instances of things being thrown in the last half of the year! Other than that, the actions are pretty well balanced between throwing and giving. What do we take away from all this, other than me going a little crazy scribbling down cookies and tallying off brownies? Well - mostly that Scrappy loves being thrown cookies! But does this mean you have to bake a fresh batch of them just to get yourself heard for the next editorial? Well, no! In fact, according to my research only 34/126 entries had treats given, making it just under a thirty percent chance of an entry having this kind of thing in it at all! It adds a little flair, and I bet its fun for the editor to read, but definitely isn’t a requirement or suggestion. In general, if you want to get your question answered you should above all else, be kind, be concise, be patient, and have fun! Fun fact #1: The earliest Neopian Times editorial sections on record had a pretty different style of interaction from what we see today! Most of the questions were one liners, basic, and to the point. This was probably because there was still so much to learn about Neopia, and official help sites didn’t exist then either. The very first editorial question still on record was “When will we be able to dress our pets?” (editorial, issue 23)! Well, do we have news for you, Neopian of the past - Not only can you customize your pets, but you can make them hold a “Plate of Cookies” as well! Fun fact #2: According to editorial number 382 back in the Year 11, people were throwing cookies back then too! It seemed even then “most published Editorial questions start with *throws cookies*” but the editorial staff seemed all cookied out at the time, all but begging for no more cookies, please! I wonder if staff still feels buried under them today? Would you get tired of so many cookies? Ah, neggs - *tosses a bucket full of cookies and borovan from the sky, but somehow a meepit also got into the bucket and is eating all the good cookies without raisins*!! Thanks for reading this in depth analysis, I’ll be back next time with more crazy tables no one asked for but definitely needed! If cookies have reigned supreme for over eight years, I don’t think brownies have a chance. If someone ever tracks down the origin of the throwing, please Neomail me, the research demands it! P.S. I’m partial to throwing cheopples!
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