Moderator: EN minimods
juleic1123 wrote:Hey Hallowinxer, welcome back to the forums!! Ngl I don't remember you from before but superpupu sounds amazing. Your new name is great too, and the story behind it makes total sense.
Yeah, horror and creepy gothic vibes definitely suit the HalloWinx spirit!
It's awesome to see someone else who’s been in love with Winx since the very beginning like me, I started watching when I was 4 and it aired in Portugal, it's crazy how long ago that was and yet I still remember sitting down and watch it on my old bedroom, which eventually was where I also years later would join this website and forum and meet everyone! I relate so much to everything you said about growing up with Winx Club and all the memories tied to those old games like Kiko’s Adventure and Attack on Magix. I spent countless hours on those too, although I only saw Attack on Magix on those vintage coffee shops with games installed, they don't exist anymore but they were common back then in Portugal, and like you, I missed Winx Adventure so much... I don't think I spent a day without logging in to that game except... when, yknow, the old, slow computer loading for hours… yeah, I felt that pain back then. Although I believe it was because of the website, it was very slow and had countless bugs everywhere in terms of the scripting. Those bugs are also on waybackmachine so you can open the console and see more than 2000 error messages in some pages I missed the Garden of Charmix release because the website would stop responding and crash my computer.
That's why I rebuilt the website 100% from scratch. Everything you see was redone without a single script from the official old website, but remade by me to the current browsers and being as modern as possible.
Creating this website was a huge labor of love. Like you, this place was my childhood, and it’s so special to hear that others are connecting with it just like I did. Rebuilding this wasn’t just for everyone, it was also for me – I wanted to bring back that magic we all felt. I’m thrilled it feels like a good remake to everyone! Your enthusiasm makes it all worth it.
Also, your favorites are just on point! Stella is my fav again (the season 1-4 one, then I prefer Musa tbh) and I totally agree that the 2nd season is gold. Even though I prefer season 3 and 4 more for the stakes. Darkar and the Trix were such iconic villains, and honestly, Griffin needs way more love in the fandom – she’s fantastic.
natie wrote:The forum really was more than just Winx Club fans community. It was a unique place where we could push our creativity, learn something new, discuss Winx non-related stuff in a safe environment.
natie wrote: Oh, I guess the reason why I think that Mattel dolls are so rare is that we've never had them in Russia. In our country Winx Club series began airing in 2008, a few years later than in many other countries, so we had less seasons 1–3 themed stuff in general.
We definetly should create a topic with Winx Club Merch discussion. I'm wondering how our products were similar and what interesting stuff did other countries have.
natie wrote:But a few days ago I found out that in September this magazine has started publishing in Russia again.
Paper quality seems very poor, but otherwise it looks interesting. I was thnking about buying it, and a conversation with you makes me think that I should do it.
natie wrote:I'm still wondering myself why Winx Club was that popular in Russia. We've always had a pretty active art community and a lot of dedicated fans. But all my friends in real life also grew over Winx very quickly, I didn't feel alone about liking it only thanks to the online community.
natie wrote:I like both Witty and Jakks dolls! There also were Giochi Preziosi ones, they looked interesting too.
I like that Jakks dolls have very movable bodies, this is what attracts me the most! I dreamed of getting one of these when they first came out.
In Russia we had only Witty dolls. I'm not sure about Hallowinx line, but we had maaany other ones. Believix, Love&Pet, Sophix, Lovix, City Girl, Charmix... I still dream of them! I like their faces (at least those that were until ~2013) and they just make me too nostalgic not to dream.
Also, these dolls weren't like suuuper expensive back then, but definitely not everyone could afford them without a special occasion. I still remember a video where Iginio Straffi was shocked and disappointed by Winx dolls prices in stores during his visit in Russia in 2010. It was literally on our news.
We still have Winx dolls for sale now, but I don't know what brand of dolls they belong to.
wini13 wrote:Welcome back
korolyova wrote:I still don't understand why they had to close the forums
juleic1123 wrote:And legally, they couldn't do that, they would be arrested if they even tried. You can't sell data from children, let alone from children to children.
Hallowinxer wrote:
Omg this looks like the Winx 20th anniversary magazines! I've seen photos of the Italian one couple of months ago and fans were so excited that Winxs' iconic s1 outfits are back So maybe because of the 20th anniversary they re-started publishing the magazine in Russia?? Anyway that's so awesome!
Hallowinxer wrote:I've been thinking that maybe Winx was airing in a really perfect time in Europe because we didn't have so many magical girl shows back then. My friend from China didn't know Winx at all - maybe because in Japan ja China they had so much anime series, which came to Europe much more later. In Finland we had W.i.t.c.h. and Totally Spies, many people also watched Sailor Moon but I think we didn't have many other magical girl shows back then. Nowadays there're magical girl animes almost everywhere. I don't know which other series were popular in Russia back them but if you didn't have many same kind of series either maybe that's why Winx was so popular: it felt so fresh and unique. And of course Winx was also very well done! But haha these are only my own speculations.
Hallowinxer wrote:Yeah they're all so pretty! <3 And I'm so glad they made Sophix and Lovix dolls too (even though I don't own them -yet...) Until last year I didn't know Giochi Preziosi dolls exist and I was perplexed how many iconic outfits they had, which we didn't have for Mattel dolls. The Jakks dolls' faces are so ethereal <3 And I also like their articulated hands and feet because they just look so poetic somehow!
Hallowinxer wrote:Wow it's so cool that Iginio has visited Russia! It'd be interesting to see the video, sounds so hilarious But it's sad that all of the fans couldn't afford them
juleic1123 wrote:Season 2 is definitely darker than the first! But...... the final battle of Season 1 is so iconic to me it's still a better season finale for me than season 2. Even though the stakes in Season 2 were higher, that final showdown with Bloom and Icy was just too good, as well as the second half being essentially war against the Trix. It's hard to top that in terms of sheer impact.
And you're absolutely right—part of the issue was those old, slow computers, but the terrible website scripting made everything worse. Instead of starting from scratch, they just layered script after script over the old pages. The website had countless, COUNTLESS scripts being done on top of pages to redirect to the new version of the website. It was so poorly done it was even in the URLs "?wicket:bookmarkablePage=:sg.rbwmedia.centro.web.page." to avoid users being redirected to the season 3 website in "winxclub.com/page/" They didn’t even delete the Season 3 Character Pages or the Gardenia Park pages—just buried them under piles of code, causing the website to load an insane amount of extra content. Back in the day, if you converted the URL from winxclub.com/page/ or /image/ to the "?wicket:bookmarkablePage=:sg.rbwmedia.centro.web.page." you could actually find old sprites, images, and even the old .swf files hidden because they didn’t bother to clean it up! It was so poorly optimized. Unfortunately I knew about this only through waybackmachine, and none of them are saved... so while they're present in the codes, they're not available to be downloaded... otherwise I could get my hands on Gardenia Park's .swfs even...
And Winx Adventure? It was added to the website nine times, one for each language, and whenever you clicked "Play Now," the site had to check your websites browser’s language to load the right version. Naturally, this caused glitches, and sometimes the game wouldn’t load because it couldn’t find the right language file, leaving you stuck on loading or straight up not loading.
Looking back, it's hilarious to understand all this as a programmer now. As kids, we were just frustrated with slow loading, but now I can laugh at the madness behind the scenes. It feels surreal how fast my new version of the site is compared to that mess. I’m so proud of recreating it all visually from scratch, but ensuring none of that old pollution is there.
And you know, I feel bad for saying all of this, because at the end of the day that was and is my favorite website. Nothing can remove the happiness I felt there. The updates were so regular and there was so much care into the content we had in that time I feel bad just pointing out at their flaws, but it's sad that it was really bad.
If they had made a full sweep of the season 3 website, they could easily made the website much faster and bug-free...
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests