LOST - Original Build-a-Bearville Website

BACKGROUND: If you're familiar with virtual worlds, particularly ones made to compete with Webkinz then name "Build-a-Bearville" may ring a bell. Launched in late 2007 and closed in March 2015, it was a fun virtual world where you could play with the bears you made in real life, participate in sponsored events promoting certain brand tie-ins like Dairy Queen, make friends, and decorate your Cub Condo if you owned at least one bear. But what if I told you there was an older Build-a-Bear-Ville? So old...that there's virtually no documentation of it!

THE WEBSITE: It seems to have opened in early 2007, though I can't figure out when it closed due to having trouble getting both the site and buildabear's main site to display properly. I don't remember anything about the other locations, so unfortunately unless someone else who remembers this site chimes in I can't be of much help on that front. The only locations in the game were the Libeary (yes, thats the correct spelling), Virtual Store, 'Your Den', Theatre, Playground, and the Town Square. Since the part I remember most is the Virtual Store (and it's the only location with footage I could find), I can tell you it operated like a in-person store, albeit you couldn't actually buy a toy. You'd pick a bear, stuff it, fluff it, dress it, and then you could make it talk. You could use a clip of your own voice, and if you didn't have mic access or didn't want to use your real voice, you could use a text to speech of some kind as an alternative.

Unfortunately, when I tried to get the site working on Internet Archive I've had no success getting it in a playable state. Maybe it's because it's not connected to the servers of the site, or maybe my flash emulators aren't compatible enough, I've never been good enough at this sort of thing to know for certain which is the issue. Not to mention getting 'too many reloads' errors when I tried to see if the other snapshots had more functional versions than the page I got to work. It also had an account system, which might complicate things further. As of my post, I have not seen this resurface anywhere, including Flashpoint so I'm going to say it's safe to assume this game is fully lost for the time being. Below are all the images I could find of or mentioning the original version of Build-a-Bearville.

Here is some footage I found of players making their virtual bear speak.

I have yet to find a full video of the rest of the sites features or the bear making process.

And here are the links I used in Internet Archive to access this lost site- Build a Bear's main site is quite well documented, so all you'll need to search it for more information is "www.buildabear.com".

"http://www.buildabear.com/buildabearville/defaultOld.aspx"

"http://www.buildabear.com/buildabearville/"

I mainly used the snapshots from 2007- early 2008, but maybe you guys will have better luck finding things from late 2008 onwards from this site.