On the 24 August, 2004 Gambler’s Help Southern community educator, Keith Don, started a blog called ‘GuruBlog’ on the Gambler’s Help Southern website. The aim of the blog was:

"to educate and inform the wider world about gambling issues in Victoria, Australia and internationally with a specific focus on trying to reduce the potential for harm through making useful information accessible to the average person."

The blog presented perspectives on gambling issues from

Australia and around the world and was written in an emotive style in order to generate interest and debate on a range of gambling topics.

The blog also tried to advocate for change on a range of issues that could be seen as potentially harmful, including the exposure children to gambling.

There were two significant successes that ‘GuruBlog’ had on this front, being the Bratz slot machine and the Neopets gambling games.

In September 2004, GuruBlog was alerted to a Japanese-based website that promoted the internationally successful Bratz dolls. The website had a slot machine with complete Bratz branding as a game for children to play. After receiving feedback that many in the global gambling research and services community were being rebuffed by the US distributor of Bratz dolls, Gurublog sent a detailed letter to MGA Entertainment, the manufacturer of Bratz. Within 24 hours MGA responded positively saying that the site, which was created by their Japanese licensee, would be removed (and it remains down to this day.)

After receiving attention about the successful Bratz action, we received information about Neopets, a online virtual world where users create creatures which they nurture online by playing games and collecting items. Whilst there are a significant number of users who are teenagers and adults, the nature of the animals encourages users under eight to play the multitude of games which included a wide selection of gambling games such as ‘Brucey B Slots’, ‘Jub Jub Black Jack’ and ‘NeoPoker’.

GuruBlog wrote a letter to NeoPets requesting action but were ignored. The cause was taken up by a range of other groups in Victoria and received mass media attention in the Herald-Sun and on Today Tonight. Macdonald’s who ran a NeoPets Happy Meal promotion buckled to pressure and forced Neopets to block the gambling games to Australian users.

Users from around the world bombarded the gurublog site with comments arguing for, but mainly against the action taken to remove the gambling games for young children.

Eventually a reasonable conclusion was reached with NeoPets blocking the adult-modelled gambling games for young users while enabling them for older users.