Punchbag Sid
Who is Punchbag Sid?
While you may be familiar with endlessly beating up Punchbag Bob, you might occasionally find yourself facing his much tougher brother, Punchbag Sid! Sid is very elusive and only shows up for a short block of time. You'll know he's available when you try to fight Punchbag Bob (in the Central Arena) but instead see a challenger icon of Sid with a red background.
Appearances
Sid must be activated by a member of TNT, and he only shows up for a limited amount of time. So fight him (and lose to him!) as soon as you can if you need his avatar!
When attempting to begin a fight, he will still show up on the challenger list named as Punchbag Bob (and when you fight him), but he will have an eyepatch instead of Bob's glasses and mustache.
Based on his appearances since his return in 2024, he may only be available for 1-3 hours each time, before disappearing again.
Past Appearances
All times listed below are approximate, within 5 minutes:
- May 15, 2025 from 9:40am-10:55am NST
- March 18, 2025 from 8:40am-10:40am NST
- November 15, 2024 from 10:00am-1:00pm NST
- October 22, 2024 from 6:25am-9:55am NST
- May 17, 2024 from 7am-8am NST
Stats and Weapons
See Sid's Challenger Page for details on his starting HP and weapons. Notably, he is the only 1P opponent to wield the Ultimate Chive of Death, which attacks with a whopping 160 icons!
You definitely don't want to eat these veggies!
Fighting Punchbag Sid
Avatar
If you lose to Punchbag Sid, you'll receive an avatar, which may be preferable over beating him for most Neopians!
Punchbag / Guide
Lose to Punchbag Sid in the Battledome. There won't be a "Something Has Happened" event, but the avatar will be added to your list.
Sid randomly appears and replaces Bob as a challenger when TNT decides to activate him. Keep an eye on Jellyneo's alert bell, which will ring when Sid makes an appearance.
Sid did not make any appearances from at least 2014 through May 17, 2024. He returned for ~1 hour on May 17, 2024, and has since been appearing every so often, with a detailed list on our guide.
Released: October 17, 2005
Beating Punchbag Sid
While you won't get another avatar from winning a battle with Sid, you will earn some pretty serious bragging rights, especially if you beat him on Strong or Mighty.
Average (Easy)
If your pet has at least 750 strength, you will need to deal at least 125 icons of damage in order to blast away all 2000 of his hit points. You can do this with only your Lens Flare, Warlock's Rage, and Freezer turns if you have a very expensive Battledome set firmly in our Elite tier. Otherwise, because Sid's Chive threatens to do 2400 damage all by itself, reflecting it back at him is your best bet.
A Super U-Bend, a Shovel Plus, and the Level 400 ability Reflect will reflect enough of Sid's Chive to leave him either knocked out or close to it. This will leave "only" a minimum of 396 damage you'll have to tank if Sid used his Chive and Jade Scorchstone against your reflectors.
It might take you a few tries to get Sid to cooperate by throwing his Chive into your reflectors. If he's still standing afterwards, your Lens Flare + Warlock's Rage turns should be more than enough to knock him out.
Strong and Mighty
Sid's strength boost goes way up on these difficulties, so reflection is even more important now than before. This will not be an easy victory, even for some of the strongest Neopets around!
Your free Lens Flare + Warlock's Rage + Freezer turns will be taken up by your use of Hubrids Puzzle Box and Evil Hubrid Statue, as that 33.3% HP drain is too good to pass up when Sid has 20,000 or 40,000 HP. The remaining 66.6% will need to mostly consist of you reflecting his damage back at him.
Only the best reflectors will be good enough. U-Bend of Great Justice and an Ultra Dual Shovel to reflect that massive Chive damage. A Mega U-Bend is acceptable if you have an especially high-HP pet, but it's noticeably worse.
Using your reflectors alongside the Reflect ability will give you the best chance of surviving a full turn while reflecting as much damage as possible. If you don't reflect the Chive on that turn, you'll have to restart the battle. If you do, then you'll only have a few thousand HP left to go.
There are a few ways you can bring the battle over the finish line. The best way is probably to try reflecting again, but by now you might not have enough HP left to tank another attack. Luckily, this is where a Thyoras Tear and/or Thick Smoke Bomb will come in clutch: if you put a reflector into the right weapon slot and your Tear into your left weapon slot, your reflector will reflect some damage before the Tear blocks the rest. Be sure to get the order correct, otherwise all the damage will be blocked before you can reflect it! Thick Smoke Bomb can serve as your second Tear (or your first, if you don't have one). You can even use your Level 500 ability if you need another turn of almost-invulnerability, but be careful: all Level 500 abilities can only be used once per day.
If you manage to get any specific item rewards from winning a battle with him that we don't have listed on our Battle Prizes page, please be sure to send us a ticket and let us know what you won!
This article was written by: Daino & macosten
