I’m calling it: this is my favorite Goosebumps book of all time.

I can say this with confidence since I’m reposting all of these from IG until I catch up to where I’m at now in my reading. I’ve read the rest. This is my favorite.

The story centers on a young writer banging out stories on a magic typewriter and I can tell you why I liked this so much:

1) I love typewriters. Always have. I have three now and need two more before I call my little collection complete (a Hermes 2000, perhaps with a German keyboard so I can keep practicing my Deutsch and an Olivetti because that’s what “Richard Bachman” used). The steady click clack sounds cool to me and when I’m writing, the tactile feels and loud sounds are inspiring. I want to hear more and to do that I have to write more.

2) I was absolutely that kid. Not with a typewriter - my parents hopped on the computer train pretty early - but writing. I wrote ALL the time. I still write. I’m working on a second-chance romance right now and it will be my fourth book. I don’t publish them - they’re just fun to write and I’ve been doing this since I was nine or so.

So this book could have done anything and I would have still been onboard with it. As it is, the magic typewriter makes everything the kid writes actually happen and hijinks definitely ensue. It’s a fun, fast-paced story and once it gets rolling, it gets pretty exciting.

Out of the whole series, this is the one I want a hard copy of the most.

Also, if you’re looking for an affordable, reliable, fairly indestructible typewriter, look for a mid-1950s Silent Super from Smith Corona. I’ve dragged mine around the world in my checked luggage (in its case) and it’s fine. Can’t recommend it enough.

If you’re more into apps, check out Hanx Writer for simulated typewriter typeface and sound goodness.

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This is one of the good ones! The story centers on a kid that finds a weird egg during an egg hunt. The egg eventually hatches and a yellow goo-monster comes out.

The kid wants to figure out what the goo monster is so he takes him to a science lab where the scientist says these eggs have been popping up and he’s been keeping them in a cold room so they can stay alive because the heat would kill them.

Which… fine. Goo monsters. Got it.

But then the scientist says he won’t let the kid leave because he wants to study him.

The scientist kidnaps the kid!

The kid’s dad shows up looking for him but the scientist says no, he hasn’t seen any kids recently.

The scientist eventually says he hasn’t decided to kill the kid, the goo monsters attack the doctor, the kid escapes, yadda yadda yadda.

Then the obligatory twist ending that takes all the fear away and bing bang boom: the story.

I liked this one a lot. A whole lot. I hated the twist ending, but I thought Stine did a great job of leaning in on a genuinely scary idea (kidnapping, and not in a particularly fantastic way but just being kidnapped and held by a random adult) without making it TOO scary for the kids.

But I could have absolutely seen him throw caution to the wind and write a story that gave kids way more than just goosebumps with this. If he had taken just a couple things out of this story, extended the timeline, and gave in to a writer’s cruelty they usually have at their disposal (and then not released it in this series), this book could have been fucking terrifying to kiddos just by focusing on being kidnapped, alone, and uncertain about your future.

Even as it is, though, it was still nice to read something with such wild (and close) potential.

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*sigh*

The two bright spots of this book are 1) I think it might be the best of all of the Living Dummy books and 2) this is the last time we’ll see Slappy in the original run of Goosebumps books.

That’s right, folks! We are winding down on this series. Will there be bright moments in the future, pure garbage? Lots of mid-level, “I’m kind of shocked I liked this as a kid,” books?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Just you wait.

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Do you remember how the first Haunted Mask was basically about the power of love?

This isn’t that.

Oh man, but I thought it would be! It was lining itself up SO perfectly for it.

You one of the little bastards from the first book who, for punishment, has to coach a whole team of even smaller little bastards - you know, like what happens at EVERY elementary school, right? A child given the responsibility of being the sole coach to a group of even smaller children? Parents are TOTALLY down for this.

Anyway, he hates these kids and he wants to scare them so he goes to the same place the last girl got her mask (ignoring her warnings) and found this old man mask.

Where the first mask made the girl slowly turn mean, this one just makes him into an old man. Walking becomes a challenge, talking is harder, etc.

And then he sees his team of kids and goes to them.

Now, *I* thought that they would help this old man out while talking about how they give their coach a hard time but that’s only because they feel so comfortable and trust him so much - that they really look up and love him.

Nope. They fucked right off.

This kid goes through the expected agony and the love trick from the first one doesn’t work for him.

Bummer.

What DOES work is reuniting the mask with its matching suit.

Logic.

At which point the whole suit and mask come to life and boogies out of the building like a character of Thunderbirds (the puppet show).

I think it’s a really weak book BUT I actually think it might be the best sequel so far in the series.

…Yup. Pretty sure. What else was there? Slappy? Come on. Monster Blood? Ugh - hell no.

No, this is the best one so far.

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I won’t lie: I rolled my eyes at the cover, but this is actually one of the better ones in the series (which is nice since we’re so deep in it at this point). The premise is that the daughter of a ride designer and her best friend get to go on a tour of a new ride that focuses on the Shock Street horror movies.

And it goes horribly wrong (as you could guess).

There was a clever misdirect in the beginning where the daughter asks if they should take her mother on the ride as well and the dad says something like “excuse me, young lady?” Like she did something wrong.

“The mom must be dead,” I thought. Then everything after that was based around that until the best friend keeps harping on the fact that all these monsters must be robots because the girl’s dad is so great at making them. Then the friend pulled the girl out of a mud pit with strong arms and I thought “he’s a robot!”

“A robot that was made to be the girl’s best friend after her mom died!”

But I was wrong. Well. Partially wrong. Both kids were robots. The reason it was suspicious when she asked about her mom is that she didn’t have a mother.

I’ll admit it: I was fooled.

When you sit back and think about it, it IS weird that the trial run of the ride to see if it’s the right level of scary was done with two robot kids because… they’re robots. What real data are they going to give? Also, don’t robots famously not have emotions?

I also wonder why the robots were allowed to live lives that were at LEAST normal enough that they went to movie theaters and watched movies. Or were the memories false the whole time?

I 👏🏼 have 👏🏼 ques 👏🏼 tions. 👏🏼

Still. A good one for sure.

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I’m actually kind of curious about this because I always thought I was up to date on these as a kid but I distinctly remember reading this one WAY before Attack of the Mutant.

Oh well.

This cover actually scared me as a kid honestly, but I can’t remember finishing it.

And I feel like I definitely would have remembered finishing it because this is probably the dumbest entry so far.

It’s another body swap book where kids become dogs and then do… ugh. Just the most idiotic things in the world.

One of them is like “I have to tell my parents what happened but I can’t talk. Because I’m a dog.

“I know! I’LL WRITE THEM A LETTER.”

Bro, I don’t know how to break this to you, so I’ll do it as gently as possible:

You are a DOOOOOGGGGGG!

Sure enough he tries to grab a pen and uh-oh! No thumbs! That’ll throw a wrench in the ol’ letter-writing works!

But that’s this whole book. Dumb idea after dumb idea and when the end comes you hope whatever head injury Stine suffered while writing this has worn off and that maybe the next book will be better.

Also, as an adult I think what I was scared of with the cover were the eyes because the way too-small mouth never got me. That thing killing you would be a logical challenge - at least for long enough to make your escape.

NEXT!

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Ugh.

UGH.

Hey, did everyone see the trailer for the new Stephen King movie? “The Monkey?”

I wouldn’t mind seeing that. James Wan can go pretty hard in horror when he wants to and every night I go to bed asking god why bad things happen to good people and what moron at DC cut Wan off at the knees when he was making the Swamp Thing show.

Why are so many streamers scared of doing original horror?

Ah well.

I don’t think The Monkey is going to be scary. Diminutive toys, dolls, puppets, etc just aren’t scary.

Kind of like this.

Slappy is back in all his shitty “I’m gonna make you my slave,” glory and I, knee-deep in Covid at the time, had just enough consciousness to wonder if it was FATIGUE associated with Covid (which hits like a freight train out of NOWHERE) or just this book that was making me sleepy.

Good lord, I don’t like Slappy books.

On the bright side, we are now halfway through the original Goosebumps run!

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I’m conflicted on this book.

On one hand, it takes a lot from Ernest Scared Stupid.

But on the other hand, there’s a lot for a neurotic over-thinker like myself to digest here.

The story centers around a kid that has an evil sponge (more or less) and it causes all sorts of bad things to happen to them and the people around them.

There’s some bullshit from a book about how it can’t be killed by VIOLENT means. How cryptic.

But the more I thought about this story, the more I liked it because it seemed to me like this evil sponge that causes harm and bad luck might actually symbolize a grudge.

Think about it: an impressive grudge festers. It causes heartache. It leads to harm (or wishing for harm). It is all-encompassing to the point where you lose yourself and focus only on this thing that is growing inside you and you can’t kill it with violence or anger or anything.

The girl in the story sang sweetly to the sponge and it dried up and died. But if a person decided to be kind and let the grudge go - if only to be kind to THEMSELF - its hooks release from you and it goes away, leaving you to live a happier, more satisfying life.

I suppose depression works as well. Instead of beating yourself up over how you always feel like shit, being kind to yourself and giving yourself some grace really helps with recovery.

Take it from me, a guy who holds grudges to a STUPID level AND is on meds for depression: this might be the most clever Goosebumps book of the lot.

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Goddamnit, dude, are we REALLY back to fuckin’ MONSTER BLOOD?

Yet another entry where Evan is yet again “traumatized” by the monster blood but is yet again instigated by someone shitty (in this case his nephew Kermit) and yet again prodded into absolute stupidity by Andy (who at this point is either outing herself as a sociopath or the actual devil), Evan yet again acts like a friggin’ moron and then hijinks ensue.

The ONLY part of this that reverberated with me was the fact that Evan absolutely hated Kermit (good job with the names, Stine) but he has to babysit this little underwear stain because he couldn’t afford a Walkman without the babysitting money.

And, as a kid who had a Walkman, I can tell you that I would have done a LOT of awful things for money to buy one. That and a Game Boy was basically my youth and my Walkman is SOLIDLY why I got so heavy into music.

Though, all truth be told, you could usually find a tape from New Kids on the Block in mine as I was an unabashed fan.

But the rest of this, like monster blood itself, is better forgotten.

Ugh.

Why is Evan such a weakling in body, mind, and spirit?

Why is this book basically Clifford the Big Red Dog with a protagonist whose intelligence is rivaled by said dog?

Why is ANDY so keen on watching her friend’s life get destroyed?

How is Kermit actually good at science?

WHY DOES STINE KEEP GOING BACK TO MONSTER BLOOD?!

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Oh man, I am GENUINELY excited to talk to you about this book because it is in my Top 5 Goosebumps books.

It’s spectacular in so many ways.

The story centers on a boy who’s had a rough life almost exclusively because of his little sister.

It should come as no shock to anyone that reads Stine, but he’s adept at making evil cartoon villains and there’s not a SHRED of humanity to this girl.

Ever since she was born, she’s been manipulating everyone into laughing at, disregarding, disliking, or even hurting her brother.

He turned twelve, had a party that went about as well as you would expect and then his dad brings home this antique cuckoo clock that can supposedly control time.

The little girl gets caught messing with it and gets lectured. This is the first time she has ever gotten in trouble so he wants to capitalize on it. He sneaks to it at midnight and, when the bird pops out, he twists the head backwards to frame her.

Then he goes to bed only to wake up the morning of his birthday.

And every day he gets younger and younger.

Talk about a ticking clock (ha): if he doesn’t find this clock and fix the bird’s head, he’s going to blink out of existence!

He goes all the way back to being a baby before he actually manages to fix everything.

EXCEPT that, in the process, he accidentally knocked off a year from the outside of the clock and next wakes up to his 12th birthday party again.

Except everything goes right. And nothing of his is damaged.

He figures it out: his sister isn’t here. He accidentally scrubbed off the year she was born.

Now he needs to put that year back on the clock and go back in time to make sure everything goes like it’s supposed to.

AND THEN THINKS “NAH, SHE SUCKS.”

He, for all intents and purposes, killed his little sister.

In a GOOSEBUMPS book!

I love it!

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