Goosebumps - Reader Beware, You're In For a Scare!

[kooshmeister]

So. Goosebumps books.



Nowadays considered either so bad they're good, or just plain terrible, with a love-to-hate-him opinion about author R.L. Stine. But in the 1990's there were huge. And I was one of the kids collecting (and occasionally reading) them. Anyone else big into these as a kid? If so, what were your favorite books? Mine were Stay Out of the Basement and The Girl Who Cried Monster. I even watched the TV show, which ranged from passable to cringe-inducing depending on the child actors and the budget.

I still have a few of the books - The Girl Who Cried Monster, A Night in Terror Tower, A Shocker on Shock Street, Tales to Give You Goosebumps (the "special edition" short story collection, of which there about six more), and a very, very battered Stay Out of the Basement. I also have It Came from Ohio!, Stine's autobiography, and even a few of Stine's Ghosts of Fear Street books although The Ooze is the only one I can actually pinpoint right now.

I also have the Goosebumps Collector's Caps (basically Pogs) and their respective booklets, which actually contain some neat trivia and backstories for some of the books, such as the backstory of the costume shop owner in The Haunted Mask, and where the family from The Girl Who Cried Monster immigrated from originally.

[pulphack]

Funny thing, fashion, Kooshy... Mrs PH's kids loved these, and I think they're rather fine examples of how to scare little ones without actually terrifying them too much. Stine was excellent at what he did, and the fact is that the next generation inevitably want something else - but I bet he comes back into print in ten years and is hailed as 'classic'. This is what happens to kids writers when their original readers hit a certain age and start their own kids on what they liked.

[kooshmeister]

Had to ditch my old copy of Stay Out of the Basement. Its replacement...?



...why does the Goosebumps logo look like semen?