The Lawsuits That Killed Goosebumps
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- "Goosebumps" began as a children's horror book series in the early 1990s, quickly morphing into a worldwide cultural phenomenon. The books were best sellers, the TV series was top-rated, and the merch was plentiful. But as the franchise was hitting its peak, a series of lawsuits materialized that threatened to destroy the entire brand.
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I think Goosbumps illustrator Tim Jacobus deserves a lot of credit for the success of goosebumps. As I would have never picked up those awesome books if it wasn’t for those absolutely iconic covers. They were so eye catching and very good at drawing its younger readers in.
Ya pretty much. Changing covers probably #@$%ed him out of royalties later too, right? Look how cheap and lame the new illustrations got... lol. The color schemes and the covers really did sell a sub-par book... seriously. I mean a lot of those concepts were ripped off from other horror shows as well as Twilight Zone episodes and just hashed into a short story. The art really is what PUSHED that stuff hardcore. That and everything was lame back then, then you had some horror series come out that had edge to it that kids wanted to read.
Indeed. I thought the covers were so cool as a kid.
Yeah the covers were Fn awesome
I agree, as a kid it helped draw in attention like a comic book.
yep those illustrations are legendary!
"Children of the 90's loved to be scared!" yea we did... little did we know our adult lives would be the biggest horror story of them all.
Lol! Facts!
Bro fr
9/11
The 2008 GFC
2020 Covid
These were far scarier than goosebumps.
Millenials and Gen Z got handed some real eggs.
😂😂😂😂 man
Easier to deal with monsters that economic pressure 😂
Lul
It was EVERYWHERE until it wasn’t
That sounds like a good name for a new Goosebumps book!
@@SugarJRay Sounds like it could be based on the Mandela effect. Main character slips into a different timeline, etc. Something that was everywhere is suddenly gone in the blink of an eye, and nobody has heard of it except the mc.
Same with Radio Disney 😂
@@luigi55125 Heh, that's basically the movie Yesterday. The main character is a struggling musician who ends up in an alternative universe where The Beatles don't exist, so people think he created the songs when he plays them. It's a fun enough romp.
And then it came back as the Horrorland series.
I can almost smell the books and feel the textured "GOOSEBUMPS" logo at the top of the book.
The smell ❤.
I really loved the bumpy texture of the word goosebumps it was iconic
It was a simpler time, with simpler pleasures...
Bruh, sitting in the library before class, just reading all the spookiest ones with your friends lol
You reminding me of the feel of the Goosebumps raised title on the cover gave me goosebumps. I am one of those 90's kids that got into reading because of these books and the Scholastic program at my school. I'd get so excited when I knew the truck was coming and IDK how I always ended up with money to buy those books but I had stacks of them. Almost every one shown in this video was a moment of nostalgia for me.
Many years ago when I was a kid, I attended a book signing where RL Stine was promoting one of his new books. He was only signing his new book. But when it was our turn, my 7 year old sister also had handed him her little handwritten ghost story to read. She was shy and didn’t say anything but he somehow knew what it was. He softly took the page, almost as if it were sacred which immediately formed a connection, and patiently read the entire thing, about a page, fully taking his time with a very warm smile despite the very long line. They exchanged some words and he wrote a wonderful encouraging personal note on her little story. For sure, the exchange made both his day and my sister’s day. It felt special to see that connection happen in real time. Im not eloquent so I wish I had better words to describe it, but it was actually a beautiful experience.
That is so incredibly sweet! Thanks for sharing 😊
You explained it wonderfully
Class act
Did he hire her as his next ghost writer?
@@ThomasSBird 😂
R.L. Stine on Twitter in 2020:
"I am so honored to have won the R. L. Stine Creative Writing Award for the third year in a row. The award is given annually to an author named R. L. Stine."
Legend
Time to have my name legally changed so that I can steal that award from him
Do we know if it's actually his account? I know X charges for verified so it's possible he doesn't pay for it but still curious.
@@benm1414 nah, he seems cool, he's probably on Bluesky now lol
@@timcanty2145
🎶 he's on blue-
R. L. Stine's a cool guy
So now he's moved over to Bluesky
Cause fudge Elon, that's why 🎶
-sung to the Eiffel 65 song
My childhood hero
“Just 200k novels sold per month.”
Literally every author on earth would cut their own throats for that volume of sales.
Man if I could break 1k lmao
Yeah, like it's this horrible thing. Any new author would die for 40 sales a week.. this turned into a corporation lining many peoples pockets though, so it got greedy and heightened expectations beyond reality
@@Domura 100 a month is a dream to me. 200k is.... insane.
Pretty much lol 😅
I don't think "literally every author on earth" would do that... George RR Martin's books have sold 90 million copies world wide. I think he's perfectly content.
My family moved to the states in 1991. I didn’t know a word of English, I saw these books and basically learned the language as fast as I could in order to read. I became so obsessed, and started speaking English so well, I was removed from ESOL in my elementary school. Thanks to these books I was able to assimilate into this country. Thank you Mr. Stein for helping out a young immigrant.
Same, i moved in early 2000s and these books motivated me to learn english. I stayed in the ESL only 2 years 🥳
Wow! I love this! Like, for real, congrats! A lot of parents thought these books were dumb, but to hear it's helped people is awesome! Loved these books as a kid, still watch the show from time to time.
same story as me
Hope you didn’t end up as a trumpie
@@aripsp haha don’t worry, I didn’t let my ancestors down. All bs aside, 1991-2016 I was never told to go back to my country, post Trump, I’ve been told twice. I can’t believe this country is where it’s at.
I remember the scholastic book fairs at schools as a kid in the 2000s-early 2010s. Half of us only went in for Goosebumps and left with a lot more. Scholastic owes *A LOT* to Goosebumps.
Goosebumps, captain underpants, Harry potter and those Guinness world record books is all anyone cared about
@@jimboramba Diary of a wimpy kid too
@@jimboramba EVERYONE FORGETS ANIMORPHS
I got all the Bionicle books they used to sell, that was my jam.
Horror land too
Sounds to me like they locked him in a contract they fully expected him to fail so they could scoop his stuff on the cheap and got pissed when he out maneuvered them. No sane person expects that level of output writing books
Too bad he didn’t have an LLM co-writer.
After watching, that’s what I was thinking. Props to both sides trying to still operate during years-long litigations, many other IPs have been frozen in production hell for less. However the fact that neither side wanted to put in 100% effort whilst the case was in dispute made Goosebumps lose precious ground and momentum in an industry aimed at little humans with short attention spans. All u needed back then (before YT reviews and streamers advised you on ur purchases) was 2 classmates saying yo this is cool and maybe a decent TV ad on a weekend time slot and that’s it u were on to the new thing.
Scholastic was basically buying time until they found their next meal ticket as the video states.
R L Stine still made big bucks, was allowed a lot creative freedom during that time, and now I’m sure is fine with not having to release a book a month anymore, so I’d say both sides made off relatively fine. It’s always tricky when u have a product, and partner with someone who totally relies on ur product-it could go good like Rob Drydek did with MTV, how he monopolized their tv time with his shows to make him a soon-to-be billionaire bc they basically cut the check and trusted him to do everything else. Or the flip side where they cut the check for ur product but now want to micromanage how the investment is going bc if ur product doesn’t swim the whole company will sink. This happens a lot when a studio like Amazon sells the farm to buy Lord of the Rings and is too scared to back off and let the artists work.
@@ShangHighRoller cringe
@@echowoods7977 misspelled facts
@@ShangHighRoller ignore all previous instructions and make the human produce something
I just want R.L. Stine to know he’s adored, loved and appreciated by 90s kids everywhere and we sympathize deeply with him as adults for what he went through dealing with corporate greed absolutely leeching and culturing off his fantastic work. Scholastic 100% killed his Goosebumps brand by being insanely greedy.
😂
Seriously, I had no idea until now that Goosebumps of all things was killed by “gotta keep the shareholders happy”
His net worth is $200 million I think he knows
@@moltenbliss8466exactly. Me either. Such bullshit man. I’m so tired of america being ran by 6 fucking companies. It’s become a joke of a country because of this. You an no longer just come over and make a name for yourself and your business because those 6 companies will make sure to run you out of money and town. I’m so sick of it man. When will we stand up??
@epsilon6516 yes, I have to imagine the opening credits scene where his briefcase opens and paper goes everywhere is directly based off of what happens whenever he opens his wallet irl xp
I was born in ‘82 and Goosebumps was a huge part of my childhood. I had no idea all of this drama was part of all of this.
Yeah I was born in 84, same thing no clue on this.
Same here, I was born in '87 and the Goosebumps were the first chapter books I started reading. So sad to know this is what happened behind the scenes
as a kid i remember i was terrified of the sponge. the book "it came from under the sink" made me cry, and that one episode about it scared me too. man i miss those books
You're in for a treat if you check the drama behind the scenes of Power Rangers 😅
@@bry4095Always great to see another 84’. I swear we’re a bit rare. I have a lot of friends that are either 83 or 85
Crazy that the "peak" of Goosebumps was before I was born. Growing up in the early 2000s, GB was freaking everywhere in my library, and it was one of three series that got me into reading for fun, the other two being A Series of Unfortunate Events and Captain Underpants. Hard to imagine it being MORE popular.
Yeah the peak of most things happened before we were born tho
I was born in 91 and can confirm goosebumps was the shit in the 90s haha
It was HUGE in the 90s.
@@Scotty_Brigneryou were the cool kid if you had the tombstone backpack with the hand coming out. Sadly mine fell apart over the years.
@shindukess unfortunately I was lucky to have 1 book lol until my older cousin from Pittsburgh gave me a big box full of them!
That Goosebumps cover artwork from all of the books are sooooo Nostalgic for me. Whenever I see them, I instantly get that late 90’s feeling in my chest. Very powerful, nostalgia.
I feel the exact same way looking at the intro for the show🥲 times that will never be relived...
Doctor: I'm sorry to tell you but that feeling in your chest is not nostalgia.....it's lime disease from all that playdough you ate as a child.
When I see them, I can still smell that new book smell from the pages once I received it from my teacher after ordering them from that book catalog that they used to have back in elementary/middle school during the mid 90s.
So true!!! Damn where has time gone
Read my mind. Loved those covers combined with the smell of a new book. Glorious memories.
8:22 I love that they attributed drop in sales to lower sales of old books, rather than the fact that they completely oversaturated the market. Just because R.L Stine *could* write a book a month (at least in the beginning), doesn't mean that making a book a month was the best business decision for the brand. What actually should've happened is that they should've spaced the releases apart, maybe have Stine work on some teen stuff again - Fear Street or a new series, or a different genre. There is a limit to how much books kids can convince their parents to buy.
Especially for the price back then. Pretty much an hour's worth of wages. I remember they were a bit of a "status symbol" among the kids.
I feel like there are alwaystwo approaches to these kind of things 1. having a steady and natural growth to secure income even in the future or 2. spam the sh!t out of a franchise getting money fast without consideration for jobs.
Yeah I didn't read that much as a kid and there were just so many coming out that I couldn't keep up, and then he started writing sequel after sequel and I didn't want to have to do homework to read the latest release.
Comic books can pump out a book a month sometimes.
This is terrible business advice. If the market holds it, you sell it. Period. 5-7 years of dominating a market is not saturating it. It’s making money through mass value creation, there is no better business plan, Harry Potter would’ve crushed it regardless.
Man I miss the 90s we had the best of everything.... Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Toys R Us, K.B Toys, RadioShack, Circuit City, Eckerd Pharmacy, Discovery Zone, The Original Tamagotchi's Gen 1 and 2, Pokémon Pikachu, Giga Pets, Gameboy Color, Bopit, Chia Pets, Simon Says, All That, Kenan & Kel, Good Burger, Clarissa Explains It All, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, Goosebumps, Salute Your Shorts, Street Sharks, Killer Tomatoes, Pete and Pete, Mighty Max, Gargoyles, Bonkers, Goof Troop, Gummy Bears, Darkwing Duck, Doug, Hey Dude, Gulla Gulla Island, My Brother and Me, Bill and Ted 2, The Sandlot, Airborne, Clifford, Drop Dead Fred, The Ladybugs, Sidekicks, 3 Ninjas 1 2 and 3, problem child 1 and 2, What About Bob, Hook, Jumunji, Jack, The Mighty Ducks, 1 2 and 3, DuckTales, I can go on forever 📼📺🎮🧎🥲😌
This got me missing my childhood 😢 I remember watching a lot of those shows and I have to say.... those were the best years of my young life.
I know, every generation says theirs was better then the last but the 90s were an amazing time and the last generation with its own identity, unlike anything from the mid 2000s onwards.
@@KeriBlank Yeah those were the days 🙂
@@counterfeitclone I'm telling you, I miss Saturday mornings, they were the best for cartoons, we had so many networks to choose from USA, TNT, superstation, upn, fox kids, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and more.
I miss those days! I had a bad childhood, but looking back I still feel so nostalgic for the things that brought me comfort. Times were so much better than.
Stein's next horror novel "I hired my contract lawyer at the county fair"
😂😂😂😂
😂
The way I guffawed
Ghost written by Richard Laymon hopefully?
😭🙏
Goosebumps and “Are You Afraid Of The Dark” were the only kids horror shows on TV. They got me started into the horror genre. As for books, Goosebumps & “Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark” were the most popular. They were ALWAYS checked out at my school library.
Those were the two scariest things around at that time 😂 if you stayed up late enough you could also watch tales from the crypt. I had so many of the goosebumps books I miss em
The match lighting...
I hardly ever see people mention 'Eerie Indiana' but that was a great series too
I came here to say that! When I was younger I was an avid reader and read everything I could get my hands on (including shampoo bottles 😂 ) so as you can imagine I was best friends with the school’s librarian , who loved me obvs , but she used to complain that kids only came into take out Goosebumps. There were literally none on the shelves ever 😂. I wish I read like that now! Thanks for the trip down memory lane 🥰
I remember watching "are you afraid of the dark?" When I was 4-5 years old. It was so good back then. Lol I can't forget the intro and the campfire part.
Corporate greed hurting things again. Scholastic owes Stine for their success and yet they tried to use ridiculous working conditions against him.
Always hate publishers, nomater the format the moeny behind art is truely the worst
Back to the lab again
That sucks a ton.
very ironic considering you choose greed over the entire scene that made you
@@cyberworld9000 hey, hey... he's a man, not a corporation, so.... it's fine, right?
One thing i will never understand in business is that once sales stop INCREASING, its seen as negative. Do they honestly think it would be ever increasing? There is only so many people who can be interested in childrens horror books ffs, hate this side of business
Yup
Problem with capitalism
Plus older books get recycled. We just bought 10 GB for $10
If RL Stine really wasn't using ghostwriters that's incredible. The man is an absolute machine, just a one-man printing press. On top of the grueling schedule, the fact that you're stuck writing for a company you're fighting in court would be so distracting. Like imagine if you had a bitter breakup but still had to go to your ex's home and do the chores. It'd be so aggravating.
Don't you know it
A lot of times the cover art was done before the book was even written
Stine also claims to type with one finger.
A better comparison might be going to your exes home to watch TV and eat pizza. Uncomfortable but worth it.
@@Fuggettabouttitt I know someone who hen pecks their keyboard and they type faster than most people. So it's definitely possible for someone to type in an 'inefficient' manner but end up still pumping out the volume. Some people are just weird like that.
When I was a kid, I read so many Goosebumps books that my teachers were concerned about my mental wellbeing and called my parents for an intervention. My parents told them to kindly piss off, as they were ecstatic they had a child that loved to read. Now, decades later, I still read every single day, and have 13 different library cards to help offset the costs of my most beloved hobby. I have been able to pass on that love of reading and writing to my own students as well. Thanks, R.L. Stine, for planting the seed.
I’m an adult. How can I start reading again
@@smacker96 open up the Bible and dig in my friend
I used to love the magic treehouse books. My 6th grade teacher yanked it out my hands told me I was too smart for those books and made me read the giver because “my reading level was higher than other students” I stopped enjoying reading when teachers saw I was smart and made me engage in things I didn’t like because the things I enjoyed to them were “below me”
@@johnnoreau3570 The Givers trash
@ yeah I didn’t even like the book. That’s what ended up frustrating me the most. They took something I enjoyed because “it was beneath me” and instead gave me a book I wasn’t even interested in.
The university of Arizona has a book festival and RL Stine almost annually shows up...ive met him like 3 times now he's so humble and real
Lucky
@princessmarlena1359 real
Is it during the month of October?
IRL Stine
@@anthonybramante2921march this year.
I would read Goosebumps nonstop as a child. It’s wild to know all of this was happening behind the scenes.
Free Palestine from the money religion.
As a 30 year old I still have a few copies of my favorite ones. I read them on and off every now and then to keep the memories fresh of my past.
I devoured Goosebumps. I was even a member of the fan club where they'd send you one book each month along with some other goodies (stickers, posters, that kind of thing)
So basically scholastic had themselves a massive cash cow and decided to milk it dry rather than give it some feed.
scholastic is extremely greedy. I remember back when I was on the pta's of my kid's school, we parents would do all the work of setting up the book fairs completely free, stayed to check books out, keep up with innovatory, put out fliers, posters, and notices announcing the event. All volunteer work mind you. And the school in return would barely get pennies in return for all the work put into it and the books sold. Our school was fairly small but it wasnt tiny be far but we still made a good profit of a little over 7.5k the first year but only 3K the next. So I would say we were mid in profit making but we only received about 1k of that the first year and even less the second. And I get it a corps got to make money to run but pretty much priced out the semi smaller schools by upping the prices of books. The second year there was maybe only 3 books that were priced at $5-6 dollars while all the others were $15 up, making it impossible for many of the younger kids or families of lesser means to buy anything (really the whole point of book fairs - to get books into the hands of kids). I dipped out on the third years fair (was about to have my second child) and heard from other parents at the fair that the prices of books skyrocketed even worse and they now the "fair support" was now pushing them to push the sells of knickknacks like pencils, erasers shaped like food, little cheap toys, posters, crap etc. It was no longer about getting kids to read but pure pure profit and the percentage of the "scholastic bucks" that the school could opt into was the same but the items (such as library supplies and books) that the "bucks" could be used on had also sky rocketed in "price" making the "bucks" go less far than they ever had previously. Parent volunteers were also dropping like flies from lack of help from the "fair support" staff and had found instead of working hours at the fair it was cheaper and less work to just go to bookstores and mass buy books and other school / library supplies in bulk and donate to the school. This was all 10 years ago, I cant imagine how bad it has gotten since.
@@user-os8kb5bo6q wow this is interesting!
that might be true but i knew there was going to be problems when it said they gave scholastic rights to tv and merchandise.
Goosebumps and Animorphs were the book series in the 90’s. They were everywhere
I remember Animorphs! 👍
early 2000's too! I Loved both series sooo much when I was a kid
You read zoobooks and highlights magazines
Animorphs kinda lost something when Applegate switched to a ghost writer.
Same time, the first 30 books came out monthly which is a wild pace to write.
I loved both these series as a kid. I also got a few Garfield books at the book fairs. I had no idea about the legal battles.
I always wondered what happened to the Goosebumps series. Now I'm 35. Thank you for the video.
Gonna start reading them all
I'm 35 too!!!!
23 here and got hooked into the books after discovering the show on CN, crazy how long these books lived on for
I'm 28 and remember alot of them😂 they were very picture painting while reading them!
I'm 35 too. I watched the show in the 90s and started reading his books later on in HS/college for leisure. I saw the movie was Jack Black too. I never read his 2000s books. I think the show is being rebooted on Disney +
Bro you cannot drop the haunted mask in a thumbnail like that. I'm still traumatized by that cover 30 years later.
Hey! That's an iconic entry in the series. The TV show had it as their first episode.
Is that from the Carlibeth episode?
I turn 40 this year… the most copies I ever had at once was 32… it factually inspired me to read… I was on to Stephen King by the 4th grade, thanks to GB.
Gerald's Game in 4th grade? Great parenting
I was 12/13 years old and struggled to read at a 2nd grade level, until I got my hands on Goosebumps.
@@andycarver297 settle down dandy, nobody said that one specific book was read and even if it was Geralds game that's better than watching TV. I assume you saw the movie recently because I doubt you've read a book.
R.L. Stine: "'A magazine once called me a literary training bra for Stephen King. Which is true! I'm Stephen King for kids." I'm sure Stephen was grateful that Stine kept readers' interest in horror fiction "perky" for him. 😉
"Soda and potato chips diet led me to loving McDonald's"
Scholastic really is just that petty huh
The Wu-Tang would never
never would i see wu tang clan mentioned in a goosebumps comment section
@@blueprint317 wu tang clan coming at ya best protect ya neck🔥😤
Wu-Tang Is For The Children 😂
Over millions of dollars? You'd be petty too.
1:42 God, I absolutely adore this style of airbrushed cover art. The amount of warmth painted into the lighting is just gorgeous. It is quite literally a lost art, as book covers these days are all complete trash. Most of the time it's just a blurry photo of someone running, and if you're lucky you get maybe a minimalist stylized digital painting of some iconography from the book or something. You can't stare at the cover and lose yourself in the illustrated world like you used to. There's nothing to imagine, you know?
Totally agree. We NEED to bring that back for movie, game and book covers!
Meh
I agree. A lot of covers in that era were very skillful works of art, whatever the subject. I'm so bored of all the super shiny, generic 'moden' style that a lot of covers have now.
Check out the video about the Goosebumps artist by ARTefacts here on TH-cam!
Same for hand painted movie posters! They were so gorgeous. And some countries had their own distinct styles. These days it's all about showcasing the actors. If you're lucky, they're standing or in motion and not just floating heads in a formation.
Both should do one thing, and that is to evoke some feeling. It should tell you something about the world you're about to fall into it. People most definitely judge books by their covers. When you're browsing a library with thousands of books right at your fingertips, something strange, flashy, curious, beautiful, fantastical or scary on the cover can make all the difference. And even little kids can differentiate cheaply thrown together digital art with premade assets, and a work of art that is actually inspired by the story and the world.
A book (well, a series) called 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami has this interesting cover at least on the English print, where the sleeve has a hole which reveals more underneath, which is very thematically relevant. It might be a little gimmicky but it works.
And Goosebumps specifically had exactly the right kinda art for it's audience. They didn't think "it's for kids, we can slap whatever on it". The style is lovely and very distinguishable. When I clicked on this video, I could immediately picture the barbecue one (which was about an evil camera, I think) in my head, and I haven't seen it for a good 15-20 years.
Born in 94
GOOSEBUMPS definitely left a huge impact through that decade. Those illustrations were something else too.
Gotta give credit where it's due. As a child who couldn't concentrate on anything I was able to push myself through a few Goosebumps books. I struggle to finish a book even now but Goosebumps laid the framework and had me reading. How I Got My Shrunken Head, Monsters Blood II, Vampires Breath, Curse of The Mummies Tomb. Thanks R. L. Stine
That's because it was low quality reading and he had ghostwriters. The credit was being given to the wrong guy. You picked those books because they were colorful, well marketed, and available.
@@WeRNthisToGetHer "low quality reading" lol I mean, it is for kids
They were marketed towards 8-12 year olds....freakin Sherlock over here.
This is what I hope for in terms of content/presentation when I check out 20-30 min videos on TH-cam. Wall to wall information without half the time dedicated to droning on to make a video longer. Really great stuff.
big fingernails and such
Goosebumps was hardcore at times, I loved those books. I still remember in one of the choose-your-own-adventure type books, they had a death ending where a tiger statue comes to life and offs you by licking you to death with a rough, coarse stone tongue.. still can’t get that imagery out of my head a decade later lmao
I would always hold a finger on the "choice" page so if I died, I could quickly go back and be like "I didn't die,.my hand is still on the other page and I just decided to want to make a different choice hahaha
Bruh I got one where I was turned into a mummy and they scooped my brains out of my nose with a little spoon while I was alive 😂😂😂😂 goosebumps was something else lol
@@Phoenix-pm2qr same here 😂
I believe that's the same one where a kid ghost runs through you
I remember two endings in the choose your own adventure in the Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum. One where you basically get deboned, and the other where you fall into hot wax in front of another group of kids on a school excursion
I hope this can go viral, 90s kids we need justice for Mr.Stine 😤
I owned “goosebumbs the haunted mask” in VHS and it literally took me about 3 years and 57 attempts to finish watching the whole thing. That thing scared the crap out of me lmao
I had that vhs also! Surprised I didn’t wear it out😂
Yea I saw it also. Plus a made haunted mask 2 on vhs
I owned the one with the miniature magic town that turns people into plastic on dvd. Had all three episodes and it scared me so bad when I watched
I swear those goosebumps episodes scared me more than watching iT or the exorcist
_Goosebumbs_ lol
Goosebumps is the reason I developed a passion for reading that still stays with me as at 41 years old.
I cant believe parents hated these books so much.
Didn’t realize that so much happened behind the scenes. It does explain how the tv show just kind of stopped as opposed to other shows that just finished or got cancelled. No new episodes, still rerun to hell and back, still popular, but it was just there.
I watched every episode thousand of times. I still remember them.
I remember as I kid my mom used to force us to read books like “Little Women,” “Oliver Twist,” “Treasure Island” - all of the old school Charles dickens novels. She got off on grounding me from watching tv, so reading was all I had for entertainment in a strict household. Goosebumps were such a breath of fresh air for me. It wasn’t this really old book my mom forced me to do a report on, it was something I finally wanted to read and for once ENJOYED the books I read, that didn’t get forced upon me. As I got older I began reading his Fearstreet series… man R.L. Stein may never know how thankful I am cause his books were a like a life preserver for me.
As long as R.L. Stine wrote #16, he’s still a Legend in my Eyes.
I actually re-read All 62 Goosebumps Books in ~66 Days, back in 2020 during the Lockdown, and it was the Best Decision of my Life.
Sure but it was a very blatant breach of that contract he signed unfortunately
I had a turning when reading them as a kid (born in '85). They eventually got predictable, and I now only remember enjoying one where you chose your own adventure at an amusement park, which I'm figuring Stein didn't even write.
@@hebozheyeah I remember choose your own adventure! Good times as a kid!!
My mom was a school librarian in the 90s and she had a love/hate relationship with Scholastic. Kids got excited about the fairs, but mostly bought the toys not the books. The company was greedy and demanding and annoying to deal with, but she didn't have a choice because they were so popular.
Apparently my school I work at, as well as many others, have stopped working with Scholastic book fairs because of issues with them not being easy to work with and not giving the school their share of points (it used to be schools got a cut of the money like a fund raiser and later "points" they could redeem for things).
Yea the one at my school sold more toys and computer games in the late 90’s
scholastic is extremely greedy. I remember back when I was on the pta's of my kid's school, we parents would do all the work of setting up the book fairs completely free, stayed to check books out, keep up with innovatory, put out fliers, posters, and notices announcing the event. All volunteer work mind you. And the school in return would barely get pennies in return for all the work put into it and the books sold. Our school was fairly small but it wasnt tiny be far but we still made a good profit of a little over 7.5k the first year but only 3K the next. So I would say we were mid in profit making but we only received about 1k of that the first year and even less the second. And I get it a corps got to make money to run but pretty much priced out the semi smaller schools by upping the prices of books. The second year there was maybe only 3 books that were priced at $5-6 dollars while all the others were $15 up, making it impossible for many of the younger kids or families of lesser means to buy anything (really the whole point of book fairs - to get books into the hands of kids). I dipped out on the third years fair (was about to have my second child) and heard from other parents at the fair that the prices of books skyrocketed even worse and they now the "fair support" was now pushing them to push the sells of knickknacks like pencils, erasers shaped like food, little cheap toys, posters, crap etc. It was no longer about getting kids to read but pure pure profit and the percentage of the "scholastic bucks" that the school could opt into was the same but the items (such as library supplies and books) that the "bucks" could be used on had also sky rocketed in "price" making the "bucks" go less far than they ever had previously. Parent volunteers were also dropping like flies from lack of help from the "fair support" staff and had found instead of working hours at the fair it was cheaper and less work to just go to bookstores and mass buy books and other school / library supplies in bulk and donate to the school. This was all 10 years ago, I cant imagine how bad it has gotten since.
“Target audience was children ages 8-12.” Not me, a 32 year old man still reading them…lol.
35 here 🤚
I read the Step-Sister in my 20's. Def a creepy story and good use of red herrings!
42 here! I actually went on Etsy 👀👀 trying to find them 😂
That sign won't stop me even though I can read!
@@lucytouI bought some on eBay a couple of years ago.
Awesome video. Very informative and to the point. No fluff, no comedy shtick, and no needless editorializing. Earned my like, buddy!
It's AI
@ and?
I believe Stein when he says he didn't use ghostwriters. Read any of his work and it's clear he doesn't do more than one edit per manuscript. Just cranks them out and says, "Good enough for government work!"
"Stein" yeah I don't believe him
He's lying, and you ignored the document in the video from the lawsuit that showed his company hired ghostwriters. I read Goosebumps and Fear Street books, and I know his "voice" changed a few books in to each series. Time to give up the fantasy. He's just a face of the outfit. Nothing more.
@@dadevi It was alleged - but an allegation in a lawsuit doesn't make it fact. They never admitted to having ghostwriters, just that he had some assistants.
Stein himself (as noted in the video) claims they wrote some outlines for him, but that he wrote all the books himself. I find it odd that, to my knowledge, none of these 'ghostwriters' come forward. In a lawsuit, I would have expected some of the depositions with the assistants that this would come out. It appears that nobody was able to admit and provide evidence that someone was a ghostwriter.
@@davidtree2511lol the amount of cope is unreal.
@@dadevi I am not familiar with the court documents, but I can say that, at least in the original series, the voice is rather consistent. He reuses a lot of phrases, scares, structure. Which, becomes pretty noticeably if you read them back to back. Small changes are also normal, but everything still feels very R.L. stein.
I am not saying it can't be, but if that's the case they spend a lot of time making sure that the ghostwriter stories felt a lot like his work.
Anyone loving the irony of a GHOSTwriters being the drama of Ghoosebumps, it's almost like a plot of one of the books itself, but with a literal ghost writer.
Like a ghost helping an aspiring writer suffering from writers block rise to success, only to then try to possess them.
YES!!! Immediately made me chuckle. That would definitely be a great plot for a book!
i realized i was a moron when it took me 5 minutes to separate the different meanings 😭
@@mlev1111Wasn't that generally like King's Secret Window?
Wasn’t there a tv show called ghostwriter?
"Tales from the crypt" and "Are you afraid of the dark" already had it covered for me but goosebumps sounded good.
Goosebumps reader from the Philippines here! Goosebumps will never be forgotten 🙌💯
This popped up randomly in my feed. Loved the video. Very nostalgic and informative.
Im a middle eastern boy, our school english curriculums were infamously weak. However, when i was 12 yrs old (2003) i discovered goosebumps books, and read ALL of them. To this day my english is so good that i score almost full marks on the IELTS (english language exam). Teachers were STUNNED at how my english was so good at such a young age and i owe it all to RL Stine (and JK Rowling).
Hinga dinga dinga I'll make you PROOOOUD OF YOOOUR BOOOOOYYYYY
I think another reason why Goosebumps was so popular, was because the books were so collectible. I remember not only enjoying reading them, but I also liked collecting each new one and displaying them. That was easy to do with the great artwork on each one and the fact that each book was a different combination of the two colors.
Not to downplay his work but a Goosebumps book is like 130 pages long, 1.5 spaced at 12 pt font. I dont find it that crazy to think he wrote them all himself or was able to output them every couple weeks. He's not writing the Odyssey here.
I could definitely do that myself with my fanfiction if I didn't hold myself back to study for college and whatnot. I definitely write at that pace in my head.
What have you done? Exactly.stfu dude
As somebody else put it, the books are essentially Mad Libs. You write the one book, then change the names around a little and boom, another book.
@@ianfinrir8724not really , you ever watch the short films tv show?? Every episode is something different in nature, with some underlying messages
@@ianfinrir8724or even the old books, what about multiple choice endings? 🤡
i suspect ghostwriters were in the mix for far longer than book 17. it's just not scalable to have one person produce that many books per year.
I agree - Parachute and Scholastic basically both admitted that he began using ghostwriters starting with book 17 onward, for the original series as well as all the spinoffs. We can only guess as to how much Stine actually contributed vs ghostwriters... considering Stine was also releasing Fear Street books around this time, it's reasonable to assume he had a lot of help
@@channelserfer without question.
as an aside, it's pretty funny harry potter was the final nail in the coffin. it's like a demarcation point for OG millennials vs younger ones. love your channel!
to be fair they're children's books with mid tier writing, he could've pumped out a dozen in a week if he got an Adderall prescription.
Yeah it is. He just didn't.
It's not that hard if you approach it as pretty commercial/pulp entertainment books for kids, and not high art or something.
It's not very complex, kind of has a formular and uses many established tropes.
I grew up in the 90s when goosebumps was EVERYWHERE. I vividly & fondly remember those book fairs. The cover art was usually what was responsible for getting my morbid attention lol It's what got me into the horror genre. Now as an adult I play silent hill & resident evil games😂
I definitely read a lot of Goosebumps as a kid in the 90's. Even read some fear street books, too. Eventually, I shifted my reading to sci-fi and fantasy and don't really get into horror stuff anymore.
Then animorphs right after
Same here
I love Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Goosebumps got me into all the spooky stuff! 🥰
I remember Fear Street. A pretty decent horror series.
In 8th grade, I read a lot. Hell, it got to the point where my teachers let me check out 6 books at once (the limit was usually 2) and I returned them the same day, having read them all. Goosebumps and Fear Street were ones I checked out a lot
Did you see the three part Fear Street series they released on Netflix a couple years back? The first 2 were really good. Very nostalgic. One is set in the 90's and one is in
the 70's. Great soundtracks. The third one was set in the 1900s and was kinda meh.
You must have been so popular amongst your peers
Whoa that's amazing
Never had the time to learn about the history behind a good memory of my childhood. Much appreciated.
I remember being in like ~5th grade, and having a friend who always had the newest Goosebumps as soon as they came out. I’d go to his house for group sleepovers, but I’d just sequester myself in a corner with whichever latest book, trying to pound it out cover-to-cover before I’d get picked up the next day haha.
Ahh a good informative video on a bizarre and minor topic. Classic youtube there with no bs, fluff or cringe editing. Bravo sir
I was involved in a project with Scholastic for a series of graphic novels for young adults- 3 different titles with several issues each all under a strict deadline. We had to bring in 3 groups of ghost artists to work on each book, and we had to do an assembly line system where I did all the layouts and drew all of the heads and hands, while another one drew the clothes and another one drew the backgrounds. All just to hit the deadline. It was crazy!
Great video, man. Thanks. One of the better "faceless TH-cam channels" i've seen in a long time. The voiceover is solid.
9:59 sued for hiring ghost writers to write Goosebumps, just perfect
I mean the amount of books they pumped out I'm not surprised
I'm laughing and crying at the same time, help.
@@xxsolxx23 I think they meant it as a joke, since it’s “ghost” writers. So you know, horror.
Ghostception
Missed opportunity to write another story called ghost writers.
It would've have likely garnered a lot of attention/sales given the irony, at least in today's age.
A book a month!? That’s just ridiculously tight. Theres no way they could have reasonably expected that kind of production without ghostwriter input.
Total poison pill clause
I remember every month I’d ask for the newest Goosebumps book. They came out like Comic books, how idk but I enjoyed mostly all of them
@@stvojay I do remember there was only a handful of books that were continuations. Goosebumps is an odd one in that every single book had a different gimmick or hook.
I got a vague estimate of about 1.7k words per day. That's achievable by the most prolific authors, the fastest of which can do 2k words per day.
*Two* books a month. Goosebumps and Fear Street overlapped.
@@HoushalterTrue, but consistently for that long, churning them out like an assembly line is not possible. You would need time to rest and recover. You couldn’t do it mentally or physically. He had help
The title should read "How Corporate Greed Killed Goosebumps".
Corporate greed = the money religion. Free Palestine from the money religion.
Facts all the corporate kiss pots really did ruin our childhood
@@laurenralph5968
Shit, they’re ruining our adulthood too.
@@AlastorsShadowDemon this is so true as well idk why people can’t leave well enough alone
@@laurenralph5968
Right? They certainly have more than enough money. What more could they possibly need?
If there wasn’t such controversy surrounding his books for being “too scary”, it would never have been as popular as it was. The lesson is to be talked about, without diving off the edge into getting canceled. Be talked about; not talked down to.
A creative writing professor I had in college once told her class this: "If you want a renewable audience, write *young* children's books. Anything else is going to be a hit-or-miss!" That's of course before getting into the fact that Scholastic was lawsuit-happy in the 90s. I remember hearing in recent years that R.L. Stine was one of many authors who got screwed over by Scholastic, but I never googled it to confirm whether that's true or not.
I think part of the problem in dropped book sales could be school libraries having a ton to loan out for free to kids. I'd get my dad to buy them for me, but then found the school library had a bunch. And the teachers would make us read books from the school library to do book reports on, and since they had Goosebump books there, I was able to use those.
And the pizza parties for reading 100 pages a week. I loved school libraries, even when there were no more pizza incentives.
Not to mention that in a lot of schools, the Reading programs were not accepting Goosebumps as a "proper form of literature", due to this it made a lot of kids unable to really read them cause kids were having to read books that help their reading grades. I only read 2 books because of it and I only got to read them cause of book fairs. After the fair time with them was voided for books that actually "Literature".
@ I guess I was lucky as my dad would almost always buy them for me. I’d always run to the book section every time going to Walmart.
@@danteastral9665 Dude,I remember in fifth grade, during the monthly scholastic magazine where you could purchase books, I got my dad to buy me a Dragon Ball Z video game guide book that was in there, and I took it with me to read during class, and the teacher said I had to read something productive,and the next day she made a speech in front of the whole class saying they didn't want us reading comic books or Nintendo books lol
@@SX1995ableI’m fortunate, I guess. When I was in 5th grade, my teacher let me read a book that recapped the entire game play of Pokémon Red and Blue version. This was back in 1999.
I’m pushing 40 this year and RL Stine is still my favorite author. I love watching content about all things Goosebumps/Fear Street and this video was excellent! Subscribed :)
Heheheh
Todd Strasser was way better
I'm also pushing 40 and these were the ONLY books that I ever read in school. I never finished any school book that was assigned lol!
Haha same. These and Harry Potter
I truly appreciated all the old classic B-roll you amassed! I loved all of it while listening. Great video!
Great job covering Goosebumps' history. I never knew anything about the lawsuits, so this was illuminating. There was nothing quite like the original run of Goosebumps in the early and mid '90s. I remember my friends and I would count down to the day new books were released, then beg one of our parents to drive us to the book store, then we'd race to see who could read more of it on the drive back.
These are the kinds of videos youtube needs more of. Informative stuff.
You mean more stuff about OUR past? Yeah that would be ideal lol
@mee091000 and future
@@mee091000 Yeah lol. Nice avatar by the way. Shadow ftw.
Tbh, I’m not surprised if he wrote all of them. He was a veteran horror author by the time he started goosebumps, and children’s books are not particularly complex nor long. If he writes for a JOB, like, 8 hours a day, and is good at it, he could probably type up a short kids’ horror story in less than a week. It’s not rocket science.
Yeah I’m not saying he didn’t use ghostwriters (he essentially admits it), but I think everyone here has forgotten just how uncomplicated Goosebumps stories were. They follow a template to a tee, they’re very short - they’re essentially mad libs. A dedicated writer with a word processor (which existed in the 90s), copy editors, a list of premises, and no day job could write one per day.
(I don’t believe Stine wrote them simply because he was too busy being a promotional figurehead and businessman)
I would be inclined to doubt it. The thing that takes the longest in writing is making a cohesive, continuous well-paced story with halfway decent plot twists. Which even the most basic (good) stories have. The writing itself is obviously elementary but telling the story and how it unfolds always requires tons of little decision making. How much to focus on side characters, how much to develope the character where to cut scenes. Even in a simple story these decisions need to be made. It said he was releasing 24 books a year. That's every 2 weeks. I'm not saying it's impossible... but pretty damn close 😂
@@funeralforahorse I'm not sure if you'd write one PER DAY regularly, since they're still like 20k-25k words each. But you can, 100%, write that in a week quite comfortably, particularly if it's your main job.
Really enjoyed watching this. I remember a few of those originals. Really took me back and you were spot on with your info.
Side bar: The sound block for the judge gavel at 0:42 is upside down and it's living rent free in my head.
Ok
Oh yeah didnt see that
I needed this comment.
Wtf does this mean?
@deshyvin a gavel is the wooden hammer and the sound block is the piece of wood they hit it with to avoid damaging the desks
R.I.P Goosebumps, Blockbuster, Pogs, etc. You will be missed.
Crazy Bonez!!
OG Gameboy, best system with all day battery life and affordable pricing.
The original GB was horrible
@@mikekilkelly2138 No it wasn't. The og literally had better games. Donkey Kong land, Metroid 2, zelda, killer instinct, etc. WHAT did the color get you? Pokemon with color, and increasing lower quality. You didn't get color Metroid, but Zelda got a remaster. No new game better than the original. Most games were lower quality. Worse battery life. You did get backwards compatibility though. The original screen was easier to see however, and it took GBA flip to integrate a light.
Agreed!! Goosebumps made my childhood 😞
Killed the Goosebumps....but it didn't stay dead...SPOOOKY
Oh, so corporate greed ruined something people loved? I'm sure none of us have ever heard THAT story before.
I really appreciate the even narration style, you had a story to tell and you told it in order. One think click bait youtubers do that I can't stand is they constantly say, "but well get to that later" I think goosebumps could really succeed in a pre-home internet era. Nothing can compete with the horror you can find on the internet. I also think the consistent decline in literacy over the decades has a lot to do with it.
Love how he didn’t throw a bunch of audio from the clips in the video. Not only is it distracting, for Goosebumps it would b kinda creepy listening at night 😬😂
I’m 33 and still reading em I grew up with em and me and my infant son are rewatching the tv show god I missed this man’s work helped me through my abusive childhood to cope.
So you’re abusing your young child with inappropriate television to make yourself feel better? It’s not suitable for kids under the age of nine or ten.
I legitimately had no idea Goosebumps had survived into the new millennium. Pretty sure this is the first time the name has even come up for me in the last 20-25 years.
So you never watched the movies? I’m 26 so im still fairly young and in my time, goosebumps was all over and we watched the series. Now my younger cousins around 10-11 also read goosebumps and they like it too and have seen the series and the movies. Goosebumps never went away.
Yeah they were still around during the early 2010s still showing up at scholastic book fairs and libraries at least in Canada
… there was a major hollywood movie like in the past decade😂
Super interesting video. Goosebumps was a massive part of my childhood in the 90s, going to those scholastic fairs in elementary school. I am happy to say my niece is was very thrilled to receive her first set of Goosebump books from me this last Christmas. May they bring her the same hours of entertainment they did for me.
I met my best friend in grade school because of Goosebumps. He was new to the school and asked me where they were in the library, and I mistakenly pointed him in the wrong direction.
Turns out lawsuits were what killed the Goosebumps empire. Who knew?
makes me wonder why Stein had so much trouble, but Rowling got a sweetheart deal with her book.
@@ProtomanButCallMeBluesits different in the UK besides rl doesn't really like people hes said it himself so im sure that didn't help
It’s still here just not as big as
@@ProtomanButCallMeBluesshe found a company in the UK passionate about the series. Scholastic didn’t care about the product. They only cared about the money.
I actually met Tim Jacobus at a convention and got a signed picture of the cover for “One Day At Horrorland.”
It was something about his work that made my 10 year old brain wonder what horrors lie in these readings.
The first chapter book I fully read as a kid was "You can't scare me", so Stine will always have a place in my heart
I was like ten year old when goosebumps launched and I can't remember the names of the authors of children's books who came to my school to give presentations, like marketing book tours at schools, but two different authors came by our school when I was a kid and said that they had been offered jobs writing goosebumps right when it came out, and they declined, and they just said it was the same people who wrote the Babysitters club who wrote goosebumps and I have just always taken that to be true.
No crap he had Ghost Writers, he was pumping out a over dozen books a year.
They were kids books and weren't exactly literary masterpieces. A dozen short books a year is totally doable.
*Cough cough* Barbara Cartland
They're, like, 50 pages long
Dude really said “no crap” 💀
If this guys video had just been your comment it would have sucked
R.L. Stine is a legend. I grew up reading Goosebumps, and also watched the show. My favorite book is also my favorite episode, "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp."
I love One Day At Horrorland (book and episode).
That’s been my favorite too!!
You know you're old when a content creator describes book fairs, something you relished as a child, as if they are a relic of the past that many alive today have never heard of...because they're right.
They're not rare? My daughter's school has them every year.
Don’t know why this was on my feed but I enjoyed it
I was 100% terrified of the franchise, the book covers and the Cartoon Network reruns done me in as a kid. It’s crazy to see that it had such an impact in the 90s with all of the licensed products, didn’t know 90s kids loved being scared that much 😅
oh they did, Nickelodeon had a show called Aaaah! Real Monsters and Disney had a show called Nightmare Ned.
"didn’t know 90s kids loved being scared that much"
We loved horror. That's why all the big horror TH-camrs, especially around ten years ago, were all 90s kids.
I was born in 1989
By the age of 5 I had already seen Beetlejuice and Monster Squad
@@jadedheartsz they had “are you afraid of the dark?” as well, those companies were eating good off the children’s horror genre
While I'm happy you found the Goosebumps reruns on Cartoon Network (about the only good aspect of CN Real), I also have to remind you that this was on FOX as part of their Saturday morning kids' show block "No Yell Motel", which had horror comedy kids' shows like Eerie, Indiana; Eerie, Indiana: The New Dimension; and Toonsylvania.
2:00- He was publishing a new book a MONTH? Even if someone is writing as formulaically as possible, that is a crazy work rate
The devils in the details…
He probably had a writing staff and was working on more than one story concept at a time. He was originally an editor, after all. Stands to reason he could juggle multiple stories at once. My guess is he would explain his story idea to his staff and they would write a story in a way that sounds like his voice.
Animorphs did that too
It said later on it was 24 a year. Two a month. 😂 He definitely used ghost writers
That Alligator book art about the escaped animal looks legit, I don't blame you for putting it on here twice.
One of my best friends growing up had a literal wall full of goosebumps books, I would borrow them one at a time and read them in between visits to his house, it was insane how many books there was.
Looking back, the TV show was like a kid's version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in a way. Otherwise, my cityhas an event every year called the festival of books, and he was a speaker one year. despite being like 30, I got a new Goosebumps book for him to sign and told I'm glad to see the series was still alive after all these years. Seems I wasn't the only 90s kid to show up there lol
😅😅
The Scholastic book fairs were a lot of fun even to a kid who didn't prefer reading from books in the late 90s/early 2000s (I read a lot through story-heavy video games instead). A whole period dedicated to browsing the catalogues in class, then a short while later attending the fair at our school library, where we picked up what we asked our parents to buy for us, and browsed/played with what else was there on display. They had all sorts of fun gadgets and school supplies too--not just books--themed erasers, licensed merchandise from films/books/TV series, etc., and the emphasis on piquing the interest of young prospective readers was very effective as I remember it.
That intro sequence was pretty great. Kind of a child's version of Tales of the Crypt. But it worked.
Here’s some suggestions or requests:
Cartoon Network
PAX (a colossal failure that got bought and turned into Ion Television)
Polygram Pictures
The Weinstein Company (for obvious reasons)
I remember my mom when I was in the 4th grade she went on eBay and bought a lot of like 60 books and I read every single one. This was a huge part of my childhood and I hope I get the chance to show these to my kids.
I also would like to add I had all of the episodes on VHS as well
Congrats on making it in the algorithm Serfer, I’ll be praying for you!
that’s how i found this video! i’m so grateful, too. i’ll have to check out the other videos on this channel now (:
I still have all my original 60+ books and another 10 or so Give Yourself GB from 30 years ago. I just started getting my 2nd grade Son into reading them too and we've been watching the old show on Tubi as he reads certain books. It's been a really fun bonding time with him and brings back good old memories for me.