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.
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?
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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!
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 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.
3:35 it's crazy how styles take you back like the grain on the camera of early digital/ analog ending, the clothes, and even the way the camera is tilted. It was all the new cool stuff lol. Those kids were in it the same way iPad kids are now.
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.
@@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.
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
@@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.
@@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
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.
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 :)
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.
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 😅
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)
Honestly, ghost writers make sense. I remember as a kid hearing a rumor that R.L. Stein wasnt a real person, just a name many wroters used, so seems even after the lawsuits the story lived on, but in a new way.
I absolutely loved those scholastic book fairs as a kid. One of my fondest memories as a kid was my parents giving me money for the book fair, it was almost like a holiday. I did pick up a goosebumps book or two. I'd say scholastic accomplished their goal of getting kids interested in reading
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
This was really great, you killed this. I always love finding merchandise that they made from that era when it was at its peak, there was so much stuff that they made under the umbrella in such a short amount of time that it is pretty impressive.
These books didn’t necessarily teach me to read BUT they taught me to read FAST .. when I was in 3rd/4th/5th grades (like ‘95-‘97 when they were popular) I could read one in LESS than a day.. I’d go cut grass to make money and buy either the newest one or two - three older ones to fill my collection.. I still have them too at my parents house
Great video on the history of Goosebumps. Very nostalgic and reminds me of the Scholastic book fairs as a kid where i would see these books. As well as the 90s Nickoldeon show.
Wow, the scholastic book fair stuff really brought back memories. I only read one book as a kid, but I remember they cover art for sure. Never knew this is why they disappeared. Didn’t know they were still being made either. Good analysis.
As a Canadian every year we'd have a Scholastic book fair which i guess consisted of all of there books goosebumps being my fav. Still have a good 30 or so books pre 2000 series
I think he has a hand in everything, even if only a hand. I collected the books and majority of them felt the same. Like he definitely had help, but he always provided the general feel of each book, I think.
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.
Just found your channel and subscribed since this was a really well done documentary. I grew up with these books as a kid and they were my gateway into my love of horror so it was nice hearing all this info about them even though greed hurt the franchise
DYK: r.l stine was a writer for Eerkra’s Castle an old nick jr. show that aired in the 90’s and replace reruns of Nickelodeon’s first original show Pinwheel?
This just gave me flashbacks to the old Goosebumps website i used to visit religiously. I remember reading articles and books, playing the games, writing a few different short stories, and a bunch of other shit. GOD i remember inn Kindergarden grade i was so hooked on the website on the first day i found it, my teacher let me stay in her class all day to be on the website (I was only ever in the Kindergarden class for homeroom and end of day wrap up, i was taking all 1st Grade classes otherwise, so she was really cool to let me stay in and do that)
I remember when scholastic used to bring the books in and display them in my elementary school, and it absolutely worked. Authors like Stein, Applegate, and Coville are the reason I grew up to love Tolkien, Lewis, and Sir Walter Scott.
Watching this video has already gotten me hyped for this year's Halloween. Suffice it to say, while it may not be a part of my own celebrations, I can tell Goosebumps is still a major Halloween tradition for fans young and old, and I wouldn't want it any other way
I grew up with goosebumps to the extent I was born in 1990 so I wasn't there from the start, but it was part of my childhood. This explains why it kind of fell into the void.
was writing full length books by the time i was 13, but i don't remember finishing one until i was fourteen or so, but most of those are lost, and i remember getting that version of Haunted Mask, man, I looked at books like each of them was a unique / collectible, singular thing, so, any book I could find … encyclopedias, my siblings' schoolbooks, and I remember really plowing through these books in a day, if it took that much time to read … The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Nightmare at Camp Jellyjam, read all of them up to … maybe continued until the series started and you start getting part 2 for a number of books. They were enjoyable books, but they have left almost no lasting impact… I don't remember the plots, barely at all, but I remember the first time I read Crime and Punishment, where i was sitting, where I started reading, literally where I was sitting on my mom's front porch, and I still remember that 22 years later. I remember it so vividly that I still think back to how much it affected me by the time you get to the meeting with the Jellyman, when Radya meets Marameladov at the pub. When he starts telling Raskolnikov his daughter has a yellow card, how he steals his wife's clothes to sell and to buy liquor, i remember … it hit me in the soul in a way that destroyed me. I was probably 16,17 at the time. … And after that, i got the Brothers Karamazov and remember, 22 years later, where I was sitting over th course of reading that book, what the cover looked like, which one it was … and how I reacted to certain moments … and while what you say towards the end is true, that Goosebumps might not be 'high literature' or art but it is great fun, and I know that it made a lot of younger kids want to write and to want to tell stories, even if they later went onto think less of the books as they aged out of the target demographic. It's important to remember, that's what is supposed to happen, and when you get older you will probably find the tories less interesting but it doesn't really make the books lesser. There are certainly people who will remember reading the Night of the Money and Nightmare at Camp Jellyjam and remember them in a visceral, impactful way, and still enjoy them as adults. that's fine too. I think Goosebumps does a good job of getting kids to seek out books, to (potentially) make a lifelong connection to reading and storytelling. I read the first Goosebumps book in 1995 when I was 9 years old, got them from the scholastic book fairs at the school. when you took home their catalogue, you could order more books. in 1996, my mom got me A Game of Thrones because she went to Barnes N'' Noble to scout for new fantasy and science fiction books for me, and she would ask what a given employee would recommend for 'a young boy who is seriously into long books, Lord of the Rings stuff." Somehow she got recommended a Game of Thrones. I remember reading through the first book and … absolutely forgetting most of it until it was rereleased on HBO. That's when I finished the series,, but re-reading the first book as an 11 year old and the second sy 25 … was a different animal entirely. I've often thought about going back to these books to see if there are any similar gems … that I read as a young 'eat all the books' kid but don't remember at all. It got me into reading, and it hardly left a mark on me, yet I've dedicated most of my life to writing … so, thanks R.L Stine and your ghostwriters, to whatever extent they were involved. Being a ghostwriter is shit, for any aspiring authors out there; you will not get credit, and if you tell the wrong person about it and it gets out, ypu'll get in trouble for talking about writing a book you wrote. TL;DR i remember thiis series… and yeah, no shit he had help releasing novellas like they were weekly comic strips for fuck's sake. A book a month is not sustainable with any kind of pretense to anything more than 'they're fucking kids.' I wonder if that's the feeling that they still retain.. Ah, the world may never know. nice vid, chum. sorry for the rant, i am too lazy to stop once i start.
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
Loved goosebumps growing up. I still have a ton of them and my animorphs books, it's sad the series rights got so messy, but I'm glad stein is still getting to write
I used to own all the goosebumps books and then collected quite a few of the Redwall series. I believe that he didn’t use ghostwriters. They aren’t large novels to write.
Coming from a generation previous to the one that reveled in the fun of the Goosebumps series, catching the tail end of all the media in the middle to late nineties. I did enjoy delightful campy horror of the Goosebumps series. Growing up on TV series such as tales from The dark side and Friday the 13th the series it was still a treat to see.
That's true, I believe the 2006-2007 comic book series was the first new Goosebumps media to be released after the book series concluded in 2000. It sort of tested the waters for the release of Goosebumps Horrorland in 2008
I discovered the "young adult horror" genre in late 90's and early 2000's. Christopher Pike was okay. The Fear Street novels had been decent. But I thought the Goosebumps series was kind of tame. Learning they were aimed at grade schoolers makes the tone of the books make much more sense.
This sounds *A Lot* like the FNAF books, which are also Scholastic. Their cannonisity is often in debate, as some ghost writers have more knowledge of the FNAF lore than others. If the male mpreg story (yes, they put a male mpreg story in the scholastic book fair staple) is any indication, they might even be using the exact same ghost writers. Like take
I mean if he did have ghost writers that’s fine I still love what RL Stine did with goosebumps. I still think I appreciate the man more than the books. He seems like an optimistic dude. I read somewhere he just created goosebumps to get kids to read. I mean with how big it’s become he probably made a ton of money and that’s swell as well but I like to believe like any author he had good intentions. I’m glad he’s had the success he has had. I mean he comes off as a genuine good guy in interviews. If he has skeletons in his closet I’d be surprised but he does come off as a humble man but other than that don’t take my word for it I do not know him maybe he’s not a saint. We learn nowadays people with fame can be quite garbage. Just look at p Diddy and so many celebrities in that cesspool.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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
3:35 it's crazy how styles take you back like the grain on the camera of early digital/ analog ending, the clothes, and even the way the camera is tilted. It was all the new cool stuff lol. Those kids were in it the same way iPad kids are now.
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.
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
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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
Don’t know why this was on my feed but I enjoyed it
Killed the Goosebumps....but it didn't stay dead...SPOOOKY
Scholastic really is just that petty huh
The Wu-Tang would never
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.
Glad to see this kind of content recommended to me. Liked and subscribed
Great video! I had no idea about all the litigation!
You caught me off guard with the pic at 4:18 lmao I completely forgot about this pic 😂
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 don’t care if it was ghost written, how I got my shrunken head was amazing
Came from Reddit. Good job reporting. You didn't use a terrible AI voice, no dumb filler dialog, or annoying opinions. Enjoyable.
I was just thinking about how many AI videos there are now. I was watching a travel video and then realized the dialogue was just weird...
Yes. As a real human, I really enjoyed this person's video.
He didn't show his face either, which is great.
Ok now go back where you came from, redditor
bUt AI iS THe fuTUre!
Very good video!!! Well researched and well edited!!!
Honestly, ghost writers make sense. I remember as a kid hearing a rumor that R.L. Stein wasnt a real person, just a name many wroters used, so seems even after the lawsuits the story lived on, but in a new way.
It was literally Goosebumps that got me into reading
I absolutely loved those scholastic book fairs as a kid. One of my fondest memories as a kid was my parents giving me money for the book fair, it was almost like a holiday. I did pick up a goosebumps book or two. I'd say scholastic accomplished their goal of getting kids interested in reading
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
This was really great, you killed this. I always love finding merchandise that they made from that era when it was at its peak, there was so much stuff that they made under the umbrella in such a short amount of time that it is pretty impressive.
I'm already subscribed, glad you're getting recommended to people at the comments are saying
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
Great video! Hope this gets a lot more traction!
R.L. stines & christopher pike. I especially loved the fear street books, i read every book that i could get my hands on
Don’t know why this was recommended but I’m happy it was! Subscribed!
I was obsessed with The Fear Street series as a kid, I was reading them at the exact same time I was reading Goosebumps
These books didn’t necessarily teach me to read BUT they taught me to read FAST .. when I was in 3rd/4th/5th grades (like ‘95-‘97 when they were popular) I could read one in LESS than a day.. I’d go cut grass to make money and buy either the newest one or two - three older ones to fill my collection.. I still have them too at my parents house
Great video! Had never thought about why Goosebumps had fizzled away, but this was great to learn about.
Great video on the history of Goosebumps. Very nostalgic and reminds me of the Scholastic book fairs as a kid where i would see these books. As well as the 90s Nickoldeon show.
Wow, the scholastic book fair stuff really brought back memories. I only read one book as a kid, but I remember they cover art for sure. Never knew this is why they disappeared. Didn’t know they were still being made either. Good analysis.
As a Canadian every year we'd have a Scholastic book fair which i guess consisted of all of there books goosebumps being my fav. Still have a good 30 or so books pre 2000 series
I think he has a hand in everything, even if only a hand. I collected the books and majority of them felt the same. Like he definitely had help, but he always provided the general feel of each book, I think.
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.
Just found your channel and subscribed since this was a really well done documentary. I grew up with these books as a kid and they were my gateway into my love of horror so it was nice hearing all this info about them even though greed hurt the franchise
DYK: r.l stine was a writer for Eerkra’s Castle an old nick jr. show that aired in the 90’s and replace reruns of Nickelodeon’s first original show Pinwheel?
This just gave me flashbacks to the old Goosebumps website i used to visit religiously. I remember reading articles and books, playing the games, writing a few different short stories, and a bunch of other shit. GOD i remember inn Kindergarden grade i was so hooked on the website on the first day i found it, my teacher let me stay in her class all day to be on the website (I was only ever in the Kindergarden class for homeroom and end of day wrap up, i was taking all 1st Grade classes otherwise, so she was really cool to let me stay in and do that)
Love your videos!
I remember when scholastic used to bring the books in and display them in my elementary school, and it absolutely worked. Authors like Stein, Applegate, and Coville are the reason I grew up to love Tolkien, Lewis, and Sir Walter Scott.
I have all the VHS movies and loads of books, it WAS my childhood.
Worth it, very well presented. Thank you, god bless
Stein's next horror novel "I hired my contract lawyer at the county fair"
Haven’t watched the video yet but I had the Haunted Mask VHS and that really creeped me out as a kid. Thanks for jogging the memory with the box art.
This video gave me Swanpimples.
I like the idea of writing a story where the fear of the unknown and of horrors is in the child's mind. Even if there are monsters they're not evil.
I remember going to see the goosebumps play during the height of its popularity. It was really cool.
What a flashback! Love this video ❤
Watching this video has already gotten me hyped for this year's Halloween. Suffice it to say, while it may not be a part of my own celebrations, I can tell Goosebumps is still a major Halloween tradition for fans young and old, and I wouldn't want it any other way
Scholastic book fairs were the highlight of any school year for me. I think I still have some car posters in storage 20+ years later
That intro music almost gave me nightmares while I was awake
I grew up with goosebumps to the extent I was born in 1990 so I wasn't there from the start, but it was part of my childhood. This explains why it kind of fell into the void.
was writing full length books by the time i was 13, but i don't remember finishing one until i was fourteen or so, but most of those are lost, and i remember getting that version of Haunted Mask, man, I looked at books like each of them was a unique / collectible, singular thing, so, any book I could find … encyclopedias, my siblings' schoolbooks, and I remember really plowing through these books in a day, if it took that much time to read … The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Nightmare at Camp Jellyjam, read all of them up to … maybe continued until the series started and you start getting part 2 for a number of books. They were enjoyable books, but they have left almost no lasting impact… I don't remember the plots, barely at all, but I remember the first time I read Crime and Punishment, where i was sitting, where I started reading, literally where I was sitting on my mom's front porch, and I still remember that 22 years later. I remember it so vividly that I still think back to how much it affected me by the time you get to the meeting with the Jellyman, when Radya meets Marameladov at the pub. When he starts telling Raskolnikov his daughter has a yellow card, how he steals his wife's clothes to sell and to buy liquor, i remember … it hit me in the soul in a way that destroyed me. I was probably 16,17 at the time. … And after that, i got the Brothers Karamazov and remember, 22 years later, where I was sitting over th course of reading that book, what the cover looked like, which one it was … and how I reacted to certain moments … and while what you say towards the end is true, that Goosebumps might not be 'high literature' or art but it is great fun, and I know that it made a lot of younger kids want to write and to want to tell stories, even if they later went onto think less of the books as they aged out of the target demographic. It's important to remember, that's what is supposed to happen, and when you get older you will probably find the tories less interesting but it doesn't really make the books lesser. There are certainly people who will remember reading the Night of the Money and Nightmare at Camp Jellyjam and remember them in a visceral, impactful way, and still enjoy them as adults. that's fine too. I think Goosebumps does a good job of getting kids to seek out books, to (potentially) make a lifelong connection to reading and storytelling.
I read the first Goosebumps book in 1995 when I was 9 years old, got them from the scholastic book fairs at the school. when you took home their catalogue, you could order more books. in 1996, my mom got me A Game of Thrones because she went to Barnes N'' Noble to scout for new fantasy and science fiction books for me, and she would ask what a given employee would recommend for 'a young boy who is seriously into long books, Lord of the Rings stuff." Somehow she got recommended a Game of Thrones. I remember reading through the first book and … absolutely forgetting most of it until it was rereleased on HBO. That's when I finished the series,, but re-reading the first book as an 11 year old and the second sy 25 … was a different animal entirely. I've often thought about going back to these books to see if there are any similar gems … that I read as a young 'eat all the books' kid but don't remember at all. It got me into reading, and it hardly left a mark on me, yet I've dedicated most of my life to writing … so, thanks R.L Stine and your ghostwriters, to whatever extent they were involved. Being a ghostwriter is shit, for any aspiring authors out there; you will not get credit, and if you tell the wrong person about it and it gets out, ypu'll get in trouble for talking about writing a book you wrote.
TL;DR i remember thiis series… and yeah, no shit he had help releasing novellas like they were weekly comic strips for fuck's sake. A book a month is not sustainable with any kind of pretense to anything more than 'they're fucking kids.'
I wonder if that's the feeling that they still retain.. Ah, the world may never know.
nice vid, chum. sorry for the rant, i am too lazy to stop once i start.
1:48 - "There's tons of cheap housing on Fear Street!"
Great video
Great audio!
Haha! The red letters that you put above goosebumps in the intro, reminds me of the show "married with children"
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
Every time I saw the opening from the show durythe video I could hear the theme song
Loved goosebumps growing up. I still have a ton of them and my animorphs books, it's sad the series rights got so messy, but I'm glad stein is still getting to write
I used to own all the goosebumps books and then collected quite a few of the Redwall series. I believe that he didn’t use ghostwriters. They aren’t large novels to write.
24 books a year, aka 2 books a month? Even if he were truly writing all those books himself it would make sense why the quality dropped
Coming from a generation previous to the one that reveled in the fun of the Goosebumps series, catching the tail end of all the media in the middle to late nineties. I did enjoy delightful campy horror of the Goosebumps series. Growing up on TV series such as tales from The dark side and Friday the 13th the series it was still a treat to see.
Good work but forgot to mention the comic books
That's true, I believe the 2006-2007 comic book series was the first new Goosebumps media to be released after the book series concluded in 2000. It sort of tested the waters for the release of Goosebumps Horrorland in 2008
I wonder how many people are doing the same thing now, but instead of ghost writers they're just plugging the outlines into chat gpt
I discovered the "young adult horror" genre in late 90's and early 2000's. Christopher Pike was okay. The Fear Street novels had been decent. But I thought the Goosebumps series was kind of tame. Learning they were aimed at grade schoolers makes the tone of the books make much more sense.
loved the bit about scholastic getting "bigger fish"ed. corporate greed is truly wonderful.
Yo! Christopher Pike totally ruled my middle school years. Last vampire and Remember me were NUTS
Thanks for the video! Corporate greed is disgusting. (Also "phenomena" is the plural, which you used incorrectly a couple times)
Amazing video *new sub*
Scholastic Bookfairs were such a highlight of my childhood. Goosebumps and Series of Unfortunate ❤
I still have a few books somewhere in storage.
This sounds *A Lot* like the FNAF books, which are also Scholastic. Their cannonisity is often in debate, as some ghost writers have more knowledge of the FNAF lore than others. If the male mpreg story (yes, they put a male mpreg story in the scholastic book fair staple) is any indication, they might even be using the exact same ghost writers. Like take
one of the first books i borrowed from a library was a goosebumps book
Greed is an ugly trait, and only ruins beauty
Idk if you care but "entitled" is an attitude but "titled" is when something is given a title.
I have a great request for you! The death of Dimension Films.
That studio was terrible
I think the only reason they were popular because of the art and the raised goosebumps logo on the cover
Scholastic killed the golden Goosebumps
I mean if he did have ghost writers that’s fine I still love what RL Stine did with goosebumps. I still think I appreciate the man more than the books. He seems like an optimistic dude. I read somewhere he just created goosebumps to get kids to read. I mean with how big it’s become he probably made a ton of money and that’s swell as well but I like to believe like any author he had good intentions. I’m glad he’s had the success he has had. I mean he comes off as a genuine good guy in interviews. If he has skeletons in his closet I’d be surprised but he does come off as a humble man but other than that don’t take my word for it I do not know him maybe he’s not a saint. We learn nowadays people with fame can be quite garbage. Just look at p Diddy and so many celebrities in that cesspool.
I had so many Geesebumps as a kid
I was so excited for those book fairs and goosebumps or buy a poster of a car or something.
"Say Cheese and Die" was my first and favorite Goosebumps book as a kid 😊
1:59 "Redwall"
That explains the early 90s kids turning into furries :P
The book covers always attracted me as a child.
I saw the Animorphs TV show on Nickelodeon in the late 90s.
3:11
I miss the Book Fairs
That sucks a ton man.
There used to be a TCBY in my hometown
Still have 36 of my own!
slappy gave me a reoccurring nightmares as child. hated that dude.