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Are You Afraid Of The Dark’s Sardo & Dr. Vink Recurring Character arcs

10/27/201802/05/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Unlike Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark didn’t really have recurring villains or even characters outside of the kids who told the stories. But there were indeed two characters that we got to see plenty of times and they were Sardo the magic shop owner and Dr. Vink who got to appear in more than one story through out the shows run and were fan favorites so let’s talk about them for a while.

Not only the owner of Sardo’s Magic Mansion but also a bit of an amateur magician, Sardo. He is most famous for his catchphrases “That’s Sar-DOH! No Mister, accent on the do!” and “All right!, but I’m losing on the deal!” and he usually had some type of item that the character of the story needed. His store usually featured both phony stuff as well as real stuff which would usually get either him or others in trouble. He appeared in the following episodes: “The Tale of the Super Specs”, “The Tale of the Dark Dragon”, “The Tale of the Carved Stone”, “The Tale of Cutter’s Treasure: Part 1”, “The Tale of Cutter’s Treasure: Part 2”, “The Tale of a Door Unlocked”, “The Tale of Oblivion” and “The Tale of the Time Trap”.

Lost Goosebumps Books you didn’t know about

10/21/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Miscellaneous

Goosebumps has had quite a a few different books in their different series, compilations, special editions and what not. So let’s take a look back at some lost Goosebumps books that for a variety of reasons never came out, are rather obscure and forgotten by time to the Goosebumps brand as a whole. Sometimes time … Read More “Lost Goosebumps Books you didn’t know about” »

Goosebumps Article Archive

10/20/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Miscellaneous

They tell you not to judge a book by its cover but in the case of Goosebumps it was the cover that completely sold the books to every kid. The stories were never actually all that scary but many of its creatures were as iconic as any other horror icons like Jason or Freddy. This is my little tribute to the Goosebumps franchise.

French Goosebumps: Chaire de poule Books & Goodies

10/19/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Miscellaneous

It’s October and the Halloween season is the perfect time to talk about Goosebumps, or Chaire de poule (literally chicken skin) as it’s known in francophone regions. And that’s exactly what I want to talk about the different editions that the French versions that this book series got in both France and in Quebec Canada.

The French Edition was published and translated by Bayard Poche and printed 74 books. The logo is mostly the same slime font only with the Chair de poule name while the covers are entirely different.

They are worse and nowhere near as iconic as the Tim Jacobus’ covers but they do succeed in looking far creepier and scarier that you’d expect them in another book series like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

The Lost Goosebumps Series 2000 books you R.L. Stine published secretly

10/30/201701/26/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Reading again..

After the original run of Goosebumps ended as sales were slowing down they continued immediately with Goosebumps Series 2000 to capitalize on the marketing for the year 2000 coming up. This series ended after 25 books, partly because kids had been outgrowing Goosebumps but mostly because of a several lawsuits between Scholastic and Parachute Press which lead to R.L. Stine’s contract not being renewed and everything Goosebumps related to be cancelled, including the Goosebumps Gold series that was due to launch at the end of the year 2000.

Ironically because of this only one Goosebumps Series 2000 book came out in the year 2000 as it had already been scheduled for January of that year. We know of the 26th book that would’ve been released in February of that year called “The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader”. Thanks to Tim Jacobus we got the cover art for that book that never came out. Or did it not?

A book called “The Adventures of Shrinkman” came out shortly after the cancellation of Goosebumps without any relation to Goosebumps. This book which emphasized that it was from R.L. Stine was not the only one as there were a total of six stand-alone novellas that were published that year and the following. The book mentions that it’s inspired by “The Incredible Shrinking Man” which was the play on the title the Goosebumps book had not to mention that one of the scenes of the book closely resembles what is pictured in the cover art of the Goosebumps 2000 book.

Here is the Synopsis:

When Danny Marin isn’t playing basketball, he spends hours drawing Shrinkman, his favorite comic-book superhero, or watching Shrinkman movies. His hero can shrink to the size of a bug. But, whoa—wait. Suddenly, Danny finds himself shrinking, too! His parents are horrified, his friend Megan thinks it’s funny, and his doctor is baffled. With each passing hour, Danny gets smaller and smaller—until he’s the size of a sparrow. Soon he’s fighting for his life against a grasshopper, a colony of ants, and even his own dog. He isn’t safe anywhere. He has to find a cure—before he shrinks away forever.
Funny and terrifying and filled with BIG surprises, The Adventures of Shrinkman proves that it takes more than size to overcome impossible hurdles.

As you can see the story seems right up Goosebumps alley making this the 26th Goosebumps 2000 book that was never released. But here’s the thing, the other 5 junior novels also feature stories that seem straight out of Goosebumps, featuring a young kid getting into a spooky or weird situation only for things to turn out fine until a twist ending comes. So It’s clear that all these other books that were released were originally intended to be Goosebumps Series 2000 books before it was abruptly cancelled and to not let those stories that were already drafted go to waste he published them with another publisher.

Goosebumps Gold was due to come out in October of that same year, marketing had already begun and there was no reason for Series 2000 to finish and leave a gap as one book was constantly published every month. Counting January’s book was released that left us with 8 series 2000 books that would’ve been published before moving on to Goosebumps Gold. While only 6 of these novels came out that likely meant the other 2 hadn’t even been drafted which made sense the Goosebumps Gold books had also not been written yet, only some ideas thrown around.

So let’s take a look at the other rare Goosebumps Series 2000 books that were published without the Goosebumps name and their synopsis not counting the one already mentioned. Thankfully they’re all easy to get through Amazon even though they are somewhat rare. It’s also worth noting that Goosebumps artist Tim Jacobus is credited as being the artist of these books as well, keeping the connection back to Goosebumps tighter even if it’s not exactly the same style.

Whatever happened to.. Goosebumps Gold ?

10/19/201701/26/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Whatever happened to...

Goosebumps was a huge hit in the 90s but as the years went by the franchise started to slow down a bit and to re-energize it the original run ended and was immediately replaced by Goosebumps Series 2000 which sparked a bit more interest into the series though the trend of Goosebumps slowing down as their original target audience kept growing up. Still, Scholastic had no intention of letting go and they had planned for a new series to take over Series 2000 in October 2001 with Goosebumps Gold.

R.L. Stine’s contract was ending and Scholastic was in a legal dispute over Goosebumps with Parachute Press, add to that the declining sales and the scheduled Goosebumps Gold series was cancelled and not seen again for a few years. But what exactly was Goosebumps Gold going to be like? Besides a few press releases what we mostly have to go by is the artwork of the first two books as well as the title for the third from Tim Jacobus’ website.

Lost Goosebumps Episodes from the TV show stuck on PC

10/10/201701/26/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Secret Movie

Goosebumps was a huge hit in the 90s releasing tons of books and spanning a successful TV show on Fox Kids which adapted almost every book of the original run in 74 episodes. Sadly the show came to an end but I can’t say it didn’t accomplish more than I would’ve thought. Even then if you’ve watched every episode you might have an itch for more than not even the movies can get to and luckily I’ve found just that to watch.

As mentioned Goosebumps was huge and of course it got plenty of merchandise including video games, and we’re not focused on that exactly but the story of them since they serve as nice extra episodes of the franchise that you can enjoy if you’re tired of watching the same episodes over and over again with the same cheesyness that the original show had and we have a total of 3 “extra/lost” episodes, two featuring Horrorland and one the infamous Mutant from Attack of the Mutant.

Escape from Horrorland