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 makes things be forgotten and this what this is all about.
Goosebumps Gold
The second re-banding for Goosebumps was supposed to come out after Goosebumps 2000 but the legal issues between Parachute Press, Scholastic and R.L. Stine. It was scheduled to be 12 books but all we know is the title of three of those books and the cover art of two of them and not much more that I didn’t already write on the Goosebumps Gold article. According to Robert Laurence Stine he writes the titles of books before writing them so he had nothing written on those books but I’m guessing even with just the title he had some vague idea, sadly the only idea from these titles that was re-used is the Slappy one.
Missing Goosebumps Series 2000 final books
The legal dispute mentioned above didn’t only cause Goosebumps Gold to be cancelled but also the last few remaining Goosebumps Series 2000 books. I did a lot of research and wrote an article about them in a previous October. The gist of things is that after the fall out R.L. Stine wrote some books that seem to be very Goosebumps like so it seems to be that they were at one point meant to be the final Goosebumps 2000 books to lead up to Goosebumps Gold. At the very least we know at least one of them was called The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader which make the coincidences too big for this theory not to be true.
Give Yourself Goosebumps #43
All we know about this book is the cover that has some angry penguins and quite frankly one of the least imaginative or creepy cover Goosebumps ever got so I’m guessing not many people are sad over it. No one knows why it was cancelled but I’m guessing the legal and contract negotiations mentioned above as well as declining sales were all parts of it. Counting how much time it would take to make one of these Choose Your Own Adventure books I’d guess this book would’ve gotten far along into production or else they wouldn’t have commissioned the artwork for random angry penguins for a Goosebumps book.
Goosebumps TRIPLE HEADER Book 3
The Triple Header books told three shorter stories and “narrated” by this three headed creature which is a novel idea on its own but we only ever got two books out of it. But Tim Jacobus did a third piece of artwork which basically confirms that a third one was meant to be released and based on the factors already mentioned we can guess why it didn’t come out. It’s ironic that this series meant of 3 heads and 3 stories didn’t have a third book released but I can’t say that I’m too saddened by it since I even though the format was novel I just didn’t like that it was basically replacing Tales to Give You Goosebumps which was hosted by my favorite Goosebumps mascot Curly the Skeleton not to mention the cover is a bit lame.
Goosebumps Presents #19 The Blob That Ate Everyone
Goosebumps presents was a series where they summarized the TV adaptations of the books which seems a bit irrelevant like Street Fighter The Movie The Game was. I guess the TV episodes that had the most changes from the books would’ve been the best to adapt but I’m not sure what their criteria to choose to adapt was. I would’ve guessed that these never sold very well and so it was cancelled, we do know that book 19 would’ve been about The Blob That Ate Everyone and a part of me thinks that most of the work on it had already been done but just wasn’t worth their trouble to even release it. The episode did feature some alterations to the story including a different ending so it would’ve been a nice adaptation.
So that’s it for some lost goosebumps books, for more spook-rific Goosebumps articles click here. If you enjoyed the article or have any thoughts let me know by commenting below or by tweeting at me. You can also share the article or hit me up an email with your thoughts, it’s nice to hear from other fans.
