 You know, looking back at the 90s, it really was a golden age for just really weird media that was aimed at kids. Because we had stuff like Warriors of Virtue, which was a movie about talking humanoid kangaroos that knew kung fu. Trust me, it doesn't make sense in context either. It was a very strange film. You've come uninvited into our light spring, Komodo. This is our home. We want it back. Warriors! Komodo! We had stuff like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which in the words of Donald Glover, sounds like a homeless person's fever dream. We had... shit, basically. Oh, okay, my stack of books fell over. That's fine, I was expecting that. But we had basically everything that was on Nickelodeon for that entire decade was very, very odd. Stuff like Ren and Stimpy, or Rocco's Modern Life, things. They were weird, is what I'm getting at. I already did a whole video talking about Animorphs and how weird that was, and I did another video talking about Everworld, and granted I was mostly focused on how good that series was, but it was also very strange when you get down to it. So in a way, it was kind of weirder when something came along in the 90s that was aimed at kids that wasn't all that strange, and it still did really well. Enter Goosebumps. Now, Goosebumps is an absolutely massive franchise. Like it started off as a book series, which has over 60 entries, and it has multiple spin-off series, such as Goosebumps Horrorland, or Choose Your Own Goosebumps. And some of those have dozens of entries on their own. They had several video games made of it over, like somewhere in the 90s, somewhere a bit more recent. They had a TV show in the 90s, which is kind of famous nowadays for having really terrible acting, but I will say that the theme song still sends chills down my spine. They even made a couple of movies off of it, and like these weren't a long time ago either. These were just in the past few years, like they had Jack Black in them and everything. And I saw the first one, it's actually not bad, but the point I'm getting at is that this isn't just nostalgia, you know, it wasn't like, oh hey, this was successful in the 90s, let's make some stuff to pander to millennials or whatever, like no, there is something about it that makes kids today still interested in this series. And I've mentioned playing at times before, as soon as something gets big enough, a lot of other people come in and try to copy it so that they can ape on some of that success. Like I made a video on Twilight clones and how those worked, I made a video on how the Hunger Games clones all worked, and I point out in both of those that a lot of times the clones just sort of copied the aesthetic of it without really understanding what made it work, and so they just didn't have quite the same staying power and none of them reached that same level of success. And Goosebumps was no different. There were a ton of book series aimed at kids that were like horror or horror-esque in the 90s and early 2000s, stuff like Strange Matter, Spooksville, Michigan Chillers, Dead Time Stories, Bone Chillers, Graveyard School, Shivers, The Bailey School Kids, and probably a couple of others that I have never even heard of. Now, most of these series have a very similar formula to Goosebumps. It's young kids that get caught up in a bunch of various dangerous supernatural situations where they run into like vampires or leprechauns or they get trapped in haunted woods and they have to find their sister in a haunted house that, you know, things like that. And please note that I said situations not adventures because in most of these, like whether we're talking Goosebumps or the other ones, most of the time you don't come away envious, you know you don't come away thinking like, man, I wish I could go on adventures like that. Like, no, it's most of the time it sounds terrible. Even if the book is not one of the scarier ones, which let's be honest, a lot of Goosebumps and a lot of the other ones just weren't that scary. They were still entertaining reads, but they weren't like things that would make it hard for you to sleep at night. But the point is you still don't come away wanting to be characters in there the way you would with something like, say, Harry Potter, where a huge chunk of the series is just wish fulfillment. Now this video isn't going to be like a super deep dive into the topic because usually when I do that I prefer for it to be scripted, but this one, I just kind of want to look at Goosebumps, look at, you know, what made it work, what made it have such staying power, why do so many people have such fond memories of it, and then just look at how that worked and why other series never quite reached that same level. And there will be a bunch of spoilers and stuff in here going ahead. So I guess if that bothers you, you shouldn't watch, but I mean, Goosebumps, if you're an older person, they're probably not going to appeal to you that much beyond nostalgia because while I can look at this and pick it apart on a technical level and say, like, oh, yeah, this is why kids liked it so much. This is why that worked. It's still probably not going to be your favorite thing ever. But I mean, if you're really curious, go read a couple of them and come back. So the first thing to note about Goosebumps is that it is a really long series. Like I said before, it has over 60 entries, but most of the books are self-contained. You know, you can just pick up any random one from any part of the series and then read through it and you won't be confused or anything. Like to this day, there are still a couple in the series that I never read for one reason or another, but it's not like I have holes in my knowledge or anything. Like I read all the others and they're all pretty much self-contained. Like they'll introduce new characters, introduce a new supernatural threat of some sort, introduce a new situation for them to be in, and a lot of times they have cliffhanger endings and we just never find out what happens. There are a couple of sequels where you would need to read the ones that came before, but not that many. Like Monster Blood, you know, there's Monster Blood 1, 2, 3, 4, and it's just the same kid running into situations surrounding Monster Blood. There's Say Cheese and Die, and then there's Say Cheese and Die Again, which is about a haunted camera. There's Night of the Living Dummy, 1, 2, and 3, like, you know, things like that. Every one of these entries follows a kid in a scary situation. Usually they're on their own. Not always. Sometimes they'll have one or two friends with them, but the thing is there aren't any adults around to help. Because think about it, when you're a kid, if you're in like really big trouble, you probably go to an older person for help. Like, your parents would be the first choice for most people, but if they're not available for whatever reason, you might go to your grandparents or a teacher or an older sibling or something like that. And the thing about Goosebumps is that that's usually not an option for them for one reason or another. You know, like they're trapped out in the woods or something, or they try telling people about, oh, these ghosts are going around doing ghost things and nobody believes them and they can't find any proof of it. So, you know, they are both literally and metaphorically isolated. And so these kids are, you know, stuck in shitty situations. And most of the time, they can't like just fight their way out either. You know, they don't have any sort of super special powers most of the time. There are there are one or two entries where it turns out that the kid had powers all along, but that's usually a twist right near the end. But it's not like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or something like that, where they can just figure out how to use these new powers they have and fight out of trouble. Like no, it's they have to rely on their own wits and they have to rely on luck. Plus, there were no cell phones in the 90s, or at least they weren't very common in the 90s. So calling for help when you're stuck out in the wilderness or something just wasn't an option most of the time. In fact, I believe Arl Stein has commented on how difficult it is to write stuff that takes place in the modern day, just because you have to spend a lot of time getting rid of cell phones. That's why pretty much every modern day horror movie has at least one scene where characters are holding up a phone going, Hey, there's no service out here. And they're like, Yeah, we're in the middle of nowhere. Like, they have to do that to isolate the characters. Otherwise, you're just wondering, Well, why don't they just call for help? Another thing Goosebumps did really well a lot of the time was that it played around with ideas of monsters. You know, pretty good examples of this would be werewolf skin and vampire breath. Now, we obviously know all about werewolves, like people turn, excuse me, people turn into wolves on the full moon, they run around if you bite, if you get bitten by one, you turn into a werewolf. But werewolf skin changed it around so that once the full moon goes down, the person who is a werewolf sheds their skin. And on the inside, they're a human again. And then when the moon comes back up later, they run over, put their skin back on and that they're a werewolf again. So that's, that's a unique take on it. And vampire breath is pretty similar, like vampires actually take out their fangs when they're sleeping, kind of like those, like those fake plastic vampire fangs, I'm imagining. And the two main characters actually get trapped by a vampire in his castle. And he tells them like, there's really no way you're going to get out of here. I don't have my fangs. I'm going to go search for them. As soon as I find them, I'm going to kill you. But in the meantime, just have fun wandering around. And that's most of the book. I'm really not exaggerating. That's kind of how it goes. But again, that is a different take on something that we've seen a lot of times, like, especially in the, the years since goosebumps has kind of faded away. Vampires have been done over and over and over again. And very rarely were they done differently in any way. So looking back, that's especially impressive. The stories often had constant twists, like just constant twists. Like you think you know what's going on. Oh, no, you don't. It's actually something else is going on. Like the person you thought was a bad guy actually turned out to not be that awful. And the person you thought was a good guy turned out to be really bad. And so you never know what's going on. And that works really great for horror, especially horror and thrillers. And Arlstein was not afraid to give you twist endings that left you hanging like stuff like Welcome to Camp Nightmare, where it turns out that the entire time these kids are at a summer camp and other kids are going missing and the main character is wondering what's going on. And at the end, he finds out it was all a test. His parents are actually going on a mission to another planet. And they wanted to take him along, but they had to make sure he was prepared. And he's like, Well, what's the planet? It's called Earth. The people there are called humans. And you realize, Oh, okay, he, these people have all been aliens all along. And it's just that that's the end of it. We never find out what happens next. And it works really well in a horror format. Or my best friend is invisible, where at the end, the main character finally sees the invisible guy who's been making his life hell for like a week. And then it turns out like, Hey, this invisible guy is a human. What the hell? And it turns out they were aliens the whole time. They actually, they used that twist a couple of times, actually, like either the main characters were aliens the whole time, or they were monsters the whole time. And we just didn't find out about it. And granted, it is, they do it at least slightly differently every time. But, you know, they, they do the same twist a lot. But there are other twist endings, like, for example, the legend of the Lost Legend. At the end of that one, they finally find the Lost Legend. And they're, you know, stranded out in the middle of the woods somewhere. And then they open it up and it says whoever owns the Lost Legend will be lost forever. And they look around and realize, like, wait, where are we? These woods look unfamiliar? And you realize, Oh, well, they're going to be lost in the woods forever. That really sucks. You know, like there are, it's a simple idea. You know, like just having a cliff hanger where you're like, Oh, they're in trouble. They might not get out of this alive. Works pretty well for horror. Or you're thinking, Oh, they're about to die. Like either way, it works really well for horror. And so you combine a couple of those elements together. And while it usually is pretty formulaic, it works great to get kids not only into reading but into horror stuff in general. But now that we understand the basics of what makes Goosebumps work, let's look at some of the rip offs and see like where exactly they went wrong. So the first Goosebumps rip off that I really read and was familiar with was Spooksville. And this one, this one I only read about because my older brothers used to have a really big collection of Goosebumps books. And then they just had one Spooksville book in there. It was Aliens in the Sky, if you're curious. And it was just, I don't know, I was really into aliens at the time. So I read that one. I thought, well, this is a lot like Goosebumps, but it's not quite as good. And at the time, I obviously couldn't articulate how I felt about it or why. But that was basically my thoughts. And I would show off that Goosebumps collection. But I mean, after they moved out, they gave it to me. And then years ago, I gave it to my nephew. So it's long gone now. Anyways, with that, that tangent out of the way, the Spooksville books are, you know, very similar to Goosebumps. Like you have kids that meet aliens and witches and they go to other dimensions and they find haunted houses and they fight giant crabs, you know, things like that. It's very similar to Goosebumps in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways, it does work. Like I said, Aliens in the Sky is not a bad book by any means. I think it's pretty decent looking back. But it makes one major, major mistake, which kind of prevents it from ever reaching the same level as Goosebumps. And that is that it sends the kids on adventures. Like it doesn't put them in scary situations and force them to get out or die. Or in some cases, it's not die, but meet a fate that's worse than death. Because, you know, censorship boards would have been upset about it or school boards would have upset about whatever. Like the point is some bad things would happen to them. But like in Spooksville, they like go to other dimensions and overthrow an evil king with the help of some of their new friends. And that's not really scary so much. That's like an adventure. And so it just it never quite worked on the same level as Goosebumps. And it also makes the mistake of having the same characters in every book. Like it has one core cast of kids that are all in the same town and they just go on one adventure after another rather than having new characters in every book. So they can never be in real danger is the thing. Because they can't kill them off and then just replace them later on or kill them off. And that's the end of their story. Like they have to continue making more books. So they're never in real danger. And so even as a kid that the level of tension just wasn't quite there for me. And possibly even worse is that you can't have those crazy twist cliffhanger endings like you had in Goosebumps. Like and that's just that's just kind of unfortunate because a lot of times that was a big part of the Goosebumps identity. Like another good one would be like the Beast from the East where the kids are spending the whole book playing a game with these giant animals that are going to eat them if they lose and then they finally win. And then at the very end they run into another one and he starts the game again. And they're like fuck we're well we're in trouble. And then just that's how it ends. And you you would not be able to do that with Spooksville because you'd be wondering wait what happens in the next book. And then they would either have to drop that storyline altogether and you'd feel like you are ripped off or they would have to try and continue it. And at that point it's no longer a self-contained story. And it just the whole thing falls apart. Now I'm not trying to say that Spooksville is a terrible series. Like obviously I haven't read it in a long time. But from what I remember it was fine. It's just that it never quite reached the level of what it was trying to imitate because it didn't really understand what made it work. Or possibly they did understand what made it work and they just tried to set themselves apart by doing something slightly different and having this same cast of characters the whole time. And it just didn't quite click for me. Either way it never reached the same level as Goosebumps. The next one that I really remember pretty well is called Strange Matter. This one again is very similar. Kids run into various supernatural threats like haunted houses and they go out into the woods in one and there's like these lizard men who are actually just pirates from a couple hundred years earlier who were cursed and they melt in water. It's very odd. It's an odd book. And this one is different than Spooksville in that it actually does have different characters in every book. So it fixes that problem. But it all takes place in the same town. The town of Fairfield if you're curious. And that I think actually works because it allows you to have this certain level of continuity and you can make references to past books or you can like foreshadow future ones which the series does at a couple of points and it it works out okay. And when you get rid of the same cast of characters in every book you can actually do stuff like kill them off or make it seem like they're going to be killed off. So there is actual tension there. And you know they have tons of like monsters in the woods, witches, haunted houses like there's nothing here that is phenomenally bad. And honestly thinking back on it I can't remember all that much in terms of specifics. Like I remember a couple of brief moments from the series but I don't really remember that much about the characters. I don't remember that much about the threats other than like I said the mutated pirates because that one was just weird. Or there was one where they were getting stalked by a Yeti in in the mountains and that one was pretty spooky just because at the time I believed in Sasquatch. But you know I just don't remember that much about them and in a way it makes me feel like maybe it's better to be bad than to be forgettable. It's like would I rather read the Twilight books or would I rather read the Halo trilogy again. Like they're both pretty bad but the Halo trilogy is bad in a boring way where I just didn't really care about anything that happened whereas Twilight is still bad but it's a lot funnier. Like I can at least laugh at parts of it. So I don't know like I just I don't have that much to say about Strange Matter. It wasn't it didn't stick with me. And now we go to the stack of books that I had sitting with me here the Michigan Chillers series. Like this is half of it the other half still just sitting there. And this is basically the same you know it's kids run into a bunch of various threats but they all take place in Michigan and it's more similar to Goose Bumps in that it changes characters every time. And so we have stuff like dinosaurs destroy Detroit creepy clowns of Kalamazoo which if you are unaware yes Kalamazoo is a real city in Michigan or the first one mayhem on Mackinac Island. Like you know it's just things that take place in the author's home state. Like he wanted to write stuff that happened in his area and you know what good on him for that that that's fine. Like it's not something I'm particularly into like the reason I have all of these is just because my sister used to live in Michigan and she would send me these as gifts. But you know to me Michigan's just yeah this place over there it's not my home but I mean I think the books were fine. You know they uh they were just kind of more Goose Bumps stuff. Now it kind of has the same problem as Spooksville in that there is a continuous storyline even if they don't have uh the same characters in every book I suppose. Like for example at the end of the first book uh the main character like gets out of all the trouble she was in and she was like whoa that was crazy and then she runs into one of her friends and she's like hey man I gotta tell you about what just went down with me and he's like oh well before that happens let me tell you about what happened down at Christmas time back in my home and then Terror Stalks Traverse City is book two and it follows that guy uh in during his own adventure and then at the end of that one he runs into some other people and he tells them about that and they're like oh well that sounds an awful lot like what happened to us last summer and it just every book ends that way so it's going backwards in chronological order it's like memento it's kind kind of interesting but it does have the same problem in that you know oh nothing really bad is ever going to happen to these people so it is kind of unfortunate but I mean at the very least if you're a kid from Michigan then it would be cool to have something like this that you are uh that you're connected to you know like I've said in the past that I wish there was more stuff written that took place in Colorado and finally we have the Across the Street series now I can guarantee that the vast majority of you have never heard of this book series before because I finally got around to rating and reviewing the two books on Goodreads because I re-read them and I I'm the only person that's rated or reviewed either of them so basically unless you saw my reviews of those then you probably are not familiar with this series in the slightest uh I did mention it a few months ago though during my uh book uh my video on Christian books and why they're all terrible at the very end I mentioned that my sixth grade English teacher wrote a series of Christian goosebumps ripoffs and well that that's the Across the Street series now obviously I can't offer you any real proof that it was my English teacher that wrote these because these are the only two books he's ever written he's not well known and I certainly don't want to give away any of his personal information or my personal information not to mention I haven't talked to the dude in probably what 14 years but uh again I'm the only person that seems to know these exist so I think that is some evidence you'll just have to take my word for the rest but yeah like on the first day of school he when he was introducing himself to us he said yeah I'm actually a published author and if you're curious you can go check out some of my books over at the school library and I thought that was cool so I did exactly that and I read them when I was 11 I thought they were bad I just recently bought them again on Kindle and read them there and they're so terrible they're so bad like I tell you Christian Goosebumps horror ripoff and you're probably imagining something stupid but whatever you're imagining this is worse so the first book is called The Witch Across the Street and I think the setup for this one is pretty good it just follows a normal kid named Byron and he has a neighbor who's just an old spinster woman who lives by herself and no one really talks to her people think she's a witch people don't really like her and kids are afraid of her because they think she'll put a curse on them or something I think that's a solid setup for a book like this at least it's a solid setup if you set aside the fact that Byron spends like the first eight pages just describing his very mundane milk toast life in just a stupid amount of detail like I just mentioned a minute ago I wish there were more books that took place in Colorado well this series takes place in Denver and it does not make Denver seem very cool or exciting it's just like yeah I'm a kid in elementary school and I really like football and I have a leg which didn't develop properly so I have a limp and people make fun of me for that and like that's it he doesn't really have any personality beyond that but anyways the story gets started because Byron's mom has him bring cookies to the witch across the street or Byron and his sister I should say and I'm going to describe this very quickly and you're going to think I'm condensing things but I'm really not this kind of happens all at once so they go over there they find out that she's actually a Wiccan and rereading this today I was like oh I forgot about that they're gonna make it so that Wiccans are all actually secretly Satanists aren't they and at first I thought like oh okay they're actually pulling away from that because she was just going on about how oh no we're not bad people we just have respect for like Mother Earth and yada yada actually I'm actually not very familiar with the beliefs of Wiccans so I know they're not Satanists but I don't know if this book got them correct in that regard but basically yeah they they talk to her a bit about that and she gives them a Ouija board but it turns out she actually was a witch and she actually is possessed by a demon and so Byron plays with the Ouija board for a little while he accidentally summons some demons and the demons do bad things and they make his dad get in a car crash but he lives and then this book makes the the major mistake when Byron goes and tells his parents he's like hey um that lady actually is a witch and she gave us a Ouija board and then his mom freaks out on him and she says this is satanic Jesus wouldn't want this and then they bring in a pastor and he exercises the demons from their house and then he exercises the demons from the witch and pretty much the entire back half of the book is just Byron watching adults fix the problem and honestly that's that's the entire book right there like around 10% of it you might think I'm exaggerating but no around 10% of it is just either reciting bible verses or talking about God and not in like an interesting complex theological way which I I can get behind you know like I think discussions on nature of divinity and stuff can be really interesting even if I'm not a religious person but no it's just very standard surface level Jesus loves you and you need to let him into your heart or God will kill you I guess like just very basic stuff I'm really not leaving much out this thing is very short it barely breaks novella length like I am not just lying about this on Kindle like you can have it set so that it calculates a reading speed and tells you how much time you have left to finish this thing I read each of these in about an hour and like I read fast don't get me wrong but that is still crazy short like I know a lot of you probably aren't even going to believe me when I tell you that because I I do read really fast but I'm not skimming the pages or anything I'm reading every word on the page and it took me that little time it is it is very very short so there's no time to even gather up tension or to set up plot twists that happen it's just sort of like yep wickens are actually satanists and uh like I said it breaks the main rule it lets the kids go for help like the adults just fix everything and so it's very unsatisfying it is to forgive me for using this cliche but it is a deus ex machina like they literally just come along fix everything for the heroes and then the heroes just go home and that's just that's just not fun to read about like especially if you're trying to be a horror story or to have any sort of tension at all or have any sort of climax at all like you have to let your heroes stand on their own otherwise they don't really come across as heroes and that goes for all sorts of genres truth be told I wish I could say more about this but there's there's really not much there and then we have the sequel which is the magic store across the street which barely deals with the magic store at all but we'll just we'll set that aside and it starts off pretty much the same as the first book like where oh there's a normal kid living in denver and then nearby there's some sort of weird magical satanist that uh tempts them away from god or whatever but it it gets crazy it gets really crazy after a bit so without going into too much detail the main character you know starts worshiping satan by accident or whatever and then he starts acting out and his parents are very upset with him and I'm pretty sure that the author inserted his wife in here like his name is Casner Curran I mean as we'll just say like you you can find out on Goodreads or anything it's not giving away too much personal info I know but I'm pretty sure he put his wife in here at some point like I don't feel comfortable giving away more than that but there is a character I was like that really seems like his wife but anyways main character gets framed for being a drug dealer keep in mind he's like 13 so that's like not too unbelievable but it is a bit of a stretch and then he goes to jail and his parents and his therapist tell him about how hey accept Jesus into your heart bro and then you'll all be saved and he decides you know what yeah fine I'll accept Jesus back into my heart and then Jesus like comes down out of heaven and breaks him out of prison and starts shooting lasers at the guards and shooting lasers at demons and I was like what even the fuck is this I don't get what's happening is this a dream or something and then he breaks out and that's the end and here's the thing that's a lie like what I what I just told you that's not what happened everything after him being framed as a drug dealer and going to jail I made all that up but none of you are ever going to read it let's be on it not not a single one of you is going to come away from this and think oh yeah let's check out the magic store across the street James really gave that a glowing review like no you're all going to come away from this thinking well that sounds stupid but it was kind of fun to hear about and honestly the real ending is a lot more boring so just pretend that my ending is the canon one just go with that and uh I guess if Casner Curran sees this high how's it going bro hey guess what if you made it this far you are one of my best friends all the names you see here yeah those are my patron names especially the ten dollar and up guys those are the best ones and their names are Apocavillainan Olivia Rayan brother Santotys Carolina Clay Christopher Quinton Dan Antlasee Ciovic I hope I got that right Echo Joel Cartkat Kitsune Liza Rudikova Lord Tiebreaker Madison Wispenit Marilyn Roxy Microphone Sad Martigan Tobacco Crow Tom Beanie and Vaivictus you are all absolutely the best and all the other names on here also the best if you want to support the channel and get things like early access to videos then consider becoming a patron and if you don't feel like doing that then you can always just tip me over on PayPal become a channel member or just like this video and share it around comment on it subscribe to my channel you know 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