Happy Halloween Traumateers!
Okay, well, not quite yet, but we figured we’d get a jump on celebrating every kid’s favorite holiday. In honor of Halloween, we’re bringing you three extra special posts, filled with spooky, scary, frightful things. I’m using those words loosely, as we’re actually covering more Goosebumps, specifically the three part “Night of the Living Dummy” series. Part one is below, part two will be posted on Thursday and the conclusion will be posted next Monday.
And although we know three Goosebumps posts are enough to make anyone happy in the pants, we’re throwing in something extra special: our first giveaway.
That’s right kids, pull out the warm wine and rape cups from underneath the passenger’s seat of your convertible because Childhood Trauma is hosting a giveaway.
Up for grabs? Personalized messages from each of the sexy Snark Squad members, Halloween themed cookies, our first ever made “ho suspension” t-shirt and a Goosebumps DVD for your viewing pleasure.
Here’s how to enter:
[THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED]
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Sara: It’s time, y’all. It is officially time for the ever terrifying, ever horrifying, every kid’s worst nightmare and best memory all at the same moment — Slappy the Dummy is here!
It’s difficult to look scary when you’re wearing a bow tie.
Before we even begin to start covering the “plot” of this book, I’d like to point out the back cover synopsis.
“Kris is jealous of all the attention her sister is getting. It’s no fair. Why does Lindy always have all the luck? Kris decides to get a dummy of her own. She’ll show Kris.”
R. L., maybe you could be a liiiiittle more careful with your proofreading? Like, I don’t know, maybe glance at it once or twice after you write it? Just a thought?
Sweeney: Scholastic spends far too much money on Contrivance Writers to be able to afford silly things like “editors” or “proofreaders.”
Sara: Oh, who am I kidding, you’re the one making millions, while I sit in an office, drinking watered down coffee, reviewing a motherfucking Goosebumps book. You win this round, Stine.
Sweeney: I hate when R. L. wins.
Sara: Onward we go!
Lindy and Kris are an obnoxious pair of twins who fight over everything. And by everything, I do mean everything.
Questionable Quote Alert:
“‘I’ve blown much bigger than that,’ Lindy said with a superior sneer.”
Ahem.
Sweeney: Of all the books we read, I often feel like the Goosebumps books leave us nothing to do besides directly quote the page after page of innuendo.
Sara: And R. L. says I need help? Seriously? Seriously??
Moving on.
The girls are fighting over who can blow a bigger bubble when their mother walks in and is all, “OMG. SHUT. UP. Why did I put my vagina through the pain of twins again?”
She sends them out to ride their bikes, and I’m pretty sure she’s taking a shot of tequila as they walk out the door. Pour me five threeone, Mama Powell?
Sweeney: I don’t know why we keep doing this while sober.
Sara: The girls wander over to the house being built next door. Apparently, they just break in and wander around to check out floor plans and wallpaper design? I scoff, but let’s be serious. When I was a kid, my mom used to take us in homes that were under construction all the time. We’d call dibs on rooms and check out closet space like we were moving in or some shit. Reader beware, you’re in for a scare ….because your mom might get your ass arrested for breaking into homes that don’t belong to you.
Sweeney: We used to do that too! I have no idea why that activity was so exciting, but we did that a lot and I remember actually enjoying it – it wasn’t just some thing my mom dragged us into. I was clearly a super lame twelve year old.
Sara: The girls hear a noise in the house! so they run outside to get away! and barely escape whatever terrifying creature is inside! …….but it’s just a squirrel?
And then Lindy runs off to the back of the house! and Kris can’t find her! and when she finally sees her, she’s standing in a dumpster! holding the body of a dead child!
……..but it’s just a ventriloquist’s dummy?
#LAME
Lindy decides to name her dummy Slappy, and he’s kind of a jerk to Kris, which is cool with me, because Kris won’t stop whining about how uncool the dummy is, and how not funny Lindy is, and how it’s fucking gross that it was found in the garbage, and while all of these are very good points, OMG SHUT UP, BITCH. Lindy realizes that Kris is just super jealous, which makes her want to keep the dummy even more. Valid.
Sweeney: I respect fictional children that own their asshole factor.
Sara: Lindy takes the dummy to school and shows all the kids her ventriloquist act, and it turns out, the kids think she’s awesome and want to hear more.
Wait, what? These kids aren’t tossing Lindy in a trash can or a locker at this point? I’m sorely disappointed in you, middle school kids.
Sweeney: +1 and I’m calling bullshit, because that’s totally what would be happening.
Sara: After seeing everyone want to be besties with Lindy because of her new hobby, Kris decides she wants a dummy, too. Way to be original. Lindy echoes my sentiments by yelling, “Copycat!” at Kris and making Slappy, well, slap her. I’m thinking Lindy might have some abusive parental issues…
Sweeney: This is totally legit. It’s the toy assisted version of “I’m not touching you.” It’s fair game if the doll is hitting your sibling.
Sara: If only I had known this years ago…
A couple days after the Slappy slapping incident, Kris comes home and is horrified to see……. a new dummy sitting next to Slappy! Because it’s not like she just fucking asked for a new dummy two nights earlier. But I’ll forgive her on account of she was probably counting the number of dummy hands available to slap her in the face now. Bring two more dummies in, Papa Powell!
Kris names her new dummy Mr. Wood, in anticipation of my one day writing this post and wanting to find a million different ways to make this book into one big sexual euphemism. Thanks, girlfriend!
Sweeney: Mr. Wood? Seriously? Seriously, seriously? R. L. is just too pervy for words.
Sara: Kris and Mr. Wood practice jokes for one of her friends, and even he can’t pull out a fake laugh for this shitfest. He leaves after three jokes, and seriously, you gotta give credit to the kid, because there’s no way I would have lasted that long.
Mr. Wood starts getting creepy when Kris wakes up to find him dressed in her clothes. Mr. Wood, we’re not judging the whole skirt fetish thing, but you gotta let a girl know before you just show up in her underwear, knowwhatimsayin? (My second guess is that Mr. Wood went clubbin’ last night and got really fucked up and come on, we’ve all been in that day after, ‘what the fuck did I do last night’ state, right?)
Mr. Wood also has a moment when Lindy is holding him, and he yells at Kris that she’s a “stupid moron“. Like you didn’t just borrow a skirt from her this morning. Rude.
Sweeney: Seriously. If you borrow a friend’s clothes without asking, you are obligated to be fake nice for at least a day or two. You just wait until Kris is gone and say mean shit about her to Slappy. Have a little tact, Mr. Wood.
Sara: I’m glad we understand the rules of girlfriends. There should be a book for these laws, probably.
Sidenote: Not that it’s important to the “plot” of the story, but Lindy and Slappy apparently have a rap routine. My God, the amount of money I would not pay to see Slappy doing Baby Got Back…
After Lindy gets home from totally killing it at the birthday party she was hired to do, the girls find Mr. Wood strangling Slappy on the floor of their bedroom. Y’all, I think I’m finally on to what’s happening. Mr. Wood in a skirt, Slappy getting some erotic asphyxiation, both dolls freezing the moment someone walks in and catches them. Sounds like someone has a gay porno going on in their room at night. Awkward.
Sweeney: Writing a super kinky gay porno into a kids book? Potentially-getting-your-ass-arrested awkward.
Sara: After trying to get her mother to help with the dolls trying to kill each other situation and receiving no help (come on, kid, you’re in a Goosebumps book) (Sweeney: negligent parenting is the only variety they know around here) Kris throws Mr. Wood in the closet so she doesn’t have to stare at his creepy face anymore. When she wakes up the next day, Mr. Wood is out of the closet, unfortunately only in the literal sense. Because, seriously, how awesome would it be to wake up to Mr. Wood throwing a Scentsy party with glitter and unicorns everywhere?
A few nights later, the girls go downstairs in the middle of the night to find Mr. Wood has emptied everything out of the fridge. Uh, good prank? #lame
Sweeney: I don’t think Scholastic understands how pranks work.
Sara: When the twins crawl back into bed after cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, Kris starts hearing Mr. Wood’s voice calling to her from the closet. She’s all OH SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK when Lindy says, “LOL, gotcha! It’s been me this whole time, you silly bitch! God, you’re stupid.” Kris gets mad but then she’s all, “Dude, I am a silly bitch. FML.”
After all this dramashit is over, Kris finds a slip of paper in Mr. Wood’s pocket with some nonsense words on them. Like a good little Goosebumps character, she reads the words in order to fuck everything up for everyone. Don’t you know how these things work, Kris?!
That night, an older couple who is friends with the Powells, shows up to hear the girls practice their routines. Lindy goes first and blows everyone away with her amazing ventriloquist act. (Is this sentence an oxymoron?) But when Kris starts her act, Mr. Wood takes over on his own, calling the elderly couple rude names and making really, really lame insults. You’ve disappointed me, gay little dummy.
Despite the rudeness, Mama and Papa Powell still let Kris perform her act at the school talent show. Which was probably not the best parenting decision ever. Mr. Wood proceeds to talk shit about the fat woman hosting the event.
Seriously?! What is it with children’s books and fat people?!
Sweeney: Scholastic: Letting kids know that it’s gross to be fat since the 1980’s!
Sara: After making fun of the large woman, Mr. Wood starts projectile vomiting green slime all over everyone. Hey, let’s just be thankful it was green this time and not a white, creamy substance. I still can’t get those nightmares to go away.
The teacher tells Kris she’ll be “suspended for life” which I’m pretty sure is called being expelled.
Kris gets grounded and Mr. Wood is placed under lockdown in the closet again.
Mr. Wood has a fashion show while hanging in the closet, probably.
Kris is woken by the sound of creepy dummy feet scurrying around. When she gets out of bed, she sees Mr. Wood trying to run away. LET HIM RUN, YOU SILLY BITCH. But no, of course not, Kris chases after him and jumps on top of him. Jumps on top of Wood. Mr. Wood. Oh, God. The jokes, there are too many. How could I possibly choose just one?
Sweeney: How was the R. L. Stine Ghost Writing Collective not investigated / arrested? Surely we can look up them all up on one of those Megan’s Law websites, yeah?
Sara: Lindy finds Mr. Wood and Kris wrestling on the floor and suddenly feels very scared, and probably kind of grossed out because what the fuck was going on in her room when she was asleep all this time??
Mr. Wood tells the girls that they are his slaves now, because Kris read the magical words. Kris and Lindy try to rip his head off, twist his head off, and cut through his neck with a pair of scissors, so yeah, it sounds like Mr. Wood is totally in control of his slaves here.
The girls get smart by locking Mr. Wood in a suitcase and burying him under the house next door, but obviously that never works in “horror” because the doll just appears at the kitchen table the next day. For a doll that couldn’t keep two little girls from trying to cut his fucking head off, he sure is resilient when they aren’t around.
Once Mr. Wood bites their dog Barky, shit gets real. You don’t mess with a girl’s dog, you son of a bitch! The twins grab Mr. Wood and bring him out to the construction site, so they can get him run over by a steamroller. Unfortunately, Barky runs in front of the steamroller instead, so they have to let go of Mr. Wood to save Barky and Mr. Wood escapes.
But then another steamroller comes out of freaking nowhere and runs him down. Logical? No. Awesome? Obviously.
Sweeney: Yaaay contrivance!
Sara: The twins have solved their dummy problem, and now they can finally move on to a hobby that doesn’t get them beaten up like a couple of gingers on a regular basis. Until they walk in their room and hear Slappy say, “Is that other guy gone? I thought he’d never leave!”
So basically, this book is the one that kicks the whole series off. Slappy is a huge part of Goosebumps, and most people remember him more than any other character in R. L. Stine history. And I got fucking jipped. I had to deal with Mr. In-the-Closet Wood this whole damn book, so Nugs and Lorraine better bring it when they review these next two Night of the Living Dummy books. Why the hell was this shit so scary when we were kids? All you have to do is pick him up, and he just dangles there, kicking his legs. Spoooooooky.
Sweeney: Probably because we were being subconsciously molested by R. L. Perv.
Tune in on Thursday for a special installment of Night of the Living Dummy II, where Slappy actually has more than one line!
I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
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