Spongey's Christmas Carol #5: Goosebumps Horrorland

Hello, and welcome back to Spongey's christmas carol.

Have you had enough of RL Stine’s Christmas stuff? Well…too bad! Today, we have a REAL Goosebumps book…about new years. But it had a Christmas scene! Close enough, right?

I’ve already mentioned the recent Goosebumps Horroland series. But I haven’t talked about the second story arc of it!

Starting with “When the ghost dog howls”, a 2^nd arc began. The story would start in horrorland with our heroes. They would then visit the Chiller House gift shop, owned by jonathan chiller. They buy a object there, and get a free horror toy with it. Chiller says they’ll pay for it later. They get home, object brings bad stuff. (Or bad stuff happens and said object fixes it) . And there’s more, but it’s not important for now.

Today, we look at one of the books in this arc.

This, is “Slappy New Year”

As far as Slappy books go, the plot is very basic. Ray is sometimes a dick to his brother, who Is a wimp. He buys slappy from the chiller house gift shop, and uses it to prank his brother. Of course, he finds a slip of paper in slappy’s pocket, and reads the words on it.

This brings him to life, and slappy spreads evil. His parents think Ray is doing this, as per usual for the slappy books.

Much like the 1^st and third slappy books, in the first half, it turns out that the brother has been doing the bad stuff. Though this time it makes sense, as Brandon wanted revenge for al the bad stuff ray has done. So Brandon is a cool, and likable character, and Ray learns a good moral.

I like books with moral, okay?

So how does Christmas figure into this?

Well, ray wants to throw a big new year’s eve party, and through the book his chance of doing so keeps getting crushed cuz they think he’s crazy.

Later on, he goes to his friend’s house on Christmas to get some gifts. During this scene, slappy comes to life and does something I don’t remember, and while the parents are dealing with that, he destroys the Christmas tree. Somehow no one sees a dummy coming to life…but whatever.

So the rest of the book is the normal slappy stuff. Since this book is recent, I won’t spoil it.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

So in my opinion this book is…

Okay.

Yea, it’s just okay.

It’s just, kind of routine, for a slappy book. It rehashes “Night of the living dummy 3” for the most part. The guy doing the bad stuff in the first half, the strong kid who is a wimp, stuff like that. It feels like I’ve read this before.

But it’s also what I like about it. It was back to basics. No mind stealer doll, no dumb plot twist or anything like that. Plus, it has its moments. Ray learns a lesson, and Brandon OWNS slappy near the end and becomes braver. Crowning moment on awesome!

Plus, it’s a slappy book….WITH A MALE PROTAGINIST.

All the others have a female main character. Slappy acts like a pedo most the time. I like seeing a male one for once! It’s just refreshing.

The 1^st half is mostly routine, but not bad. The 2^nd half is more interesting, with cool moments in it. Plus I like the new years feel to it at times.

So there you go. It has it’s good points, and bad points, and overall it’s alright, but nothing too special. Check it out for yourself and see what you think

GRADE: C+/B-