Night of the Living Dummy/Comments

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The following page contains every comment from Night of the Living Dummy to receive a reply from Troy.

Comments[edit | edit source]

troy steele said...

The reprinted version of this book[Note 1] de-cants the cover's image of Slappy.[Note 2] As if the redesign wasn't already bad enough, they gotta mess with the art too.
I maintain, and I'll get into this in some depth once I start tackling the terminally ugly Series 2000 books, that a great deal of the appeal of the series when I was a kid was based on the appearance of the books themselves: not just the artwork but the color schemes and template used. The "updated" versions of the Goosebumps books reprinted for modern readers are just ugly, kids today are getting shafted.

MARCH 12, 2008 1:34 PM

Anonymous said...

Speaking of redesigns, what do you think of HorrorLand-edition[1] Slappy?
http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/24360000/24366766.jpg[Note 3]
He got off lucky. Monster Blood and the Haunted Mask really are awful now.
http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/25070000/25074196.jpg[Note 4]
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51oJ4HYdHvL._SS500_.jpg[Note 5]

MARCH 13, 2008 6:54 AM

troy steele said...

The most terrifying thing about those books is the promise of "Special bonus features"-- one of my loyal readers should take one for the team and pick one of the new books up and let us/me know what the new features (What a weird phrasing, is this supposed to appeal to the DVD market?[2]) are and if they are worth me covering here.

MARCH 13, 2008 8:07 AM

Anonymous said...

I love how there happened to be not one, but TWO steamrollers coming down their street at that VERY moment.

MARCH 15, 2008 6:56 PM

troy steele said...

Initially I was going to do all of the Dummy books in a row, but now I'm positive I'm only covering the first three now and then the other two in sequential order with the Series 2000 books and the stage show adaptation at some point between.

MARCH 16, 2008 1:38 PM

Anonymous said...

Hi Troy:

I'm sorry to say that I only discovered your excellent blog a few days ago. I've read about ten or fifteen of your reviews so far but this one is by far my favourite of the bunch. It's just so brilliant.

Man, this brings back memories. I never really figured out WHY I read the Goosebumps series; I didn't want to be grossed out, and I didn't find them particularly scary either. The only one I remember with any clarity is HOW I LEARNED TO FLY, the first review I read on your site. I remember feeling really sorry for Jack because he kept getting his ass kicked; I think I empathized with him :(

I remember reading the old GIVE YOURSELF GOOSEBUMPS series, specifically the Carnival of Horrors[3] and this one I can't remember the name of where you're playing a VR game.[4] I remember it required a test of GOOSEBUMPS knowledge and it pissed me off because I hadn't read any of the GOOSEBUMPS books it was talking about. So I just did it through trial and error.

Are you gonna review those anytime soon? You could just list all the endings, because if I remember they were all awesomely bad :)

Keep it up man!
Noah

MAY 14, 2008 9:34 AM

Anonymous said...

Noah, I do plan to do at least one Give Yourself Goosebumps book, plotting out each and every possible outcome. But I've been threatening this since I started the blog 2 1/2 years ago, so who knows when it will happen![Note 6]

MAY 14, 2008 9:48 AM

John Deering said...

All right, man. Just one question. For this "Night of the Living Dummy 1" entry, when you got into the rhyming poem part, was that an attempt to imitate Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes poems?[5] Because, somehow, I got that vibe from it. But I won't be able to sleep until getting an answer. :-/

JULY 22, 2010 2:15 PM

troy steele said...

Don't lose sleep, it's one of my occasional line-for-line parodies (which I suspect no one but me enjoys), this time of the Night Before Christmas[6]

JULY 22, 2010 3:47 PM

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. We replaced this link with an archived link to the image... Just in case.
  2. Interestingly, that's how Tim Jacobus's original art was. Scholastic tilted it for the 90s version.
  3. Here's a supplementary image, as the link is dead.
  4. Here's an archived link.
  5. Surprisingly, this link works (as of 2022), but here's an archived version anyways.
  6. ***SPOILER ALERT*** It did not happen.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Alongside the release ofGoosebumps HorrorLand, Scholastic released reprints of original series books with new cover art. The new illustrations were provided by Brandon Dorman.
  2. A selling point for many DVDs is their bonus material (such as behind the scenes material, deleted scenes, interviews, etc.).
  3. Escape from the Carnival of Horrors is the first Give Yourself Goosebumps book.
  4. Probably referencing the book Zapped in Space.
  5. Troy referenced this beloved 80s/90s comic a few times (1, 2, 3). Bill Watterson loved playing with the formula of his comic, so there are a handful of poem-based strips.
  6. A Visit from St. Nicholas / The Night Before Christmas.