Calling all creeps! If you were a literate kid in the 90s, you almost certainly cracked open a Goosebumps book at some point. With 62 titles in its original run, R.L. Stine’s legendary YA horror anthology is one of the best-selling book series of all time. It also spawned games, toys, lunchboxes, apparel, two major motion pictures, and one very Canadian TV series — and the spin-offs just keep on coming.
When We Were Young invites Goosebumps fanatic Daniel Montgomery onto the show to reminisce about the halcyon days of the Scholastic Book Fair and our favorite preteen reads. Then we dare turn back the cuckoo clock of doom to revisit three classic titles from our childhoods, including The Haunted Mask and Night Of The Living Dummy, to see if Stine’s writing still thrills and chills.
From outlandish twist endings to the many, many fakeout scares, there’s at least as much campy comedy to Goosebumps as there is genuine spine-tingling. Do these books still dish out the deep trouble, or was R.L. Stine just crying monster all along? We’ll spoil the “gotcha!” right now — yes, this episode does involve a teenage Ryan Gosling. Beware!