1. R.L Stine was born October 8th, 1943 in Columbus, Ohio to parents Lewis Stine and Anne Feinstein.
2. Stine began writing at age nine, after finding a typewriter in his attic.
3. One of Stine's first major works was as creator of Bananas, a teen comedy and entertainment magazine.
4. Much of Stine's early works were joke books under the names Jovial Bob Stine and Eric Affabee.
5. Stine actually wrote for several books based on movies and television shows. Including Spaceballs: The Book, Masters of the Universe: Demons of the Deep, and several Indiana Jones books under the Find Your Fate book series.
6. Stine's fist horror book was 1986's Blind Date under Scholastic's Point Horror series.
8. Also in 1989, Stine would serve as co-creator and head writer for Eureeka's Castle, an educational puppet series for Nick Jr. It would run from September 4th, 1989 to June 30th, 1995.
9. In 1992, Stine was convinced by Parachute Press co-founder Joan Waricha to begin work on a series of horror books for children.
10. Stine's inspiration for the book series to come came through a TV Guide advertisement for "Goosebumps week on Channel 11". And thus Goosebumps was born.
11. Goosebumps was initially planned as a six book run, with the target audience aimed specifically at young girls.
12. The first book, Welcome To Dead House was released in July of 1992. Stine has later gone on to say he has some regrets with the book in making it too scary and lacking more of the fun elements that he'd bring to later Goosebumps books.
13. The proof of these books originally being a brief run can be seen on first editions of the first five books as the spines don't display the numbering.
14. Stine's inspirations for many of his stories came from classic horror movies of the 1950's along with the Rod Serling classic The Twilight Zone. Best examples of these are Say Cheese and Die! which bases itself off the Twilight Zone episode A Most Peculiar Camera, and Why I'm Afraid of Bees which bases its plot similarly to the iconic 50's film The Fly.
15. The success of Goosebumps was completely grassroots through word of mouth from kids. Due the surprisingly strong sales early on, the series was renewed for ten books (seen in early versions of The Ghost Next Door which advertises older books), but then continued on indefinitely.
16. The iconic covers for the main series were drawn by New Jersey artist Tim Jacobus. His method of airbrushed art mixed with more colorful visuals created works that were both scary and inviting for children.
17. Tim only missed two covers, one due to missing the deadline. The two covers were Stay Out of the Basement (by Jim Thiesen) and Be Careful What You Wish For (by Stanislaw Fernandes)
18. Goosebumps success led to record sales well into the millions, placing Stine in the Guiness Book of World Records. Though metrics have never been released for what book sold the best of all time.
19. Stine's least favorite books of the original 62 were The Barking Ghost and Go Eat Worms!
20. Night of the Living Dummy, released in May of 1993, featured the debut of Slappy, who would go on to be the most popular monster in the franchise.
21. However, before that, Goosebumps had an official mascot of Curly the Skeleton. Despite being featured on the covers of many compilations, and featured in much of the merchandise, he never had an official story.
22. However, several ads and merchandise incorrectly labeled Curly as the skeleton chef seen on the cover of Say Cheese and Die!
23. Despite that, there were actually two versions of Curly. The white buzz cut version from Tim Jacobus, and a pink mohawk version that was used in general merchandising.
24. The Haunted Mask, one of the most popular books in the series, was based on an experience where Stine's son Matt got his head stuck in a mask during Halloween.
25. in 1995, Goosebumps would be adapted into a television series, airing on Fox as part of the Fox Kids television lineup. It also aired in Canada on YTV. The series ran for four seasons from October 27th, 1995 to November 16th, 1998.
26. The show was filmed in Canada by Protocol Entertainment on a particularly low budget.
27. The Haunted Mask, the first episode of the series, aired first on prime time on Fox.
28. Despite basing episodes on books, the series oddly skipped episodes for the first books based on Night of the Living Dummy and the Mummy series, going with their first sequels instead. It's never been fully explained why.
29. The version of Slappy used in the series differs greatly in design from his initial look on the book covers. Some suggesting that he was originally modeled after Mr. Wood, the main dummy antagonist of the first book.
30. Instead of basing a book on the sequel for Monster Blood, the series created More Monster Blood, which served as an immediate follow up story.
31. At the tail end of season two, the series began to base episodes less on the main series, and more on stories from the Tales To Give You Goosebumps book series. And even these adaptations were more often than not very loose adaptations.
32. Several notable actors appeared in Goosebumps, with the biggest standout being a young Ryan Gosling, who would also appear in an episode of the main rival series to Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark?
33. Despite the supposed rivalry, several regular actors from Are You Afraid of the Dark? also guest starred on Goosebumps. This included Daniel DeSanto, who played Gabe on Goosebumps, but was Tucker on Are You Afraid?, and Aron Tager who played Dr. Shreek on Goosebumps, but was Dr. Vink on Are You Afraid?
34. The episode Attack of the Mutant features a cameo from the late, great Batman himself, Adam West as the Galloping Gazelle.
35. After Goosebumps wrapped in 1998, Protocol would follow up with another series based on a Scholastic property, Animorphs.
36. In July of 1995, the first major spinoff series for Goosebumps was released in Give Yourself Goosebumps, which served as a choose your own adventure style book. These would continue up until December of 1999.
37. In December of 1997, Goosebumps would end the run of its first series with book #62: Monster Blood IV.
38. Just one month later, the series would change to Goosebumps Series 2000. which would run until January of 2000.
39. Despite things looking well on the surface as Goosebumps was a franchise juggernaut, in 1996, as tensions began to boil with Scholastic, who had the book rights, and Parachute Press, which retained the merchandising rights. Things got worse in November of 1997 as both companies were embroiled in a bitter lawsuit.
40. In early 2000, when it came time for Stine to renew his contract with Scholastic, he walked instead. This lead to the end of Goosebumps after a seven and a half year run.
41. Stine's departure led to several cancelled projects, including more main line and Give Yourself Goosebumps books, along with a planned new series called Goosebumps Gold. Only three books were revealed to be in the pipeline before the falling out.
42. Despite that, the grand total of Goosebumps books released within the seven and a half years (not counting hard cover compilations) comes to just around 166.
62 Original
50 Give Yourself
25 Series 2000
18 TV books
6 Tales To Give You
2 Triple Header
2 Collector Caps
1 Screams in the Night (based on the live show)
43. In 2003, Scholastic agreed to purchase the franchise in full for $9.65 million dollars and started to re-release the books once more under new packaging.
44. Stine stayed away from Goosebumps for most of the 2000s, working on other projects including Mostly Ghostly and The Nightmare Room.
45. However, in 2008, Stine and Scholastic joined forces once again, and in April, released Horrorland, the newest series that initially planned a run for 12 books, but the success led to a continuation up to 19.
46. The success of Horrorland also led to three follow up series. These being Hall of Horrors, Most Wanted, and the most recent Slappyworld.
47. In 2015, after years of rumors, Goosebumps: The Movie was released to theaters.
48. Jack Black played R.L. Stine and provided the voice of Slappy.
49. The movie proved a modest hit, making 150 million out of a budget of around 58-84 million.
50. The film would be followed up three years later with Goosebumps: Haunted Halloween, releasing October 12th in North America.
51. Haunted Halloween had a rough development as it was originally slated to be a Horrorland movie. But the exit of director Rob Letterman and the addition of Ari Sandel led to a newer direction.
52. Before settling with Haunted Halloween, the film underwent several title changes. From Slappy's Revenge to Slappy Halloween.
53. As of April 2018, the Goosebumps revival has lasted ten years, roughly 2 and a half years longer than the original run.
54. There are two official biographies released for R.L. Stine and Tim Jacobus. It Came From Ohio! and It Came From New Jersey!
55. Goosebumps success saw a short lived live show on stage known as Screams in the Night. Aside from some production material, there is no footage of the show to be found, as is expected for a stage show from the 90s.
56. Goosebumps has also been brought to the world of comic books. First through a short lived series of graphic novels based on the classic books, and most recently a run with IDW Comics.
57. Goosebumps has also seen several releases in the world of video games, including Horrorland for the PS2 and Wii, Goosebumps: The Game for multiple platforms, and most recently Horrortown for mobile devices.
58. Goosebumps has seen a multitude of other merchandise from toys to puzzles, board games, desk supplies, apparel, bedding, trading cards and even pogs.
59. Since Goosebumps' revival the number of releases has been bumped from around 156 main series books to around 214. Not counting re-releases of old books or collector tins, the addition contained:
19 Horrorland
6 Hall of Horrors
15 Most Wanted
8 Slappyworld
60. At 75, Stine has no plans to retire from writing any time soon., promising more Goosebumps for the next few years.
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