Gooseblog?: Gooflumps #4½: Eat Cheese And Barf!

In the last Gooseblog, I covered the first of the two Gooflumps books, a pair of unauthorized parody books released in 1995 to capitalize on the success of Goosebumps. The first book, Stay Out Of The Bathroom, was interesting, but lacked any real zing that made it memorable enough to be a GB book let alone a parody. Will the second verse up the ante, or at least up the chucks? Let's dig into Gooflumps #4½:  Eat Cheese And Barf!

COVER STORY

Well this cover is unappealing. I know that's the intention, and considering it was the 90s when gross out humor was on high, it feels like it fits of that time. But this is still a rough looker. Granted, the cow reactions are funny enough. One of the things that made Goosebumps covers work was that they were never really gross. Sometimes disturbing, but never gross to the point of feeling sick by looking at them. This goes full intense and just makes you embarrassed to have it in your possession. Let's just say of all the Goosebumps and GB-esque stuff I've found since I started collecting, I'm not exactly planning on displaying this for others to see.

STORY

We open the book with our protagonist, Billy Fudder, having a nightmare where he's forced to drink milk, despite being lactose intolerant. As he's about to spew in his dreams, he wakes up as his family is heading to Bledsoe, New York, the cottage cheese capitol of the world. The family inherited the old dairy farm from their great grandfather, which works for a company called International Milk Products. IMP, huh? Sure that's not hinting anything. They make it to their new home, Breakwind Farm and see a cow eating an arm! That just happens to be the fake arm belonging to a man named Armand, who works at the farm. He gives a lot of exposition about the town and the farm, including a big dairy dance that the town holds every year to announce the newest "Dairy Queen."

We get some stock fakeout scares where Billy thinks he has zits, but it was just the popped ones from his sister Jennifer. Then his mother's feeding him something creepy! Oh wait, it's just pancakes. As he leaves the farm he sees a sign featuring an old guy with a pointy face called Jonathan Curdle. Just then a girl shows up on a scooter and throws dirt clods at the sign. After some annoying banter, she introduces herself as Fanny Rennet and she likes to belch and make people puke, because this book really wants you to hate it. Fanny tells Billy that Jonathan Curdle is the president of IMP and has been trying to take over the entire town, putting other farmers out of business. They head to Moo N Doo, the milkshape shop owned by Fanny's hippy dad, who offers Billy a milkshake with cheese in it. Then Billy's dad shows up to tell him that mom's pregnant and Armand and Jennifer are getting married! Oh wait, it's just one of dad's really disturbing end chapter jokes.

The two kids end up cleaning the basement of the farmhouse, where Fanny offers a bit more exposition on Billy's great grandfather, who she claims was a mad scientist. He worked in the milk and cheese research division at IMP. They suddenly find a hidden area that contains a strange pressure cooker with a BRAIN INSI-oh another fake out. It's cottage cheese. Along with a diary. But before they can do anything, the kids end up learning that Jonathan Curdle and his nephew Jerry are visiting the house, offering his mother a job at IMP and seems somewhat interested in the brain-like cottage cheese. They manage to get away, and take the cheese to an abandoned barn, where more vomiting ensues when Billy gets a snoot full of cottage cheese. His vomit is also acid to the cottage cheese apparently. Then a cow named Martha starts talking-Oh wait, it's Armand. God, even Goosebumps isn't this blatant with these chapter stingers.

Later on, Billy runs afoul of Jerry, who plans to beat him up, but they get saved by Armand and Martha, since Jerry is deathly afraid of the cow due an incident called the Great Stampede of '89 which Martha's gotten the blame for. The next day, Billy and Fanny check the cottage cheese again, but the lid's popped off the pressure cooker, and the cheese has grown and is definitely alive. So, this is literally Monster Blood now. The trauma begins again. The kids are impressed at the moving mass of curdles and want to teach it tricks and stuff, because like Monster Blood, they don't treat it as a threat. But, they suddenly sense someone watching them, and it's  Martha the cow. And this time she's actually talking. She says the stampede was supposed to be a peaceful protest until things got out of hand. IMP had been doing twisted experiments on the cows for years, and they had enough of it. How can Martha speak? Billy's great grandfather managed to do it in some unexplained fashion.

Martha says that she needs to study the cheese as it could prove dangerous to the world, especially if the curdles get their hands on it. Jerry Curdle tries to pester the kids again, especially over the antics in the barn, but gets no answer. The next day, Billy and Fanny see the barn explode as the cheese has grown gigantic! But that was just a dream. That was just a dream. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Losing all my patience. Trying to finish this book. But I don't know if I can do it. Oh no, I've said too much! I haven't said enough.

The next day however, they see Jerry at the barn with a pocketknife in his hand. Why? To cut the cheese, of course! I mean, it feels like the whole book was building up to that one. He says that the cheese is Culture 286, the project his uncle had been looking for. After yes, cutting the cheese, the cheese then rises over him and absorbs Jerry inside of it, then turning into a cheese version of Jerry and runs away. Martha says that the only way to kill the cheese beast is to let it rot, but if it gets near fresh cottage cheese it'll keep living forever and be more deadly. The kids play ninja and attack what they think is the cheese monster, but it's Armand, who then gets eaten by the cheese monster.

It's also the night of the big dairy dance, so Billy tries to get his mother to listen, but you know Goosebum-GOOFLUMPS, sorry, Gooflumps parents. Mr. Curdle confronts Billy, and tries to get him to talk about Culture 286, and to do so, he tortures him, almost getting him to drink milk. But Billy is saved by his sister Jennifer, mad that Jerry's gone missing. Billy and Fanny go to find Martha, who according to his dad has been put on a truck, headed to the meat factory. NO WAIT THAT'S ANOTHER FAKEOUT!

The cheese dance happens, there's a fake out again with a cheese sculpture that looks like the cheese monster. The cheese monster shows up, absorbs Jennifer, then absorbs Mr. Curdle, who starts to control it. Ultimately Billy and Fanny decide that the only thing that can kill it is her belches and his vomit, so they burp and puke all over it until it's dead. And that's really it. Everyone lives happily ever after I guess. Let's just get to the conclusion.

CONCLUSION

This one is hard to really judge fairly. On one hand, its intention is to be a gross out book, and it definitely earns praise. It's gross all right. Which considering this is a parody makes sense, though again Goosebumps is rarely on the gross out side. Not to say there ain't puke in those books and there is quite a lot. But by the end, this book felt like a drag. Lots of pointless stuff that just drags on. What was the point of the company being called IMP if they didn't make the villains evil imps or something? Why is this called Eat Cheese and Barf if the plot rips off Monster Blood and not Say Cheese and Die? I don't know, but compared to the previous book, this was a less appealing book. At least it feels more structured like a Goosebumps book. Shorter chapters and way more fake out cliffhangers, almost excessively so. Like they got the kinks out from the first book. In the end, this felt more closer to a Goosebumps parody, but the first book felt a bit better.

And that's Gooflumps. These was certainly a pair of books I read. As parodies they're middle of the road. Not strong enough to feel like they're taking the piss out of Goosebumps, and not even as entertaining as the books they're lampooning. Honestly, I wish they felt more blatant in how they executed the story, with more clear cut references to past books. I mean, you make two Goosebumps books and there are no evil dummies or werewolves? I'm afraid you just didn't try hard enough. Maybe if there were more in the works, they would have, but there were only two and I'm thankful for that. But this does open the door for maybe more looks at the competition in the future.

Maybe one day I'll look at Shivers.

Or Bone Chillers. Hi Tim Jacobus! 

Or Deadtime Stories. 

Or Ghosts of Fear Street which are Stine works in name only. 

Or Spinechillers. CHRISTIAN Goosebumps books! 

Or Graveyard School. Tom B. Stone! GET IT!?

Oh god I've literally entered hell, haven't I?