Hello, Spongey here.

So a few weeks ago, I looked at R.L. Stine’s The Nightmare Room. And in previous years, I did monthly reviews of the “modern” Goosebumps books. The main reason I wanted to stop doing those is that a lot of them didn’t leave me with much to say.

I was more or less forcing myself to do them each month, and it wasn’t up to me whether a book gave me a lot to work with. I couldn’t just skip one after all. So with Slappyworld, I am doing a general look at it with mini reviews, like with Nightmare Room.

But before then, I had some Misc Stine stuff I wanted to do. I had already been planning to finally go back to Fear Street but I had other ideas. So thus, we’re going back to monthly reviews, but for Stine stuff in general.

I will skip a month if I can’t squeeze one in due to having other projects, to avoid what happened last time. (I do think I can do it for the rest of this year at least, but we’ll see.) There’s tons I can get into now that I can pass on a book that leaves me with nothing to say.

But anyway, with this one we’re going back to Series 2000. I reviewed a few entries back in 2012 (Cry of the Cat, Fright Camp, Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls and Headless Halloween) and always wanted to cover more, but got caught up in the modern stuff.

Looking back, I have some appreciation for this weird era in the franchise. Yeah, it had some evidence of Stine running on fumes but there were also some bursts of genius that the series really needed at that point.

We’re not looking at an example of that though. This is one I had been interested in reading and when I finally did, I found myself thinking about it a lot, for some reason. You’ll see why by the end of this.

I’ve rambled enough so let’s talk about this sucker.

This, is Revenge R Us

The book starts with the protagonist writing her name in steam on the bathroom mirror. Why? So we can have a weirdly clunky way to introduce her name, duh.

Said name is Wade Brill. I’m so baffled by a girl named Wade that I won’t make a totally clever Kim Possible reference.

She tells us about her 17 year old brother, Micah. Oh boy, Micah. Basically, imagine if Tara from Cuckoo Clock of Doom had grown up and also was a boy. We get a flashback to an example of his asshole-ry, as Wade and some of her friends were over watching a movie.

Micah runs in with Wade’s underwear on his head. For some reason, wearing a 12 year old girl’s underwear embarrasses the owner of said underwear and not the person wearing them. He then tosses them to Steve, a boy Wade likes.

“How’s that for a Kodak moment? A boy I like sitting there with my underpants in his hands?!”

When I first saw this excerpt in the Blogger Beware post, I assumed Troy had made it up because this honestly feels more like something someone else would write and not Stine.

Although outside of that, this feels like Stine wrote it but you never know.

She goes on for a bit, listing more examples of Micah being a terrible person. And in true Goosebumps tradition, the parents don’t care. Seriously, this is Mom’s reaction when Wade tells her about the underpants thing:

“Your brother is so funny!”

And it’s not like Cuckoo Clock of Doom where they mostly don’t see it and don’t believe them, there’s no indication they don’t believe he does these things, they just find it funny for some reason.

As you can imagine, Wade wants a little revenge. To the point where she will watch any movie with revenge in the title, even if sucks. Okay, that’s a little funny.

“I had no idea that I was just minutes away from the worst day of my life. And maybe the best…”

I want you to keep that second part in mind during the rest of this post.

A couple days after the underpants thing, Wade has to go her friend Erin’s birthday party but her parents have a thing so Micah has to drive her. Micah is at the gym and is taking his sweet time, so Wade just goes over there herself to the pouring rain.

Micah is there but of course he splashes a puddle on purpose so he can ruin Wade’s dress. You get the point by now, he’s a very lovely person. She arrives at Erin’s and while she’s getting cleaned up, she finds some magazines.

In one of them is an ad for a place called, you guessed it, Revenge R Us. I do kind of love that name, gotta be honest. The ad only has an address and the name on it. An advertisement is kind of pointless if you don’t tell people what the ad is really for, just saying.

A few days later, Wade is hanging out at the pool with her friend Carl Jeffers.

“Over the loudspeaker, the pool manager announced “Adult Swim”

You’re right, I should be watching some Adult Swim shows instead of reading this.

Micah naturally shows up and ruins everything by going over the loudspeaker and reading Wade’s diary out loud. Because they just sort of let him do this, I guess.

This is what inspires her to take that ad up on its offer and go over to Revenge R Us. It’s on the other side of town which for some reason means she needs to wait on her friend Carl to return from a trip so they can go together. That gives her an excellent excuse to waste page time on a revenge scheme of her own, where she puts a dead slug in Micah’s coffee while he’s with a girl named Sophie he likes.

It goes wrong but we’ll skip ahead because unlike the book, I wanna just get to the point. The next day, Carl comes home and now they’re heading to go get revenge. It’s located in a trailer park which of course means it’s on the bad side of town.

They knock on the door and meet a strange woman in purple named Iris and her crow, Maggie. Spoilers, that’s the bird on the cover but it’s not really really villain here. Huh, another thing in common with Cuckoo Clock of Doom although that connection is stretching, I admit.

“Revenge against your parents?”

“Huh? No”

I would want revenge on them if I were you, but whatever.

Iris says her little business can help people get their revenge, and she can assist Wade with her problem. She wants Micah to feel the embarrassment he puts on Wade all the time.

Wade has no money so she’ll get a “Free trial” for now, and they will work out a payment later. I’m sure that’s all on the up and up. Iris thinks about what to do for revenge, then she says “it is done” and that Micah will get into an accident he’ll never recover from.

Thankfully, she doesn’t finish the spell and usually I’d skip a pointless bit like this but Wade’s reaction shows that while she wants revenge on Micah, she doesn’t want him to die or anything like that. She might be a bit consumed by revenge but she’s not immoral.

Yes, this will be important.

“There are so many rules for using this crow”

Oh yeah, Maggie is the important part in these spells. Will she explain the other important rules? Of course not and I’m sure that won’t bite anyone in the butt.

They decide they’ll just give Micah a really bad itch that will cause him to stay home scratching all day. It’ll annoy him without harming him too much, perfect. Wade’s wish is granted and they go home.

She tells her dad that Micah ran over her back earlier and he laughs it off. It’s funny because he ran over something you likely paid for. You sure you don’t want revenge on your parents?

Nothing happens to Micah at dinner, but that night Wade suddenly starts feeling an annoying itch that she needs to scratch. Yep, the wish seems to have affected her for some reason, now she has an unbearable and annoying itch.

She powers through it while she heads back to Iris’s so she can get it reversed. Iris casts another spell and boom, smooth skin again. Gotta admit, the way it was written did make this scary enough, especially when it started affecting her tongue and eyeballs.

This isn’t exactly one of the “Scary” ones so I’ll give credit where its due. So yeah, Iris is about as skilled at magic as Clarissa was but Wade still wants to press on and get another wish in the hopes she’ll get better luck on the next one.

“I had suffered because of Micah”

Technically this was just an accident on Iris’ part, it’s not like he did this himself or anything…

So next Wade wishes that Micah’s hair would fall out, since he cares so much about it. Sure, that works. That night, Micah heads out and while Wade is waiting for his bald head to return, she suddenly finds herself growing hair on her hands.

Oh no, is she gonna turn into a dog or something?

It starts growing all over her body, and she leaves to go back to Iris to fix this. With a bit of struggle, she gets over to Iris’ but she’s not home so they (she bumped into Carl on the way here) decide to just use Maggie to fix their problem themselves. Because we gotta pad the page count by having this go wrong before it can go right.

Iris eventually shows up and says she has “Bugs to work out”. At this point, Wade should just give up and take her revenge business elsewhere. But no, Iris says she owes her one so Wade will try again, even though there isn’t much of a chance of it going right at this point.

Iris has her go home, saying that her troubles will disappear. Wade wonders what that means, even though it seems painfully obvious to me.

The next day, Wade’s parents announce they will be staying overnight for a “romantic night at the beach”. I think we all know what that means and I’m happy for them. Wait no, they suck so I’m not.

Of course, this means Micah is in charge. Side note, I’ve noticed Stine likes to do this thing where the narrator goes “NAME is spelled I-N-S-U-L-T”. This book does that at least 3 times, seriously.

Anyway, Micah forces her to do his chores or he’ll leak an embarrassing photo (of her drooling in her sleep, lovely), which makes Wade wish he’d just disappear. Just to make Iris’s comment more obvious.

That night, he heads out and sure enough, he doesn’t return. At least this book had a happy ending. But of course this isn’t where it ends, bah. The next morning, he’s not there and thankfully it does not take Wade long to figure out what is going on.

She immediately feels bad but come on, at least try to enjoy this while it lasts. I mean, this is another likability point for her but still. She doesn’t have too much time to enjoy it though, because her parents have returned.

“Stayed out all night! What a guy! Think he takes after me?”

Jesus, will anything he does phase these people? Well okay, Mom is stern about it and plans to give Micah a taking to, so once again it’s the father who is especially terrible.

Wade returns to Iris, who thought she would be happy.

“What about my parents? What about Micah’s friends? Our whole family? Everyone will be heartbroken. Our family will be ruined”

Well dang, when you put it that way, I guess him being gone isn’t great. She might hate Micah but she doesn’t want him dead or for him to vanish forever, because she’s not a monster. This is a good way to balance out her thirst for revenge.

It took a lot for Iris to do the spell so she isn’t sure she can bring him back. She can try but this time Wade has to pay a price. Not money exactly, but with a task. So you want a 12 year old to do your dirty work? Man, you ARE the villain!

Anyway, Iris has an evil twin sister who has captured Maggie’s sister and Iris wants Wade to rescue her. She doesn’t say if she’s tried before or if there’s any reason she never tried to get the bird herself and is just now having a 12 year old do it for her.

She needs the power of both birds to bring Micah back, I get that part at least. But anyway, Paula lives on a somewhat legendary creepy house on the other side of town.



“Carl called it The Dead House”

…I honestly can’t tell if this is an intentional reference, or this series is rehashing house names now. It could go either way.

With that, Wade is off to get a bird while a witch is sleeping. She gets there and finds the bird but right as she is about to leave, Paula wakes up. Oh crap. But then…oh boy. Paula reveals her hair is a wig, but also…

“Micah! It’s you!”

…What?

“Don’t you get it, Wade? It was all my revenge”

…Yes, apparently he saw the magazine ad when he was snooping in her room before she went to Iris and he figured out what Wade was gonna do, so he went to Iris first. All those spells went wrong because Micah had Iris cast them on purpose.

And the whole Paula thing was of course bogus. …I have major problems with this, because this is where the book falls apart.

First…what revenge? Someone needs to wrong you first for it to be revenge. Revenge for thinking of getting revenge? If he did this after Wade actually did something, I’d understand but just thinking of revenge is enough to set him off?

How did this go? Some teenager hits up Iris and he wants to punish his sister because she even thought of this and Iris just went with it? I can’t imagine someone like him would convince her Wade is in the wrong here. Although he does say he gave her 300 dollars so money really is the root of all evil.

If Iris is willing to do this, she’s way more evil than Micah is, frankly. Yet he’s the one who gets listed as Evil on the wiki. Not that he doesn’t deserve it mind you because holy shit.

Let’s think about that 3rd wish alone: He made his parents and friends worried sick over his disappearance just for the sake of “revenge”. Wade was worried as soon as she figured out that was going on, she didn’t even enjoy that he was gone.

This takes him from being an asshole to being a sadistic asshole. This ruins any chances of this working as a “Revenge is bad” story since anyone would want this guy to get what he deserves. I’ve seen people pull cruel pranks in these books for no reason but this takes the cake. Plus, Wade never talks to Iris to get her side of this, it’s all just dumped on us by Micah so we can rush into a “Climax”.

Speaking of, let’s just start wrapping this up. Side note, we never see the parent’s reaction to Micah returning so we don’t see him get a scolding like they promised.

Anyway, Wade gets one last idea and we cut to two days later as Wade has Micah come in. She reveals she took Maggie so she can do some magic of her own. How did Wade sneak in and do this without Iris seeing it? I don’t even care. (Also, she says she did while Iris was away doing…something)

I do care that this is the first actually bad thing Wade does outside of just…thinking about revenge too much. But given that Iris let Micah do all of that, I feel having her bird stolen isn’t the worst offense.

So naturally now that Wade has the power to give Micah what he deserve, she forces him to…do back flips. Oh no, how horrible. Also, Carl shows up because he still exists.

“That was mean. But it was also really funny. And it wasn’t as mean as what Micah had done to me”

Agreed.

Next, they turn him into a slug, which is better. Then they turn him into a frog. But their fun is interrupted by Iris who shows up and is pissed her bird got stolen. She takes Maggie back and plans to punish Wade since “stealing is wrong”. I agree, but I think stealing from a witch that let an abusive older brother have his way isn’t as bad.

“I hope you all have learned a lesson about revenge. And the lesson is…revenge is sweet. But you shouldn’t try it at home. You should always leave it to the professionals”

Who says Goosebumps doesn’t teach good morals?

Wade gets Maggie and plans to take care of Iris before she can do anything to them. She makes a wish to turn Iris into a frog. But…

“I warned you, there are rules…Did you know that you can only make three wishes a day on Maggie? Did you know that if you make a fourth wish, it gets turned onto you?”

No, because you never explained the rules! If Wade knew but got so caught up in revenge that she forgot, this would work but instead, it’s a total ass pull.

With that, Wade is indeed turned into a frog. Then she forgets about her revenge because she sees a fly and figures eating it is more important than some dumb old revenge.

The End! That’s right, it just…stops there. I’ve seen abrupt endings in this series but this is one of the worst ones. Things just sort of…stop because we hit the deadline for the month.

So the moral is revenge is bad. Even if they deserve it for being a sadistic asshole who plays big cruel pranks for no real reason. Whoops. Whatever, moving on.

(Also, someone visits a strange woman and gets wishes made to help her get a leg up on someone they hate that go wrong, only for her to become an animal. So this is just Be Careful What You Wish for again on top of everything else. At least both parties get punished instead of the jerk winning, but that’s the only improvement here)

Final Thoughts:

Revenge is a dish best served cold and that’s exactly how this left me. This is such an easy kind of moral to do, and I know because The Haunted Mask covered a “Revenge is bad” lesson way better. Mostly because Carly Beth did a bad thing way earlier and we got to see exactly how it affected her and why this was bad.

Steve and Chuck were also merely pranksters instead of being…Micah. This was clearly meant to be a two sided story with both being in the wrong. Doing bad things is…well bad but mindless revenge is just as bad and can just lead to worse revenge.

But the book screwed it up because Wade doesn’t really do anything bad until the end and I was on her side due to that terrible twist with Micah. Sure, she gets a bit caught up in wanting revenge but she never really crosses a line, or did anything that made her too unlikable. Plus, as I pointed out, she didn’t want Micah to die and felt bad when he disappeared. She cared about how others would feel about him vanishing instead of focusing on how she felt.

That balanced her character so she was thirsty for revenge but still actually cared if something truly terrible happened to Micah, since she’s not a sociopath like he clearly is.

That throws a monkey wrench in the whole two sided thing the ending was going for. At least Micah gets punished but the way things played out still made the very end seem unfair. I get what the book is going for at least but boy did it backfire.

That reveal with Micah really does ruin everything. It makes him way too terrible for the kind of story this should have been, and it makes it hard for me to care that Iris’s dumb bird was stolen.

Perhaps if there wasn’t some filler near the front of this, the climax could have been thought out more but alas. As for the positives, there’s a couple decent scares and before the Micah reveal, it’s more “eh” than anything else.

Also, Carl is useless but I still like Carl. Carl is cool. Otherwise, the book took an easy moral that this series has done well before and messed it up, all thanks to a reveal that creates one of the most despicable villains in the franchise.

It amazes me how much they screwed this up. Ah well, at least I finally got this out of the way.

Rating: Bad

If you’re wondering, this is in my Bottom 10 for the franchise but not Bottom 5 since at least things actually happen and there are things I can say I like at least.

But you know what? I’m not done. I’ve been thinking a lot about this book before I wrote the review, because the concept is a good one that could have brought us a good story. So screw it, let’s play Poparena and present you with my re-write of Revenge R Us.

Re-Write:

First off, Micah is toned down, but that goes without saying. Same goes for the parents, make them more oblivious and less terrible. Anyway, in this version Revenge R Us is more of a prank shop, but the items used for pranking are magical in some way.

Wade gets an item and uses it on Micah, which works. But instead of leaving it at that, she presses on and gets another item. Micah finds out about this after the first prank and decides to get an item of his own.

This basically starts a prank war, but with magical items, leading to tons of chances for humor and scares. That’s the bulk of my idea here, I just love the idea of a magical prank war.

Plus, I’d make things more even so that no one really has the upper hand and both parties are guilty in some way. As for other details, perhaps have a secret room in the store that has items no one is allowed to touch and of course eventually they go into it and find potions that lead to even more trouble and of course some major scares. Maybe they both becomes beasts or something.

I’d have it so in the end, we see what happens when you take revenge too far and perhaps they could talk things out and start to actually understand each other. They both learn they should talk things out and actually try to reach an understand. Micah learns to not be a jerk and Wade learns that mindless revenge just leads to more revenge.

I even have a twist ending if you really need one: During all this, Wade blows off Carl many times so she can focus on her silly revenge war. In the end, Wade and Micah go back to the store to apologize for everything and while they’re say, cleaning the backroom to make up to Iris, they hear Carl come on and tell Iris about how he’s been wronged by Wade, and he wants a little revenge.

Could be a bit cruel after she learned her lesson but eh, they could come out and apologize after hearing it, leave it open for anything to happen. Either way, I like my idea because it’s balanced and could also be fun.

But since my version doesn’t exist, you can go for the Haunting Hour episode Mrs. Worthington. That handles a “revenge against an abusive sibling gone wrong” story better since the protagonist is basically a budding serial killer with the plans he cooks up, and Molly is just a bit less hateable than Micah so the double moral works better. Still not perfect, as Molly gets redeemed too quickly but otherwise is done fairly well.

But as for this book, its only legacy is being referenced in that Nerdist Gersberms’s video.

Yes, really.

I promise when we do another Goosebumps entry, it’ll be much better. But until then, I think it’s time for another walk down Fear Street.

See ya.