Slappy's back!
The Goosebumps book which establishes the standard Slappy portrayal.
Amy feels overshadowed by her sister, Sara, who has a real talent for painting. Amy is getting somewhere with ventriloquism, but her dummy, Dennis, is old and keeps falling apart. To encourage Amy, her father buys her a new dummy from the local pawn shop.
That dummy turns out to be Slappy.
Slappy may have played second fiddle to Mr. Wood last time we saw him, but this time he steps up to the role of primary antagonist. He begins psychologically tormenting Sara in various ways designed to make it look like Amy is responsible, carefully crafted to make it look like Amy is simply insane. And he'll keep on doing it until Amy agrees to become his slave. Amy must find a way to defeat the evil dummy before it's too late.
It was adapted into episode 10 of the first season of the 1995 TV series, with a novelization based on the episode being released as book 5 of the Goosebumps Presents series.
It was later reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2015 as a companion to the first movie.
The book provides examples of:
- Break the Cutie: Slappy engages in some pretty effective psychological torment to force Amy into being his slave.
- Demonic Dummy: Slappy, who's alive and evil. Dennis is a subversion; he lives, but saves the family from Slappy.
- Birthday Party Goes Wrong: In her first ventriloquism gig, Amy goes to entertain small children at a birthday party that is held at the restaurant owned by the father of her best friend Margo, who wants to help her. When Amy makes the birthday girl Alicia shake hands with Slappy wishing her happy birthday... the dummy's hand doesn't let go. At first Alicia is amused, then it starts getting tighter, she panics, she begins to cry in pain making all the other children present burst into tears, Amy does everything she can to open Slappy's hand, but the dummy instead lets out a terrifying Evil Laugh on his own.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Sara is responsible, Jed is foolish. Amy is somewhere in between.
- Gaslighting: Slappy's mission in this book is to explicitly convince Amy's parents that she's insane, a bit more specific than the general mischief and mayhem he typically causes (this is the only book where the protagonist is treated as disturbed, rather than a deliberate troublemaker). At one point, Slappy cackles about making Amy's parents commit her to a mental institution if she doesn't follow his orders.
- Insufferable Genius: Sara is an artistic genius, and won't let Amy out of her shadow.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Aside from being The Unfavorite of the family, Amy never seems to have anything interesting to share during Family Sharing Night (a tradition the Kramer family implemented that involves them sharing something special every Thursday night) since she isn't as talented as her older sister and not a total goof-off like her younger brother.
- Mistaken for Insane: Slappy the Demonic Dummy keeps causing trouble and framing Amy for it. Amy's attempts to prove that he's the culprit result in her parents wondering if she needs help, and they consider sending her to a psychiatrist after Slappy coats Sara's room with paint, only to just ground her. Slappy later reveals that he's trying to invoke this trope by convincing Amy's parents that she's lost it if she doesn't obey him.
- Nice Mean And In Between: The Kramer siblings. Amy, the middle child and protagonist of the novel, is the kind one with some problems, Jed, the youngest of the trio, is the obnoxious Jerkass who enjoys playing practical jokes, even going as far to ruin Sara's painting at one point, and Sara, the oldest of the bunch, is much saner and nice for the most part, but is a bit stuck-up about her talent and even admits that she's secretly jealous of Amy due to the latter not having to work as hard as her.
- No Ending: The story ends with Slappy getting destroyed by Dennis, who is believed to be Jed in disguise (he was meant to distract Slappy when he entered Sara's room) until Amy and the rest of the family find out that Jed overslept and didn't show up disguised as Dennis. The book abruptly ends on Amy wondering who defeated Slappy if it wasn't him, but there's no closure.
- Ordered Apology: Mrs. Kramer states that Jed will be punished for butchering Sara's painting right when he apologizes to Sara. It takes him a while, but Jed reluctantly apologizes, and is denied video games and a trip to the movies with his friends as punishment.
- Parental Bonus: As several people, along with the blogger himself, pointed out on the snarky Goosebumps blog
, the Night of the Living Dummy series may be creepy as a child, but as an adult, a completely different layer of creepy reveals itself. The living dummy in question is obsessed with making preteen girls (and it's always girls, never boys in these books) into his slaves. When they refuse, he punches and slaps them - a rare act of physical violence for this series - and knocks one girl unconscious. - The Prankster: Jed is a goofy boy whose contributions to Family Sharing Night are mostly tricks.
- Puppy Love: What was in that note from Ben to Amy that made her so embarrassed when Jed shared it to the family?
- Same Plot Sequel: This is almost a beat-for-beat repeat of Night of the Living Dummy I, except that this time Slappy is the main villain.
- Shout-Out: Amy's father plays "Maggie's Farm" by Bob Dylan at one of the Family Sharing Nights.
- Threw My Bike on the Roof: The second chapter begins with Jed revealing himself as the culprit who deliberately destroyed Sara's painting. He gets punished as a result.
- The Un-Favourite: Amy's parents do love her, but it's pretty clear they favour Sara and Jed more. Later in the book, it turns out Sara is actually jealous of Amy's own talents.
- Title Drop: Not for the book itself, but the franchise. As Amy lays awake in bed hoping to catch Slappy in the act of sneaking into Sara's room at night, she mentions "I felt goosebumps up and down my arms".
- Ventriloquism: It's called Night of the Living Dummy, what do you expect?
