Follow TV Tropes

Following

Literature / Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/welcome_to_the_wicked_wax_museum.jpg
Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum is the twelfth book in the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebooks series. Your class is visiting a new wax figures museum, but you and your friends are messing around, and the teacher tells you to wait in the lobby. Your friend Jake decides to sneak through a door, but then starts screaming for help. Do you and your other friend Liz go after him, or look for help?

If you go after him, you learn about how alive some of these wax figures really are, and if you're not careful, you might even become one. If you look for help, you are led right into the hands of Sybil Wicked and her servant Axel, who want to steal your face.

One of the villains, Sybil Wicked, would make an appearance in an entry in the comic series.


Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum provides examples of:

  • The Blank: One of the possible endings is that your face gets stolen, and the front of your head only has smooth, blank wax where it used to be.
  • Distressed Dude: Jake spends the majority of Scenario A in danger with "you" and Liz doing all they can to save him, while at the same time trying to survive themselves.
  • Karmic Jackpot: In one scene, Axel falls into a machine that will take all his bones out. He begs you to help him. If you do, he tells you that he can't let you go but he gives you a mirror, telling you that it will come in useful and even gives you a headstart before coming after you again. The only good ending with this storyline can only be reached if you have the mirror. The book actually tries to actively discourage you from helping Axel. When you first make the choice, you turn to a page where you say so to Liz, and she argues. Then you are asked if you still want to help him or not. You could take this as a sign that the book wants you to reach the bad ending, where Axel not only gets away, but then puts you in the machine, turning you into an envelope of skin.
  • Living Statue: A lot of wax figures, including the Strangler.
  • Mercy Rewarded: At one point, you come across a machine that takes bones out of people. Axel, who is chasing you, trips over and falls into it, and he begs you to help him. If you do, he regretfully says he can't let you go, but you are rewarded by him giving you an item you need to win the storyline. The book also punishes you if you refuse to help him.
  • Moon Logic Puzzle: At one point, you can only avoid a bad ending if you can't find your lifeline on your palm. If you can, you notice it's shorter than it used to be, and you end up dead.
  • Nightmare Face: Sybil Wicked was heavily scarred in a lab accident, so she's tried to reconstruct her face using skin she's stolen from innocent victims. The end result is a mishmash of differently colored faces crudely stitched together, while one eye is bigger and higher up than the other. One ending reveals her real face is actually a nest of worms and maggots inside her skull, as she's not the real Sybil Wicked, only a duplicate created by the real Sybil's father after she died.
  • Nintendo Hard: This is one of four books to have only two good endings while some other books have at least three.
  • Skull for a Head: Only partly. Axel has no face, just a skull, apparently from an early experiment of Sybil's when trying to recreate her face.
  • This Loser Is You: At one point, if you don't follow your friends into a car (the three of you had broken away from the group during a school trip), the book again insults you, and then your teacher catches you and calls your parents.
  • Too Dumb to Live: You've already seen wax figures moving, but when the Strangler doesn't chase you, you assume he's not real and put your neck in his hands while saying "Who would want to strangle a nice kid like me?" The inevitable happens.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: The book gives you a chance to save Axel from the Deboner. You have to make the choice twice, as your friend doesn't want to, but if you don't, he somehow gets away and you become deboned instead. Consequently, if you save Axel, he gives you an object you will need later on.

Top