The Pumpkin Juice segment is pretty disturbing now that you think about it. Two kids named Charlie and Frank make a bunch of pumpkin juice and after drinking it, they decide to head out to get some candy, which seems harmless enough... until the boys find themselves growing hungrier and hungrier as the night progresses. Eventually, Charlie sees that he is growing hair on his body and realizes the juice turned him and Frank into beasts.
The cherry on top HAS to be the second act. Charlie, in his monstrous state, goes to a house while trick-or-treating and is pissed that the person at the front door is handing him a lollipop. So, he pushes him aside to break into the house to eat raw eggs.
"An Old Story": it's revealed that Dahlia wasn't related to either of the parents; she was just a woman who impersonated a family member just so she could have access to two young boys. The fact that she demands a fee makes it sound like she does this a lot — meaning that the woman likely hops from family to family, impersonating a family member just so she can gain access to young children whom she can turn old and sell to older people to marry them off to them.
"Please Don't Feed the Bears": It at first seems like a Breather Episode when Sarah and her family are in Cuddle Bear Land, but then Sarah is an hour late to meet with them for lunch. They're waiting for her and trying to entertain her Spoiled Brat little sister Katie. While her parents admonish her for getting lost, she decides not to tell them that the cast members tried to turn her into a Cuddle Bear by feeding her graham crackers. After all, they wouldn't believe her, and what if they did?
The theme park's operation itself is horrifying to think about: Imagine you're either a visitor or a new employee and all the workers keep offering you what look like regular graham crackers. Then, after trying a few, you realize they're not wearing costumes...and you start growing fur all over your body...
The episodes provide examples of:
"An Old Story" is pretty tame by most standards of the series, but it still has its moments.
The thought of two young boys being aged into elderly men so that they can be pawned off to two older women by their own aunt is disturbing in more ways than one. We get several hints that she's not what she seems, but the fact that she'd go out of the way to do this to her nephews is thoroughly smashing the Moral Event Horizon.
When the boys reverse the spell, their aunt attempts to hold them hostage until one of them whips out an entire pitcher of cursed prune juice and splashes it all over her, causing her to shrivel up into a skeleton before exploding into dust. The crude look of the skeleton used for this effect just makes it more off-putting. Finally, there's her nephew having just done this deed and he's remarkably calm about having just killed his aunt. Granted it was in self-defense, but still.
"Awesome Ants" has some surprisingly good ant puppets, and the events escalate into the ants seemingly eating everyone in town. Not only that, but while other episodes rush into their Cruel Twist Ending at the last minute, this ending takes its time. Everything seems to be back to normal, and then Dave opens the fridge to find nothing to eat but tubs of food pellets... The final scene sees two ants, large as mountains, seemingly laughing at their "human farm" while human families fight in the street over dumped piles of food pellets. Somehow this depressing image is one of the only times Goosebumps didn't fudge an effect!
