YMMV / Goosebumps (1995)

• Awesome Music: The theme song is all kinds of Creepy Awesome.
• Complete Monster:
  • Slappy the Dummy is the same sadistic Control Freak he was in the books, and in some ways is even more dangerous. In his debut episode, Slappy set out to ruin his new owner Amy's life by framing her for a series of escalating misdeeds, from breaking a child's hand to sneaking into her parents' room to smash a guitar over them For the Evulz. Slappy brought a dummy named Rocky to life in his second appearance as part of his scheme to take the household and convert the family into his slaves. For amusement, Slappy transforms the protagonists' cousin into a helpless dummy aware of his current state but unable to do anything about it. In his final appearance, Slappy targets another pair of sisters after striking a deal with a failing ventriloquist. Around that time, Slappy entertains himself with murdering other sapient dummies and keeping their shards as trophies. He then tries to make the protagonist's younger sister his bride and, upon being destroyed, latches himself onto the protagonist's younger brother.
  • "Chillogy": Karl Knave gets sick pleasure out of physically and mentally torturing kids simply because it's his hobby. He transports them into his miniature town and personal playground Karlsville, where he toys with them before he plans to kill them. Karl manipulates Jessica into pursuing her own greed to sell more of his lemonade, then turns her into a pig and sends a mob of angry townspeople after her to serve her up to him for lunch. He plays a lethal game of baseball with Matthew where Matthew has to do such things as fight a team of monsters, dodge killer baseballs, and crawl over a lava pit to make it to the next base. Karl's last victim is Matthew's brother Todd, whom he prepares to "make a citizen of Karlsville" by turning him into a small plastic figure who will be forever conscious. He delays Todd's fate as long as he possibly can to enjoy Todd's fear.
• Fanfic Fuel: Because certain books weren't adapted into the television series (see They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot below), some fans have started writing stories on what they think would've happened if books that weren't adapted into the TV series actually were adapted into the series. It helps that it's getting a reboot.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: It's a Canadian show that is decently popular in the United States. Hell, even got to the point where some people thought that the show was American until they were told otherwise.
• He Really Can Act: Kathryn Long's performance as Carly Beth Caldwell in The Haunted Mask features a truly emotional breakdown as Carly Beth moves past the Despair Event Horizon. When she starts destroying the duck costume her mother made for her, you can tell Carly Beth's channeling years of frustration over being humiliated and mocked by almost everyone around her.
• Narm: A strong occurrence in the TV adaptation, mostly due to the mediocre child actors. The better episodes tend to be the ones that have solid acting to go along with the scares to really make you care for their protagonists.
• Narm Charm: Goes hand-in-hand with the standard Narm of the weaker episodes, as the series is by design focused around and made for children and teenagers. The genuine sense of everyone giving it their all, even if they fail in the delivery, combined with the unmatchable camp of mid-90s Canadian television makes the series So Bad, It's Good at worst and legitimately entertaining at best.
• Nightmare Retardant: Despite being known as the series' most famous villain, Slappy is still a tiny wooden man, meaning the kid protagonists can usually shove him over without much effort, even if it only stops him for a moment.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: In the 2000s, it became Common Knowledge in fan spaces that the original Night of the Living Dummy was at least partially filmed,^note The wilder variations of this rumor claim that the episode actually aired and was later buried by Fox, which is demonstrably untrue but that Fox decided to shelve the episode because it was "too scary," leading to speculation whether this Lost Episode might still exist. According to writer Rick Drew, the producers decided not to adapt the original Dummy because the Slow-Paced Beginning didn't fit well into the show's format, and it was easier to tackle Part II which took much less time before Slappy came to life. This was confirmed by producer Steve Levitan, who adds that any scrapped episode ideas never made it past the script outline stage.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Before playing Anakin Skywalker, Hayden Christensen played Zane in the episode "Night of the Living Dummy III".
  • Ryan Gosling plays the protagonist Greg in the first Say Cheese And Die episode.
• So Bad, It's Good: An ad for a Halloween marathon-which portrayed it as if it was a gritty 1980s Slasher Movie showed a baseball with fangs flying towards someone. And yes, all of it is that cheesy. And that's not even scratching the surface! Just try to watch "Don't Go to Sleep!" without laughing.
• Special Effect Failure: Happens quite a bit, to the point where some episodes can (unintentionally) resemble a cheesy B-movie. For instance, in "Calling All Creeps!" and "One Day at HorrorLand", you can clearly see human eyes behind the monsters' masks.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There were many books for the TV series to adapt and many fans were disappointed that certain books (i.e., Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, The first Night of the Living Dummy book, Why I'm Afraid of Bees, The Haunted School, etc.) weren't adapted into episodes of the show. A reboot of the TV series has come out, though.