The Scream: The Official Goosebumps Fan Club Newsletter 1997

I have absolutely no idea if this is still a thing, and I feel that it isn't, but growing up in the 90's, most popular kid's media included the possibility to subscribe to some sort of fanclub. Usually the price was between $10 and $15 and you got a fan-kit of a bunch of cool and useless junk, as well as a newsletter of some sort or another. Growing up my all time mom-I-have-to-have-this fan club was the Lisa Frank fanclub, but unfortunately, it cost about $14 and my sister and I were just not willing to share, and therefore my mom was not willing to shill out an extra $28 bucks on top of the monthly Lisa Frank budget, which I imagine sometime in 1996 was more than I can possibly imagine. Somehow or another in late 1996 I managed to convince my mom that I just had to be a part of the Goosebumps fan club, which was a series I had only just gotten into a few months prior.

I don't remember what came with this fan club, besides a wallet I unfortunately destroyed with hot glue sometime in high school, but I recently stumbled upon one of the quarterly newsletters. I vividly remember the 6-8 week wait to receive the fan-kit in the mail and specifically remember fickle little me thinking "But I'm sick of Goosebumps now!" by the time it finally arrived. Despite my too-cool-for-Goosebumps attitude (I had since moved on to Animorphs and considered it far more sophisticated reading material since the back suggested it was aimed at 6th graders and Goosebumps was aimed at a mere 4th grader) I still loved getting The Scream in the mail and used to reread them constantly.

Lucky for us all, in a recent archeological dig through piles of my old junk, I found a Dec 1996/ Jan 1997 copy that managed to survive. Click for a larger picture!

These also came with a similar tri-folded puzzle sheet with some various craft ideas and word games, but I didn't bother scanning it in because apparently when I was in 6th grade I somehow didn't understand what a Mad Lib was and just filled it in with the most appropriate words and I figure the internet didn't really need to see that, or my half hearted attempt at finishing a crossword puzzle.

Digging around the internet for any other info this fan club, I stumbled across the following video of one version of this fan-kit that has managed to survive the years intact.

This wasn't the same kit that I got, I know mine contained a neon green wallet, but it's about on par with what sort of stuff came with mine. Some stickers, a bunch of pencils and pens, goofy booklets, and just general miscellaneous junk. There was hardly anything sweeter than getting to crack open that junk filled cardboard coffin though, I'm sure much to all of our parents dismay. They may have felt like they flushed $14 down the drain, but a fan-kit like this was a pretty exciting thing to get in the mail.