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.

90's Perfume Review: Juice Bar Cotton Candy & Jovan Individuality Fire

Today I was incredibly excited to see the mail carrier pull up with a couple different packages from me, because they each contained a different perfume that I used to wear back in 1999! I had used up my original bottles of these over a decade ago and by the time I had used up both of them, they were nowhere to be found in stores. Lucky for all of us, Ebay is a pretty easy source to find long since discontinued scents. There are a few other sites out there that sell discontinued scents, but I just prefer Ebay because it's much easier to get to see the total price after shipping.

Juice Bar's Cotton Candy is a delightfully neon pink liquid!

First up in the review is Juice Bar's Cotton Candy Refreshee Spray. First up, I have no idea what a refreshee spray is, and it seems to be some phrase Juice Bar alone uses. It's just your standard body spray really. However, what makes this body spray different from all the other ones out there, besides the sassy girl on the cover and the neon zig zags, is this one smells like heavenly cotton candy. I spritzed this on me and was totally taken back to being 13 and borrowing my friend's bottle of this after gym class (after a tough afternoon of hiding out behind the bleachers, not, you know, actually participating in sports).

I've always thought that this spray smelled exactly like Bubblicious cotton candy flavored bubble gum, and it did not disappoint all these years later. This is clearly a girly teen scent and it practically smothers you in sweet, almost fruity, scent if you spray too much of it. I tend to go totally crazy with Victoria's Secret body spritzes, and was tempted to do that with this when I got it. Yeah, don't. One spritz (nowhere near your face, unless you want to be tasting it all day) lasts several hours!

I hope to add more to my Juice Bar stash!

Juice Bar's scents were always pretty straight forward, and uncomplicated, the cotton candy smells just like cotton candy, Lemonade Squeeze (of which I actually still have just under half a small bottle of, all these years later, it was my least favorite of the ones I have, but nostalgia has made be grow much fonder of it) smells just like ultra sweet lemonade, and I certainly remember the Gummi Bear smelling like just that, but I guess we'll find out whether or not that is true in another review, because I'm definitely going to be hunting down a bottle of Gummi Bear.

The second scent is another one I got in 1999, Jovan's Fire scent from the Individuality line. I first learned about this line during some trip to Walmart or the mall, or some place that sold perfumes. Instead of sample bottles, they had an array of scented temporary tattoos featuring element symbols to try them. I remember thinking "Oh! Free temporary tattoos!" the first time I saw them, grabbing a couple of each, and the coming back for about a handful more of the Fire ones the next time.

14 years later, I found a stash of these in my middle/high school makeup case!

I lived off of these little tattoos, carefully sticking them on my inside wrist so I could casually huff them all day long, until my mom actually bought me a full set of these, the Fire was the first to go. They're not actually perfumes, or even body sprays, but rather perfume oils (although I believe they also came as a traditional perfume), which is a scent style that I've always loved and still frequently use, so I definitely was excited to get the chance to pick this up again.

Upon opening the package I was pretty much totally floored with nostalgia. What they say about scent being tied to memory is so true, and this was my absolute favorite scent for years. If Juice Bar is a teen dream, Jovan's Fire is definitely a more grown up perfume. It's a deeply woody and smokey scent, totally fitting of it's name! I dipped a little bit of it on my wrist and gently pressed my wrists together and the scent lasted for a few hours before gently fading away, just like most perfume oils.

If you're a fan of dark woody scents, even if this particular scent isn't something you got to experience the first time around, I would suggest trying to pick up a vial of this on Ebay, I paid $9 including shipping (which is significantly cheaper than it being when it was new, if I remember correctly) and it was well worth the price. I wasn't too much of a fan of the other scents in the series, the only one that really stood out to me other than this one was the Earth scent, which smelt very much like freshly cut grass, but I might see if I can pick up the rest of the elements online sometime!

This has been my first experience buying long discontinued scents online, something I was a bit worried about because I was unsure how the scents held up to both time, and my own memory, but I was happy to find that neither time nor memory has don anything weird to these particular scents and will definitely be hunting down some of my former favorite scents again! If I was a braver person, I'd be considering hunting down some of my favorite discontinued beverages from the 90's, but I'll probably be leaving that to the more adventurous retro bloggers out there.