Gooflumps: Eat Cheese And Barf! Review

Gooflumps has got to be the chicken shitiest parody I've ever seen. On the front cover alone there are three labels warning you "Not a real Goosebumps book!" Even the title screams "don't sue us!" -- it's a goof, get it? Despite the excessive warnings (ten in all), it isn't a badly written parody; it's really a knock off that substitutes poop jokes for satire.

The cover is a work of art. I want a lithograph.

Woe is Billy. He has "some kind of weird" enzyme that makes him vomit if he eats dairy, and his family just inherited a dairy farm. Once they move in, Billy is introduced to the tuxedo clad one-armed farm hand Armand and his talking cow, Martha. Armand tells Billy about the upcoming Dairy Dance, but he hates milk and has no one to go with...

...until he meets local beauty Fanny Renett. She's talented, if you know what I mean: her foul burps can make anyone throw up. Heeeyaw! GET ME SOME! Before you know it, they're cleaning out Billy's basement - formerly Grandpa Theo's laboratory. He was a famous research scientist in his spare time, dontchaknow.

Billy finds a metal pot containing a cottage cheese brain, hidden with an old diary. Billy, who learned nothing from watching Evil Dead, reads a warning on the cover aloud: "Not a real goosebumps book!" Hehe, couldn't resist. "Not for the eyes of any Curdle!"

As in Johnathan Curdle, milk tycoon. He used to employ Theo and owns most of the town. Curdle and his bully son Jerry show up uninvited, just in time to hear Billy telling his mom about the brain. Naturally, she doesn't believe him. But the old millionaire does. He's nice to children, eats bologna sandwiches without complaint and even offers Billy's mother a job - you're immediately suspicious of the guy.

"Non-fat cottage cheeses can not go long without feeding!"
-- Martha the talking cow.

Our heroes heed the diary's warning and sneak the cheese brain out the basement window. Strangely enough, the pot is much heavier and there's cheese leaking out the closed lid. Could the brain be... growing?

Before they get the pot to an abandoned barn, Billy defends Fanny from Jerry Curdle, who vows revenge.

Wow - city boy moves to a farm town, meets girl, defends her from the snob son of the town miser. If it wasn't for the man eating cottage cheese brain monster, this would have made a fine piece of 80s movie crap. Hehe, the story would probably climax with a big dance. HEY WAIT A MINUTE!

Jerry sneaks into the barn to slice off a sample to show the elder Curlde. Billy embarrasses everyone involved by yelling "Jerry, don't cut the cheese!" The cheese is so offended it triples in size and assimilates Jerry... and his evil.

Some more crap happens, but instead of going into detail I'll just quote the back cover, which gives away slightly less than everything, but not quite.

MOO-VING TO COW COUNTRY!
Billy-boy fudder is unthrilled when his family inherits Breakwind Farms. He's a dairy dork - a hurling horror - when it comes to milk products. [Um? - Zeus] Too bad his new town is the dairy capital of the world!

When Billy and his new friend Fanny, discover a cheese brain in the basement, they don't realize they've unleashed a cottage cheese monster. It expands a s it consumes everyone in its path. Good thing Martha the talking cow is on their side. And Fanny's foul-smelling burps are the ultimate secret weapon.

Will Chunky Cheese slime the Dairy Dance before Billy's sister is crowned Dairy Queen? Barf-o-rama!

Barf-o-rama (pictured)

Complaints that also apply to Goosebumps aside, Gooflumps's major weakness is a reliance on toilet humor and silly names for "laughs". Armand the amputee, Eclaire the doughnut-stuffing cop, we're lucky the heroes weren't named Belch and Puke (Toejam and Earl?). I wish Billy had stepped in a few less cow pies and had a few more surreal encounters - like this brick of raw Twilight Zone detailing Jerry's attempted Billy beatdown.

"Call your cow off, Billy, call her off!" Jerry Pleaded.

Martha took a step forward. Jerry ran away as fast as he could.

"Why was Jerry afraid of Martha?"

"You ask a lot of questions, guy," [Armand] said. "I guess you never heard of the great stampede of '89. Jerry's folks got trampled in that dairy disaster. Three whole herds took part in the ruckus, but the Curdles tried to blame the whole thing on Martha."

Crossing Main Street, on the way to the Moo'n'Doo, I heard an engine racing down the street. I turned just in time to see a car hurtling towards me!

The station wagon squealed to a halt inches in front of me. Dad was grinning behind the steering wheel. What a joker!

– Zeus Poplar (email me about this!)

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