R.L. Stine Reveals His Favorite and Least Favorite Goosebumps Character He’s “Sick of”

July 23, 2025, 8:59pm

R.L. Stine is no dummy. The best-selling Goosebumps scribe has authored hundreds of scary children’s books since 1992, with the horror maestro’s manuscripts featuring spine-chilling creatures like werewolves (The Werewolf of Fever Swamp), mummies (Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb), and vampires (Vampire Breath), or inanimate objects brought to life, from monster masks (The Haunted Mask) and scarecrows (The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight) to living slime (Monster Blood) and living dummies (the Night of the Living Dummy saga).

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But it’s Slappy, the living ventriloquist’s dummy, who has been a thorn in Stine’s side since the talking doll’s first villain turn in 1995’s Night of the Living Dummy II.

“I don’t really get it about Slappy,” Stine said during a recent panel appearance at New York’s Undiscovered Realm Comic Con. “Slappy is my favorite character and my least favorite character. He’s my favorite character because he’s so popular and everyone loves him. At Halloween time, thousands of kids go out as Slappy now, which is really a thrill.”

“He’s my least favorite character because I’m sick of him,” Stine deadpanned to laughter. “No, really. I’ve had to write 15 books about a dummy that comes to life. It does not get easier to come up with Slappy plots. I actually killed him off in a book. I wrote The Ghost of Slappy, and I killed him. But then I had to bring him back.”

Stine acknowledged the puppet’s popularity as the Goosebumps mascot, recalling giving a talk on Halloween where “40 people came dressed as Slappy in the audience. I brought them all up on stage, [and] it looked great.”

“I looked at them and I realized that I’m in the wrong business. I should be selling red bow ties,” he quipped.

The original Night of the Living Dummy spawned multiple sequels, including 1998’s Bride of the Living Dummy, 1999’s Slappy’s Nightmare, 2008’s Revenge of the Living Dummy, and 2013’s Son of Slappy. In 2017, Scholastic launched Goosebumps SlappyWorld, the Slappy-centric series featuring such twisted tales as I Am Slappy’s Evil Twin, The Dummy Meets the Mummy!, Slappy in Dreamland, and Slappy, Beware!

Slappy has appeared in the ’90s anthology series (voiced by Cal Dodd), the 2015 live-action Goosebumps movie (voiced by Jack Black, who also portrayed Stine) and its 2018 sequel (played by Mick Wingert), and 2023’s Goosebumps TV series (as the Chris Geere-voiced Kanduu).