Well, a kid gets stuck with his deaf…aunt, grandma, something, doesn’t really matter, and when he visits a local toyshop, he finds a container of Monster Blood, which appears to basically be Nickelodeon Gak, but has odd changes in temperature, starts growing, and then starts attacking people like a The Blob, a The Stuff, or a The Blob (remake, which is by far the superior The Blob. A kid gets goddamn skeletonized in the sewer, like a little kid, gets his flesh burned off by the blob, it’s awesome).
Here’s my suspicion with this one: EVERY kid in the 90’s wanted slime of some sort. A slime puddle from a quarter machine, a sticky hand that always had box art with a kid using it to pick a dollar up off the ground (as though the speed was the only reason you weren’t able to snatch up all those dollar bills you found laying around), and, of course, various slimes, ectoplasms, goos, and the king: Nickelodeon Gak.
What all these substances shared was the fact that while kids loved ’em, they were a nightmare for their parents. They would leave a greasy stain when they stuck to the walls or the ceilings, they could peel the finish right off just about any piece of furniture, and if it made contact with the carpet, you were done for.
I’m suspicious Stine wrote these Goosebumps to teach kids a lesson, and the lesson with this one seems pretty clear: goos are to be feared!
After reading this book, I went down a minor Gak rabbit hole and found several memories shared on Reddit. Here I present some of the better ones to you:
*Oh man..I loved this shit as a kid. For some reason I decided to stuff it down the sink drain and as I tried to scoop it back out I ended up just stuffing it deeper into the sinks piping. I was too scared to tell my parents what I did and figured it would just slowly wash away. Instead that shit turned rock solid and clogged the sink… I decided to feign ignorance as to how it got clogged so my folks had to call a plumber and of course he had to take the whole thing apart . And what do you know, there is a bright orange mass hardened into the pipes. My parents almost killed me when they realized it was the gak they got me. I don’t know why I even did that, but needless to say I definitely was never allowed to get it again.
*When I was young, I was watching TV while playing with some gak. Ended up rubbing my dick while it was in my hand and ejaculated everywhere. First time I ever came and never had “the talk”, so I was extremely confused. Took me awhile to figure out you could jerkoff without gak.
*Upon touching Gak for the first time I vomited. I never touched Gak again.
*I had the scented Gak that was supposedly “Pepperoni Pizza”.
It didn’t smell like pizza for shit. My theory is the scent was actually thyme, but that was too hard to market to kids, so somebody figured pizza was close enough.
It reeked though. My mom wouldn’t let me play with it indoors. Sometimes I’d try to sneak it out thinking she wouldn’t know, but within thirty seconds she would yell “Put that back in the container or take it outside!”
*First day I got it I threw it in my ceiling fan to see it go flying. It got stuck on the fan blade. It’s still there to this day, and despite all attempts to get it out, it’s still there. Hard as a rock.
*Left it on parent’s wood grain television set…. woke up to find it had removed the finish. Grounded 4 life.
*I had a full on tantrum at universal studios when I was like 7 or 8, screaming “I WANT GAK!!!!” My parents were mortified and did not get it for me – I don’t know why I thought a tantrum would work, they never did. I finally got it months later for Christmas. But to this day my family still mocks me (I’m 29 now) about it and screams “I WANT GAK!”
*Ugh. When I was about 12 I got the bright idea to put my penis in it. What a mess. I had to shave all my pubes off.
*When I was about 9, Chuck-E-Cheese ran a promotion where you could somehow obtain limited edition scented Gak by going there. I don’t remember the details. But my parents agreed to take me and a few friends there for dinner.
After loading myself up with greasy pizza and playing a few games, I left with a small container of sunscreen scented Gak and another of pizza scented Gak. I played with them all the way home, despite the nauseating scent. About halfway home, I spray-painted the backseat of my parent’s minivan with greasy pizza upchuck.
*I was the coolest kid in school for about a week.when I got back from a big mall in a big city with a big toy store (I grew up in a tiny, isolated town) and I brought Gak to school. Everyone had only ever seen it on TV. I was a celebrity. But then everyone wanted to touch it and it got gross and I was taught a valuable life lesson that day about the cost of popularity.
But imagine my good fortune when I showed up to school at a later point with Floam! Another cool kid fix for about 3 days.
*I wrote my first “business letter” to Gak.
I used my own money to buy the rainbow colored Gak, which, within minutes, turned gray from all the colors mixed together. 10 year old me was PISSED, so I typed up an angry letter, using the business letter format they taught us in school. My mom got a stamp and mailed it for me.
They actually wrote back! It was a canned response, but still. They thanked me for my feedback, and they included coupons. I used the coupons to buy Floam and either the scented Gak or Slime, I can’t remember.
*I remember everytime we got a new vat of Gak, within a few days my mother would chase us around with a wooden spoon for some odd reason.
strange coincidence I suppose.