Nostalgia is a strange emotion. It's a sort of longing for moments in our past and a yearning to re-create memories. I'm sure you know the feeling. We've all had it at some point in our lives
Last October around the time of Halloween my wife and I watched a Goosebumps movie that was airing for the Holiday. It was based on the old Goosebumps book series, which I was a big fan of when I was a kid. We decided to give the movie a go since it was the season. It starred the actor Jack Black and was super campy, obviously meant for a much younger audience. After about 20 minutes or so I got bored and spent the remainder of the time on my phone, listening to the "action" in the background.
My wife liked the movie because she likes campy stuff like that but it wasn't my cup of tea. Nonetheless it actually had a pretty big impact on me. It sparked a strong sense of nostalgia and made me really want to read the books I owned as a kid. I texted my mom to ask if if she still had them saved in a box somewhere. She informed me that she had recently given all of them away to a friend's daughter. "NOOOOOOOO!!!!"
I immediately looked online and saw that they are still printing Goosebumps books today but they had changed the cover art since when I was a kid. They were all different. All wrong. They weren't the same and just wouldn't do.
I saw some retro books being sold on Ebay but that was in Canada and I'm currently in France. Oh well I suppose. Maybe I'll look into it again when I get back?
A few months later Christmas came and went and afterwards my mom messaged me saying that she sent me a package by boat but it would take a while to arrive. We had stopped giving gifts in my family for Christmas a long time ago so it was a bit surprising that she sent something.
It eventually arrived a month or two later.
I opened the box and found a metal tin inside and in that were five random Goosebumps books with the original cover art (now referred to as retro).
The books were smaller and thinner than I remember them to be and they no longer had the "fancy" raised lettering on the front but other than that they looked about the same as they did when I was a kid.
My nostalgia itch was scratched and I was super excited to start reading them.
I started with The Cuckoo Clock of Doom and "whipped" through it in about 2 or 3 hours. They're written for young kids with only 120 pages of very large print but it was nice having something easy to read. My main book(s) at the time were Children of Dune, the 3rd book of the Dune series and the 7th book of the Wheel of Time series. These books are large and complex and generally take me about a month or more to complete. It was nice having a quick and easy read for once. My wife read The Cuckoo Clock of Doom after me and finished it in 45 minutes. She's a much faster reader than I am. We both rather enjoyed it, even as adults.
I didn't want to finish the books too quickly, so I started to read them before bed. This worked works out great because I could only read around 5-10 pages before falling asleep. My tired "night brain" also liked the simplicity of them as well. It didn't get bored by their childishness like it did during the daytime and it could follow along without losing track of what's happening - it does that with complex books at night time. If I read the Wheel of Time too late then I can never remember what I read the next morning.
But anyway, I finished the set of five books and thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgic feeling that they gave me. I did more research online and was able to find two other tins of books with the retro cover art, so I bought the second tin. I just started the Night of the Living Dummy book and so far it is the best one that I've read of the lot. That's not surprising though because it was one of the top selling books in the series at the time, along with The Haunted Mask, which also came in the tin.
The books written earlier by R.L. Stein tend to be much better than the ones written later. Supposedly the author had started using a ghost writer later on. Maybe he just ran out of new ideas?
Say Cheese and Die is also in the 2nd tin and that book was the only one that scared me as a kid. I'm interested to see what it will be like as an adult.
It's unfortunate that they only re-printed 15 books with the original cover art but maybe I can find the ones I'm missing at a garage sale or something once I go back home? Until then I'll be quite satisfied with the ones I have now.
Nostalgia is a strange emotion and can be prompted from any number of things from our past. Other things that give me the feeling, that I would like to get a hold of would be a Sega Genesis with games, a Gameboy color, and a tamagochi.
What about you? What gives you a sense of nostalgia? Have you ever bought anything from when you were a kid or tried to re-create memories from your past? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.
