Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter

Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter is the sixth book in the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook series. It was published in 1996.

The prismatic hologram cover design consists of light-blue swirls, and the cover illustration consists of a boy trapped inside of a sandwich of Purple Peanut Butter.

Blurb
TALK ABOUT A SNACK ATTACK!

Your aunt and uncle told you to stay out of their basement. So, of course, you check it out. That's where you find the dusty old refrigerator. In the fridge there are two containers. One is filled with purple goop. It smells just like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The other holds a piece of chocolate cake. Your stomach is growling.

If you eat the purple goop, you start shrinking. Pretty soon you're battling it out with a gigantic monster - a mouse! If you choose the cake, you grow into a tall giant. Now you're trying to escape the police, who are convinced you're a mutant alien!

The choice is yours in this scary GOOSEBUMPS adventure that's packed with over 20 super spooky endings!

Plot
You have flown to Fiskeville to spend the summer with your aunt and uncle and their two children, your cousins Drippy Dora and Barney the Bully. Barney tells you to play hide-and-seek; whoever is found, Barney gets to pound. You hide in the basement, something your Aunt tells you not to do, because the people who lived there before them were strange and they never got around to cleaning it out. You get hungry and spot an old refrigerator. There are only two things inside: An jar of purple goop and some chocolate cake, the latter of which is marked as being from Effy's Bakery. If you eat the purple goop, which smells like peanut butter, you wind up shrinking; here, you face the possibility of becoming one of Dora's toys, being locked in the refrigerator, being flushed down the toilet, or fighting a now giant mouse. If you choose the cake, you wind up growing into a giant, and facing the possibilities of being chased by the local police who think you are a giant, being pounded by Barney, or intimidating Barney and Dora.

List of endings
There are twenty bad endings and six good endings.

Conceptual
Artwork by Mark Nagata.

Trivia

 * This book is likely a homage to the Monster Blood books.
 * The Purple Peanut Butter possesses the inverse qualities of Monster Blood; it makes people shrink, not grow.
 * Additionally, Monster Blood III and Kermit Majors are mentioned in this book.
 * Effy's chocolate cake may be an allusion to the cake labeled "EAT ME" from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Both cakes make the consumer grow larger. There's also an explicit reference to Alice in Wonderland when you figure that eating the purple peanut butter will fix your growing problem.
 * In one ending, the reader becomes magnetized, and change flies out of a payphone and sticks to them. This could not actually occur in most countries, as most coins are not attracted to magnets.
 * On page 103, the reader's age is stated to be twelve. Most Give Yourself Goosebumps books don't explicitly say the reader's age.
 * A character in this book is named Dr. Harlan, and he is an alien researcher. In the Goosebumps Presents adaptation of "Welcome to Camp Nightmare", Billy's surname is said to be Harlan. Additionally, Billy's parents are both scientists and alien researchers.

References in other Goosebumps media

 * Purple Peanut Butter appears as an item in Goosebumps: The Game.
 * Purple Peanut Butter appears in Goosebumps HorrorTown, during the Monster Blood event.