Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter

Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter
Author(s)	R.L. Stine
Cover artist	Mark Nagata
Publisher	Scholastic
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Release date	June 1996
Pages	135
Number of endings	27
Series	Give Yourself Goosebumps
Series number	6
Previous book	Night in Werewolf Woods
Next book	Under the Magician's Spell

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 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 Brute. 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: A jar of purple goop, and some stale chocolate cake. 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 one bad endings and six good endings.

Bad endings

• While in the sewer, a Monster Blood can floats by and you decide to open it. However, it's empty, and fills with sewer water until it sinks. You end up drowning in the sewer.
• Puff grabs you in her mouth while she plays with you. When she opens her mouth again, you are dropped on the ground, and get killed by the fall.
• Stuck inside the refrigerator until you die.
• It is implied that you were destroyed by the mouse.
• Effy gives you two beakers of liquid. When you pick the purple liquid, you find out it was the wrong one because you've become a gingerbread cookie.
• Straining under the weight of Dodo the elephant, everyone in the circus realizes you're nothing but a fraud. You are chased out of the three rings, and you get a job cleaning up after Dodo at the circus.
• The mouse decides to adopt you and places you alongside its children.
• Grabbing Barney, you try to get even with him. But then you shrink down to your normal size, and Barney finds out it was just you all along. It's likely that Barney's going to beat you up.
• Shrink down to your normal size with five tigers in your lap.
• The government thinks you're an alien and captures you with an artificial spiderweb net.
• When your coin comes up the same way three times, you guide the Popsicle stick (as a boat) over a waterfall. But then you realize the waterfall was the main pipe to the sewage treatment plant. You're about to float into a grinder.
• The dolls in the dollhouse reveal that they can talk and move. You become the new housekeeper for a doll family in Dora's dollhouse.
• After trying the Super-Duper-Reducer machine, you are back to your normal height. But your arms are too long, your legs are too thick, and your head is too small.
• You test out the steaming room, because people have lost weight with it. But inside it, you fall asleep for too long and shrink down to a raisin.
• Heading for a pile of twisted metal, it is implied that you will be crushed in a car as it enters a car crusher.
• Several science books fall off of the shelves, squashing you.
• Awakening in what you think is your bed, you suddenly realize you're now a resident of Dora's dollhouse.
• After eating all of the mixture the mystic gave you, you grow so big your head reaches outer space, and you end up unable to breathe.
• About to shrink down to nothing when looking for Aunt Fiona.
• Crushed to death when the janitor faints.
• You are back to your normal size, but you've become magnetized. Wanting to see what other abilities you possess now, you try it out at a recycling center. You're about to be crushed by hundreds of recyclable cans.

Good endings

• Shrink down to your normal size, and avoid being captured by the government.
• Grow back to your normal size, and have an elephant-sized lizard to protect you from Barney and Dora.
• Effy turns you back to your normal size with the help of chocolate cake dipped in blue liquid.
• Grow back to your normal size, but become stronger and quicker to defend yourself from Barney and Dora.
• Switch bodies with Dr. Abbott, who gets to spend the summer with your cousins.
• You're back to your normal size, but you're magnetized now. You pass by a pay phone, and seventy-three dollars in change gets stuck all over you.

International releases

Gallery

UK

Spanish

French

Norwegian

Artwork

Conceptional

Artwork by Mark Nagata.

Multiple concept sketches.

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.
• In one ending, the reader remains their normal height when they get stuck in the refrigerator despite the fact that they ate purple peanut butter.
• In one ending, the reader becomes magnetized, and change flies out of a payphone and sticks to the protagonist. This could not actually occur in most countries, as most coins are not attracted to magnets.

References in other Goosebumps media

• Purple Peanut Butter appears as an item in Goosebumps: The Game.