Slappy the Dummy
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Slappy the Dummy is a fictional character in the Goosebumps children's series by R.L. Stine. He is one of the series' most popular antagonists, and the star of the series' most successful plot arc, the Night of the Living Dummy saga. Slappy is a ventriloquist's dummy that comes to life when the words "Karru marri odonna loma molonu karrano", found on a sheet of paper in his pocket, are read aloud. Slappy, after coming to life, spends most of his time searching for a slave to serve him, most of the time the child who brought him to life. Slappy is shown to be a rude, sadistic control freak. He is also a parody of the Child's Play character Chucky.
As revealed in "Bride of the Living Dummy", Slappy was carved out of coffin wood by an ancient sorcerer. "Slappy's Nightmare" reveals that he has a twin brother Wally, carved from the same coffin. However, this is only a dream. When "Night of the Living Dummy" was rereleased in a special Horrorland edition, bonus material included with the book revealed that Slappy did indeed have a brother: Mr. Wood, the primary antagonist of the book, and that the coffin wood they were made from was cursed. Mr. Wood's destruction made Slappy twice as evil, and a thousand times ruder. [1]
[edit] Night of the Living Dummy
When Lindy Powell finds a ventriloquist dummy Slappy in a dumpster, her sister Kris gets jealous of her and soon gets a dummy named Mr. Wood. Strange things start happening, and Kris is blamed for all of it. Later, she finds out that it was Lindy all along and gets very upset at her. Kris finally gets a show when she finds Mr. Wood's card with the spell on it. During the show Mr. Wood comes to life and sprays everyone with weird green slime. Lindy soon sees the dummy moving on his own herself, and the sisters try to kill Mr. Wood by burying him and cutting his head off with a pair of scissors. He is finally killed when he's run over by a steamroller, crushing him to powder. When they go back in, they find that Slappy is alive as well. His first and only words in the book (spoken with a throaty growl) are "Hey, slave - is that other guy gone? I thought he'd never leave!" [2] The story was to be turned into an episode of the TV series, but was abandoned when the show was cancelled.
[edit] Tagline
He walks.He stalks...
[edit] Night of the Living Dummy The Collector's Edition
[edit] Night of the Living Dummy II
In this book and all other "Night of the Living Dummy" books succeeding it, Slappy is the lead antagonist. In this particular story, a girl named Amy Kramer performs with her dummy, Dennis, every night at her family's little "talent show". Unfortunately, Dennis has become almost unusable with age, and his head keeps falling off. Jed uses it to pretend to be Dennis on one occasion. Soon after, Amy's dad buys her a new one at a pawnshop that just happens to be Slappy. They find a moldy sandwich crammed inside his head, presumably the work of Kris and Lindy.
After Amy reads the little card with the magic spell inside Slappy's pocket, Slappy starts to cause a lot of accidents, including slapping Amy's father on the cheek, ruining a birthday party, and trashing her sister Sara's room. Amy's sister, as well as her younger brother Jed, repeatedly accuse Amy of doing all these things, and Amy's parents believe her, since both children are younger than Amy. Amy gets punished for all of the accidents, but one night, she hears Slappy breaking out of the closet inside of her room that she keeps him in, and sees the dummy actually walk out of her room to Sara's room and ruin her watercolor painting even further. Sara soon confesses that she saw Slappy wrecking her room, and the two decide to prove it by having their parents see him moving, with Jed disguised as Dennis again in order to shock Slappy long enough for the girls to grab him. When the lights come on, "Dennis" does startle Slappy, and knocks his head into Sara's iron bedpost, breaking it in two. [3]However, when Jed turns out to have been asleep the whole time, it is implied that Dennis himself has come to life to stop Slappy (and he even comments that he's "part of the family again" in the TV series).
[edit] Tagline
He's still walking. He's still stalking.
[edit] Night of the Living Dummy III
In Night of the Living Dummy III, the main characters are Trina and Dan O'Dell. Their dad collects dummies, and he brings Slappy home after finding him in a garbage can. After repairing his broken head, he names him Smiley, unaware of the dummy's past. Trina finds a piece of paper in Slappy's pocket and reads the words aloud, after which Slappy slaps her across the face. Naturally, nobody believes her. Trina and Dan's cousin, Zane, comes to visit for awhile. Their dad makes them swear not to scare Zane, as they had the last time Zane was there. A dummy called Rocky pops up in weird places, scaring Zane, and Trina and Dan are blamed for each incident. Many things are ruined, like Zane's camera, the dinner table, and the film in Zane's camera. Dan and Trina catch Zane taking Rocky from the attic and it is revealed that Zane was trying to frame them for revenge. The three make a truce not to scare each other.
After this, more catastrophes occur, each with Rocky at the scene of the crime. Dan and Trina suspect Zane, but nobody else believes them. To prove that Zane is guilty, Dan and Trina sneak up in the attic to wait for Zane to come up and steal Rocky. To their horror, they discover Slappy trying to sneak off with Rocky, and Slappy tells them that they are his slaves. Dan and Trina try to dump Slappy in a well, but he comes back the next morning. Trina remembers the words she read on the day they found Slappy. Trina and Dan sneak up to the attic, steal the words from Slappy's pocket, and read them aloud. To their surprise, Slappy doesn't die, but all the other dummies in the room come to life. They all huddle around Slappy, who screams, but it is never revealed what they do to him. At the end of the book, Trina gives Slappy to Zane as a parting gift. When Zane is getting in the car with Slappy, Trina catches the evil dummy winking at her, hinting that he was still alive. In the TV series Slappy brings their dad's dummy Rocky alive who saves Slappy when he gets dumped in the well. However, in the end he ended up throwing him on the roof where he gets hit by lightning, but in the end when Zane is leaving his head turns all the away around when his body's facing foward and says "I'll get you", indicating Slappy is in Zane's body and the real Zane is dead.
[edit] Tagline
Every dummy has his day-- and his night!
[edit] Bride of the Living Dummy
A girl called Jillian takes her twin sisters Katie and Amanda to a ventriloquist's show but the dummy (Slappy) treat the ventriloquist (Jimmy O. James) badly and makes jokes about Katie and Amanda who go on stage. They carry around a doll called Mary-Ellen and treat her like a living being. Jimmy O. James gets rid of Slappy but Jillian's friend, Harrison, discovers Slappy in a dumpster and takes him out to keep him. He wants Jillian's dad, who likes making and repairing things, to fix Slappy as they think he was broken. Slappy bites Jillian on three occasions in the book. He is seen scribbling Where Is My Bride on Jillian's mirror with lipstick, throws food around the kitchen, fixes Jillian and Harrison's clown tricks (for a party) and also has Jillian's pet lizard, Petey in his mouth. Jillian blames the twins who always play tricks on her, although they say it wasn't them.
However, it seems that Mary-Ellen did all this as she reveals herself to be living at a kid's birthday party and read out the words "Karru marri odanna loma molonu karrano" beforehand, which makes Slappy alive (Jimmy, his previous owner, managed to somehow put Slappy to "sleep") but Slappy wants Jillian to be his wife and a fight between Mary-Ellen and Slappy break out but Slappy pushes Mary-Ellen through a whirling buzz-saw blade. Slappy would've survived but was pulled through by Mary-Ellen. The two dolls presumably died but in normal Goosebumps fashion, the closest human standing near Slappy when he dies gets the evil spirit, this is Jillian who throws up green liquid over her twins
[edit] Slappy's Nightmare
This story begins when Jimmy O James, a magician, has cold sweat and fears. Among other weird things, his ventriloquist dummy, Slappy, has been committing pranks. But, when Jimmy buys another dummy (Wally), Jimmy has a curse put on him. He needs to commit 3 good deeds by the end of the week, or be put to sleep forever. After being given to a girl, Slappy starts to do those deeds. But, they keep getting messed up by, as Slappy thinks, the girl's sister, Stella. But, near the end, the the other dummy turns out to be behind everything. At the end, this turns out to be a dream that Slappy had until Jimmy gets a package at his dressing room door.
[edit] Revenge of the Living Dummy
Initially scheduled for an April '08 release, this book was released early in some places.
Britney Crosby is mad because her evil cousin Ethan is coming to stay for a while. When Ethan comes, he has Slappy the dummy with him, but calls him Mr. Badboy. Mr. Badboy a.k.a. Slappy has been coming to life at several different parts but Britney doesn't believe it. Following several occasions of his normal behavior, Slappy is finally beaten when he attempts to use a Mind Stealer doll to take Britney's mind so he can take over. Instead, she manages to use the doll to steal Slappy's mind, and buries the Mind Stealer again. As she walks away, she hears his voice coming from within the Mind Stealer: "I'll be back, Britney. I'm a BAAAAAAD boy!" [4] Slappy appears again at the very end, in a photo on Mr. Crosby's digital camera. The photo shows Slappy in the hotel room where they're staying. [5] The photo appears again in the Horrorland segment of "Creep From the Deep".
[edit] Slappy's New Year
Slappy's New Year Year is part of the Goosebumps Gold series, but the series was never released.
[edit] Escape from the Carnival of Horrors
He made a cameo appearance in this book.
[edit] Trivia
- Jimmy O. James is the only character who appears in more than one of the Slappy books. Each installment typically introduces a new set of characters.
