“ONLY THE BEST”
Wendy and her competitive brother, Eliot, are on a long boring car trip with their family, seeing the sights across America. While leaving Idaho, they complain to their parents about not being sent to a summer camp like all their friends. Disappointed, they hop into the trailer behind the car for some entertainment. At first, it seems fun, but when the car starts going up a steep road, something goes awry and the trailer detaches, rolling backwards down the mountain. It shoots through a clear path between the trees and crashes near a remote clearing.
Dazed and disoriented, Wendy opens the trailer door to find a strange blond-haired, blue-eyed man smiling at them with a mouth full of teeth. She notices that the man is wearing white high-fastened shorts and a white T-Shirt with a large message reading “ONLY THE BEST.” He says his name is Buddy and that they have crashed into “King Jellyjam’s Sports Camp,” a fun summer camp filled with all kinds of athletics, from swimming to ping pong. He invites Wendy and Eliot to join the camp while he says he will try to contact their parents.
As they walk through the camp, Wendy notices the odd camp mascot pictured around everywhere, a large “purple, blobby king” known as King Jellyjam. And something seems off, especially when a re-haired girl warns Wendy to stay away (we later learn her name is Alicia). But Wendy meets some of the camp counselors, like Holly and Scooter, and she gets placed in a cabin with roommates: Dierdre, Ivy, and Jan.
The kids at Camp Jellyjam are all fiercely competitive (hence the camp slogan “Only The Best”). At one point, Wendy is heavily criticized for not swimming fast enough. At another, Eliot wins in ping pong. And every day, the kids can win “King Coins” by prevailing in sports. And once they collect six King Coins, they can participate in the “Winner’s Walk” which is held nightly. It is a strange incentive program. And there are many other strange things about this camp. There are mysterious small earthquakes, an uncanny atmosphere looming over the camp, and nobody seems to be contacting Wendy’s parents. Then kids like Dierdre start disappearing.
Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, Wendy decides to follow a few counselors to a strange igloo-shaped building in the woods. Inside, she finds many of the kids seemingly in a hypnotic trance, chanting about the privilege to “serve the master” and repeating the slogan “only the best” as if they are in a cult. Wendy accidentally sneezes and she is spotted! She then accidentally slips into a tunnel that leads downward to something far more horrifying.
Wendy starts smelling a disgusting, putrid smell, like a mixture of rotting garbage, dead fish, sour milk, and burning rubber. Then she spots it: a giant revolting slimy purple monster with two pink tongues, wearing a golden crown, belching uncontrollably, and constantly sweating snails! All around him are dozens of kids circling around and hosing him down. It turns out the camp mascot, King Jellyjam, is real! Wendy learns the existence of King Jellyjam is the reason for the whole camp: to train kids to be physically fit athletes so they can continually keep washing King Jellyjam’s massive grotesque body. If not, King Jellyjam will die of his own rancid stench and, if they stop, he will eat the children. So the kids have all been placed in a slave-like trance to worship the cult-like creature, King Jellyjam.
Wendy launches a plan to help all the kids with her brother and, of course, it works! She tells all the kids to stop washing King Jellyjam and to lie down. Because they are all lying down, King Jellyjam’s stubby hands cannot grab them to eat them, so he tries to eat Wendy instead but then quickly dies of his own revolting stench and disintegrates into a pile of slimy purple goo. But with King Jellyjam finally out of the way, Wendy and the kids still have to deal with the brainwashed camp counselors. Luckily, the putrid stench of King Jellyjam has spread far and wide by now, rousing the attention of the local police who arrive just in time to stop the camp counselors from continuing the madness (apparently, the officers’ whistling noises snap the counselors out of their trance).
In the end, Wendy and Eliot are reunited with their parents. Now, they no longer wish to attend camp for the summer. And in a brief coda to the story, Buddy pays a visit to their house two weeks later. As a token of goodwill, he gives Eliot one final King Coin, which would be his sixth King Coin. While Wendy is skeptical about it, Eliot is willing to accept the coin. But shortly thereafter, they start smelling a horrid smell again… they turn to find their mom laughing from the kitchen. She has simply been cooking Brussel sprouts! The Horror at Camp Jellyjam concludes with an unserious twist ending (one of the few Goosebumps books not to have a serious twist ending).
My Thoughts on The Horror at Camp Jellyjam
This silly, utterly bizarre, grotesque Goosebumps book (originally entitled “Smelly Summer”) takes a wild turn with the introduction of a children’s version of a Lovecraftian monster who is overseeing a dark hypnotic cult posing as the leader of a children’s sports camp. This gargantuan slimy creature is a fitting tribute to nostalgic ‘90s children’s media filled with bright colors and slime. But who or what is King Jellyjam? Where did he come from? How did he create this sports camp? What are his motivations? What is he hoping to achieve? R.L. Stine does not provide answers, but the sheer immensity of a giant purple gooey monster sweating snails is certainly memorable within the Goosebumps canon, even if the rest of the book is wholly forgettable. Aside from the reveal of King Jellyjam at the end, Tim Jacobus’s cover artwork of the camp counselor character Buddy is the most striking and arresting this about The Horror at Camp Jellyjam.
Corresponding Episode Review
No episode for The Horror at Camp Jellyjam was ever produced due to the cost required to create the King Jellyjam monster.
Stine, R.L. The Horror at Camp Jellyjam. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1995.