Is fume shroom worth its price?

The Fume Shroom is worth it for a multitude of reasons.

First the Downside of the Scaredy-shroom: If a zombie coms too close they go and hide making them useless. Close is when they are either 2.5 plants away in any direction. So against fast zombies who can close the gap (like pole zombies or football zombies or god forbid an imp thrown at them or a bungee zombie) they are horrible.

Now why the Fume Shroom is good, they do a line attack hitting ALL zombies in the 4 spaces in front of them. So as soon as 3 zombies come at the same time or shortly after each other the DPS alone is already worth it. Especially if you use them in combination with Wall-nut or Tall-nuts to keep them in place seeing they all get damaged while the shooters only hit one of them.

Another advantage is that they bypass defenses like screen doors /ladders being able to kill them without having to kill the objects they are holding. Also, it works against Dancing Zombies seeing it will also shoot through the backup dancer zombies.

And lastly, they can be upgraded to Gloom-Shroom, one of the most powerful plants due to their large AoE and high DPS.