I cannot put into words how much I miss those weekends. Hunting down that new release game or movie. Getting those pizza deals. We knew Friday night was blockbuster night at our house. And. I think. It’s important to state. That. There was a great amount of socializing going on also. I truly have fond memories of those times. We did go to more than just blockbuster we also used to go to Hollywood video and several local stores. Thank you Minty for this episode. Love your homage to blockbuster video.
I loved video retail places on Thrus/Fri/Sat when in highschool time the best; it was days i stayed out later than norm so who ever i was hanging out with, would be the movie type to get and treats there. The enjoyment there was high whether it was w/ a gf picking up a romcom for the high or guys im chilling with for some poker and a action movie for background sounds/video; sometimes the former was better. It was a special time that Netflix and chill does not compete very well w/.
Yeah, the experience of going to the video store and walking up and down the aisles browsing the movies is infinitely more fun of an experience than browsing menus on streaming services. I truly do miss those times. Same goes for video game arcades. If you didn't live through that time, it is sort of impossible to really grasp how fun and special it was.
Agreed. Nothing will replace the experience of video stores or arcades too. At least there are some arcades left. We actually had a huge video store here in Long Island that outlasted the Blockbuster stores by selling baseball cards, WWE and action figures, as well as just selling movies and TV seasons. Also had a whole adult section room with different sub sections for rent and sale. They had more obscure titles from the past too, plus arcade games, so I often enjoyed going there more. Some great weekends renting from both places.
I worked at and managed a Blockbuster for about 6 years and they are some of the most fond memories I have. I made amazing friends there I still talk to today, found a husband, and collected a ridiculous amount of movie knowledge/trivia/dvds. I still have dreams about working there, rarely about my current job. I still have my uniform and name tag and can now wear it to Comicon and on Halloween. Sometimes I would go to Best Buy after work and people would start asking me questions because they were also blue and yellow themed. I don't miss getting yelled at by people over late fees/extended viewing fees/restocking fees (even having dvds/vhs tapes thrown at us). I mean, we were losing money when a movie is sitting at someone's house for weeks and can't be rented. The fees were reasonable and I will still argue with anyone who says differently. Also.. Be Kind, Rewind.
I don't agree with people throwing stuff at a worker at all. Sorry you had that happen. This going to be a long read but. Me personally had a problem with blockbuster. This was back in 2001. Me and my girlfriend got 2 movies at the time to watch over the weekend, on a Friday night. That Sunday night I dropped her off at her house. Dropped the movies in the drop box on my way back home. Then blockbuster said I didn't return one of movies. And said I will be charged $45 dollars to replace the movie if not returned. I always checked before I dropped movies off that they were in the case. With it also being the correct movie in the case. Hearing this I checked my DVD player just in case. Nothing in it, and I didn't leave dvds just anywhere. I always had them in their case or in the player being used. If it was my own or someone else's. I told them I dropped it off along with the other movie same time. They said to return the movie. I said you have it, i already did. They had the one but not the other. And they said they were missing the case and the DVD. A white case with a big bb logo on it, I think I would notice that if i still had it. I said, that movie brand new is like $20 dollars. Why would you charge double. They said restocking fees. I said, well I don't have it, you guys need to check on your end. I'm not paying that outrageous price because I already returned it. They said if I could show proof I put in the drop box, I wouldn't get charged. I said, yeah their at the bottom of it in your store. I said listen even though I know I dropped it off. I will gladly pay $20. to replace the movie. That you guys have because I dropped it off. Just so I can still use bb (weekly thing with me and gf at the time). They said no $45. Is the fee. So I said I'm not paying that at all, especially when you have it. Never did pay it. Never went back to BB. And I never had the movie in my place. Even when I moved, never came across the case or movie ever. Cause I dropped it off at Bb that Sunday night. BB was a great way to watch movies before streaming came out. But their fees other than rental fees was not fair at all imo. In fact BB is the reason Netflix was made. The guy dropped off movies him and his wife watched forgot one. Returned it the next day and bb charged him a late fee. Which was how much he paid to rent all the movies. So out of outrage of the fee. He started Netflix which killed off BB.
I will quote an old friend that worked as the manager of Hollywood Video (till 93) and Suncoast Video (till 96) in the Mall, "There is no reason for having late fees and more when all I need to do is enter the title in the computer and a new copy will be here the next day." I guess when you worked at that Blockbuster, things were not that good/ the same. Because I never saw an "empty hole" for too long in the two states I lived in. The warehouses were so over stacked they told me that any video store could get a "title" back in, even sometimes that same day. Regardless, I do miss those people. Everyone moved out of the city and state I live in that I knew from the 90's that I still unfortunately still live here. It is nice you still know those people. I, as you, sounds like had a great time with some of your past employees and customers turned friends. At a Hollywood Video in 98 I met one of the loves of my life, but she was taken by her boyfriend then later husband to "State of Misery" (Missouri). (LOL) Ya great times. :) Oh, BTW in the early 2000's, to prove my point, a millionaire’s daughter told CNN that she inherited many warehouse of VHS tapes that fueled the video stores including you old company. So, I just thought of that, I think that is the reason why you had those problems of empty holes. Just thought I'd mention that. As I said, it just came to mind. :)
I wouldn’t sweat it. It’s pretty much the same now as when I was a kid and we would go. Except instead of a store full of movies it’s endless streaming and instead of my little sister demanding we rent Lion King for the 1000th time it’s now my 4 year daughter demanding we stream Lion King for the 1000th time. God I hate the Lion King. So… so much. 😭
I live in Seattle and travelled all the way to Bend, Oregon to see the last blockbuster. It was a long hellish journey, my family jokes and say “think of National Lampoons vacation, but swap out walley world for blockbuster”, but it was worth it. I couldn’t help but cried as I walked into the store and remember my childhood in the 90’s where my mum would let me rent 2 movies and we would get a pizza afterwards. Those were the simple and best times of my life. They ran out of tshirts in the gift shop, but I got a replica membership card and a dvd copy of Ferris Bueller’s day off as a momento
Dude we have like five local mom and pop rental places in my state not counting endless retro stores selling physical media Crying over going to a blockbuster the Walmart of rental stores that’s just weird
I went there when driving from Portland home to Iowa after a job with FEMA, and I have to say it was pretty cool. But as someone who actively hated Blockbuster as a teenager because they were too expensive and did not rent PC games so they had nothing to offer me compared to any of the other video places in town, well, yes, my reaction was a bit different from yours, hah.
If I want a simular experience I just go to a big library that has a decent sized Media section. All Dvds are pretty cheap to rent nowadays especially, and you get to rent them for two weeks I think.
I lived in Southern Oregon during the pandemic and was always planning to visit Bend, but never got the chance because I was working so many 16 hour shifts. I've since moved back home, but a trip is planned to go back one of these days...
I still remember going with my sisters to blockbuster in the 90s and ordering pizza 🍕 for the weekend at Domino's. It was a great time to be alive and you had such a selection of movies to choose from. I hate that kids nowadays will never know about this experience, but it is what it is.
Agreed! It was better in the 80s though (at least it was in the UK) before Blockbuster. At the start there were far more, smaller family run video shops/stores before Blockbuster came along and killed them all off. But going to pick up a video was something that I'll always remember when I was a kid. My dad used to take me there Friday evening after he'd finished work and we used to take it in turns picking a video that we'd all then watch as a family. Great times!
@@Me-qp8vz Lucky. Yea. Pizza hut wasn't close to being where I was, but that is great marketing to set up next to a video store. I know they cashed in hard on that one.
@@davekennedy6315 same. My dad would take us there and we all would pick out a movie 🎬 to watch and take turns on the vcr for movies. My dad had a nice selection of recorded videos, but something about going to blockbuster was as epic as going to the movie theater.
@@davekennedy6315 we had a great family run video rental store in Doncaster during the 80s n 90s. It was called chazz's. It was just over the road from the primary school I used to go to. It had awesome sections of new and old films back then. It had kids and a horror section too. It had an awesome arcade room in the back. And you could also rent NES, master system, megadrive, and snes games. Great place indeed. It was a sad day for everyone when it closed down in the late 90s.
So many great memories of Blockbuster and other video stores starting back in the mid to late 80s. RIP the Video store and everything that went with it. I actually got a good laugh a few months back when calling another business, in their recording of directions to the place they mentioned that they were located right next to the Blockbuster Video. The one which has now been gone over a decade. 😁 Great job Minty. 👍
i miss Blockbuster so much,,, here in italy it was huge too, i vivid remember it had candies, food for the perfect cinema night, games and even mcfarlane movie figures and toys related to movies.... Good old days... our last one (was in my city by the way) closed in late 2010. What a void.
In the early 90s I went to Blockbuster all the time. But by the late 90s Hollywood Video opened stores in our area and they had 5 day rentals for older movies for half the cost of blockbusters 3 day rentals. The price was just better. I didn’t understand why anyone would go to blockbuster when Hollywood video was just a block away and half the cost.
We had a Hollywood Video closer to our house, so I used to walk there for movies and video games in the early 2000s. The thing with people preferring Blockbuster was kind of why people go to Starbucks in droves, there's just way more of their stores when you are out and about. There was a time when pretty much any outdoor mall had a Blockbuster store, so it was convenient and more accessible. I agree with you though, I really enjoyed both, but I liked Hollywood Video's prices and they had a better library of older movies, at least at the Hollywood Video near my house
I never understood why people went to Blockbuster in the first place. We used to have a ton of mom and pop video stores where you could rent older movies for $1, while BB was $5 for older movies. I think new releases at mom and pop stores were also $2-3, too. If they didn't have the video in stock you could go to another store, and Blockbuster didn't have that many copies back then so it wasn't like you were guaranteed to get it at Blockbuster, either.
I won a life-sized Spider-man figure from my local Blockbuster back when the first Spider-man was being released on DVD! Still got it, STILL AWESOME! 😁👍
I can totally relate to this episode. Video stores were such a beloved part of my childhood. I remember going to an independent one when I was very young and there was a life-size cardboard cut out of Mama Fratelli from The Goonies! Fantastic video, Minty, thank you.
I was born in the late 70s, I was a kid of the 80s and a teenager of the 1990s. I live in a small town in central California. In the 80s until 1999 my town had 3 small independent video stores. These stores were all wonderful in their own ways. There was the one that had the shady "adult room" in the back that the owner would make sure us kids never went into, then there was one that had the "family oriented" feel like a small mom and pop blockbuster, then there was my favorite one that really had a much bigger video game rental section than the other 2. By the time blockbuster moved into town I was already an adult living on my own. Within 2 years all the mom and pop stores closed cause they could not compete with Blockbuster. Once the mom and pop stores were gone blockbuster then proceeded to slowly raise their prices. Which they could since they were then the monopoly video store in town. This was in the mid 2000s when all the lawsuits you mentioned were going on. I really hated Blockbuster for doing this, but there was still something special about going down on a rainy Friday night and just walking around the store and finding something to watch. Maybe you would run into friends or see a good looking woman who was alone looking for a video and strike up a conversation. The store in my town closed around 2011 or 2012. Now all my town has is a couple of sad redbox kiosks. Which is great for new movies but I wish redbox would explore expanding to older classic movies. I blame Blockbuster for killing the movie rental experience in my town. I think the people who ran the company were narrow minded people who ran a business that was changing rapidly with technology but never stopped using an outdated 1980s business model. If they had jumped on the idea that nextflix had early on and adapted I think they still could be up and running bigger and better than ever with stores kiosks streaming etc.
When I was 14 my father became permanently disabled. I was home schooled, so always there with dad. Every Tuesday morning at 10 AM is when the new releases hit the shelves. We would go to our local blockbuster to pickup the 3 of them for $9.99 (3 movies, 3 days, $3.33 a piece) .. Dad passed last year..I'll never forget those days..
Sorry for your loss as well. My dad and I were huge film buffs and enjoyed similar rituals with the latest releases. He passed 5 months ago and we have great memories, many centered around movies and baseball. Also a huge vhs collection :)
I don't know about everyone else but my first experience with a video store like Blockbuster was one called West Coast Video. I remember the red carpet and the TVs mantled on the walls showing the latest movie. Me and my Mom went almost every week to pick out movies to watch for the weekend. And you're right Minty, something about that just added to my growing up. Kids nowadays will never get to experience that kind of excitement. wonder and fun. Your homage to such nostalgia was great!!
I didn't expect to get all nostalgic for Blockbuster when I started watching this video, but it made realize that I do miss those days. Going there with your friends to pick out the movies... ordering food... hanging out... it was a simple pleasure, but it felt more like an event. It's sad that we don't have that anymore.
I was a member of Blockbuster here in the UK back in the 90's. Yes I miss the musty smells off VHS titles on video shelves. It was probably the biggest video chain around.
It’s definitely accurate that Blockbuster was no friend of the smaller “mom & pop” video stores. They often expanded by buying out the competition and assimilating them in to the collective, which would remove any distinctive features they might have had. It seemed that same rigid model is what helped lead to the downfall. Before refusing to see the challenge from Netflix, corporate was refusing to adapt to technology. They never wanted to do laserdisc, and even resisted DVD at first. Then when Netflix was exploding, they refused to believe people would wait for movies to come in the mail vs. the instant gratification of renting immediately. That said, working at Blockbuster was some of the best times of my working-in-retail youth. I worked for what was then the largest franchise in the company. At least one of the commercial clips you used was from our franchise rather than BBV corporate.
That's true they bought many small video stores. But in North Miami where I grew up. 2 block from the block buster the small video stayed open till 2012 where block buster closed down closed around 2007
Buying out the competition seems like a friend to smaller pop and mom stores. There’s nothing wrong in purchasing other store and providing a better product which is what they did.
Walking around Blockbuster video was truly a form of therapy for me. I used to spend hrs at a time, to the point where the staff would become suspicious of me. It was the eye candy of the cover art, as well as the memories evoked by seeing certain covers, & the speculation and imagining about films I hadn't yet seen. Walking into a Blockbuster & feeling that atmosphere always put me in a better mood than I had been in prior. A close 2nd for me is walking around a supermarket when I'm hungry.
Growing up in South Texas was awful because of the Heat & Humidity(from the Gulf of Mexico Sea)& the scorching, DRY Summers, but places like Blockbuster had the BEST Air Conditoners to protect their inventory of movies. I would just walk-in, look around, read the BACKS of Some Movies, then walk out & the clerks knew me as a regular Movie Renter, so they never 'bitched' at me for 'JUST LOOKING'. Sometimes the NEWEST RELEASES were not on the shelf because they would get rented out again almost immediately, which is why the clerks didn't complain about us looking for SOMETHING to watch instead. Good comment MATTHEW, Thanks for the memories!
What a trip down memory lane! I use to be a Assistant Manager (S.A.M.) for Blockbuster Video. Some really fun facts in your video! The stories I could tell you! One of my favorite memories was bittersweet... I was scheduled to work the day that Titanic was released and my boss had neglected to schedule anyone else with me to handle the crowd. There was a line going out the friggin door and I was losing my mind in the chaos, however, it is still somehow a fond memory?! And I still have my VHS copy of Titanic (wide-screen no less!) still sealed up in the original shrink-wrap from that day!!! Haha!
God, this is my childhood in the '90s, just usually with 2-Day Video and Hollywood Video instead of Blockbuster. The first time I played Ocarina of Time was via rental because I was blessed by the heavens to snag a copy the week it first released. I miss browsing video stores. It's how I was able to spend one summer watching all of the horror movie classics that I had missed up to that point, either from being too young or simply not born yet since I was born in '84. Browsing the horror section in the middle of the store, baby. The outer wall was where all the new stuff was.
I was born in 87. There was a 2-Day video right down the street from our house, then they moved further down to have more room. Then they went out of business. Do you remember Hollywood video?
@@nsasupporter7557 Yep, Hollywood Video was the other, bigger store that was down the street from my school so we tended to go there the most the older I got. They had the best selection of games, too. It was the Friday after school routine: get picked up from school by my mom, then go to Hollywood Video to rent a movie and a couple videogames for the weekend. 😊 My parents used to reward me for headmaster's list report cards with a videogame so it was always great to be able to know exactly what I wanted to get based on what I had rented first! Just the concept of being able to rent a _full game_ for a couple days - not just a demo - is a luxury that kids today don't get to experience anymore, which is a shame.
My favorite memory of video rentals came when we finally got our own VCR. I'll never forget that day. It was a huge treat to go to the video store and rent a stack of movies along with the machine. This was in 1984, I was 12. It was super rare for people to own their own VCR as they were stupid expensive, a decent one went for as high as $700, for most families it was a never in a million years kind of purchase. My siblings and I would watch every movie we rented at least twice before having to return everything on Sunday. My parents never told us that we now owned the VCR and when it was time to pack it up, we couldn't find the hard plastic briefcase. My parents said that since we couldn't find the case, we could just keep the unit. This news was like winning the lotto to us. We subscribed to Superchannel, which would showcase about 30 different movies over the month, another huge treat. We recorded a ton of movies off that and now renting movies was a weekly event instead of every couple of months. Good times. Movies are one of my favorite things in life, I even became a screenwriter eventually. I owe a lot to the Video Store and I am very sad that most of them are gone.
This is so nostalgic! I have many happy memories of bringing my kids to Blockbuster on Friday evenings to pick out movies for us watch at home. I'd let them each pick one movie and a box of candy. My kids are grown now, and they still talk about how much they enjoyed that. Almost brings tears to my eyes. Thanks so much for making this video!
Hi Minty, First off, I love your videos. I’m an actor and movie buff and I think you do a really fantastic job with your overall presentation and editing. Second, I worked for a Blockbuster from 2005-2006 in Ramsey, New Jersey, USA. So this was extra interesting to me. I needed a job while going on auditions, but I knew pretty quickly I was a rat on a sinking ship. This was during the “no” late fees era. I can’t begin to explain how difficult and frustrating it was to explain to customers daily about what that actually meant. And I got chewed out quite a bit when they found out. This was also when Netflix was kicking into high gear. One of my training videos actually said how “we were at war” with Netflix. There was also some sort of lawsuit between the two companies at the time. I think it was Netflix suing Blockbuster because Blockbuster started their own mailing service. We actually had a legal document sent to us saying that we couldn’t talk about the lawsuit with customers. I may have even have had to sign something. On the upside, I had a fantastic manager and my job on the weekends was to take the floor, recommend movies to customers, and tell them about the various rental deals. I hated selling the deals (there was no commission and I just didn’t like selling in general) but I LOVED talking with the customers about movies. Like you, I miss video stores. I particularly miss VHS tapes. I still have a bunch and a VCR. Believe me, I stream as much as the next person, but there’s something so satisfying and nostalgic about popping in a VHS or even a DVD. I love the cover art and the blurbs on the back of the cases. I hope that maybe VHS’s and video stores someday come back into style like records did. Also, between watching you and the James Rolfe, I’m thinking of making my own video store display one day! At the very least, I’ve been dreaming of making an “Old School Media Room” with a full screen TV, VCR, older video games, older PC, etc. Keep up the great work! Looking forward to more videos! - Nick Latrenta
I loved Blockbuster. I spent a lot of time and money there. I even tried their DVD at home service because you could actually return them to a store. Everyone loves to say Netflix is the reason they went out of business, and while there is some truth to that, as you mentioned it was other business factors that ultimately led to their going out of business. There is a documentary about Blockbuster that features a former executive. Their DVD by mail service grew quickly and was doing really well. But on the corporate level, the start of the decline really happened with an “activist investor” who pushed the company in the wrong direction (and forced the CEO out). The brand assets and trademarks are now owned by Dish Network.
Yeah, Netflix was just one factor. DVDs becoming cheaper to buy than rent and libraries stocking tons of movies hurt, too. It was just inevitable, really.
Like Netflix morphed into a new company past the mail order business model. Had Blockbuster made better decisions, they too would have evolved into a company similar to Netflix and Amazon Prime. And still be here today.
@@nicholasbullock1709 I agree with what you are trying to say, but shifting to streaming would not have been the right strategy for them. They were a publicly traded retail chain with thousands of stores across the world. It would not have made sense as a business to close thousands of stores (and laying off thousands of employees) to shift to being a digital content provider. Also at that time, streaming wasn’t really a thing yet. Blockbuster was already on the verge of bankruptcy when Netflix shifted their strategy from DVDs to streaming in 2007. Their transformation would need to happen on a store level, and it doesn’t seem like they did much of anything to change their business model. Ultimately they would have went out of business anyway, as the video store model has changed.
One of the biggest surprises to me is that BB started in 1985. I thought it was MUCH earlier. Also the fact that they could have bought Netflix - what a miss there. So yeah, I'd say their downfall wasn't Netflix, it was mismanagement and too much dependence on late fees. There really was no reason that BB couldn't have gotten into home delivery and then streaming; they ignored it for too long instead.
I actually live only 2 hours away from the last Blockbuster video here in my home state of Oregon. I also worked for a Blockbuster video back in the early 2000's and they were a pretty scummy company in their business practices and how they treated their customers and employees. At that time their return policy was purposely confusing to try and ensure a late fee. And employees were not allowed to remove a late fee even if the person was just a few seconds past the cut off time. And so we were the bad guys that had to take all the hate for it. So I have no real find memories of the store. I think the last one being here is just cool for nostalgia sake. Last time my wife and I drove though Bend we stopped to get a picture in front of it. But the best big chain video stores around here were Hollywood video, that was the big rival of Blockbuster, and the best was Videoland. Still had the adults only section in the back unlike the other 2, but also had a way bigger and better horror and sci-fi section than the others. That place rocked! Any way, good show and good list. Keep it up.
I liked how it actually tried in some ways to mimic the facilities of an actual Movie theatre, like you'd walk in and there would be all the trappings, like framed posters, popcorn and snacks, at one point there was a huge screen that would play Movies. I remember at my Hometown Blockbuster they had a Predator standing up next to a Robocop, like a lifesized statue type deal. It was definitely a fitting experience. There are still little stores out there, we have a "Family Video" here that does its best to recreate the feel of a Blockbuster with the posters and stuff. But in terms of sheer inventory nothing came close to BB, you'd have entire walls of Priates of the Carribbean and James Bond.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Minty. I personally have fond memories of a different video store. It was part of a local chain, called Movie Buffs. The inside wasn't lit as brightly as Blockbuster, but that helped sell the sense of being transported into a different world of magic and wonder. It also helped that they went all out in some decorating different corners of the store. They had a room dedicated to nothing but horror movies, and that room was even darker than the rest of the store with a life-size Pinhead mannequin in the center of the room. And, of course, it also had the forbidden-to-children room separated by a curtain of hanging beads. All us boys knew what was in there, and we'd try to catch glimpses of some of the cassette covers as people pushed aside the beads going in and out. Ah, the good ol' days.
Never rented from Blockbuster as always used to support the local stores (Video City, Movie Madness here in Tassie). Use to love hanging out at my local Movie Madness store in the late 90's as the staff were really friendly and were always happy to sit around talking about films when it was quiet (and they never charged me late fees 😂)
This was a great nostalgic journey down the Blockbuster road! I was and am still sad to see it go. I loved the experience of picking movies and my son loved getting new video games. You just had to live in the time of Blockbuster to truly appreciate how fun it was! 🎥😢
Before reading through some of the comments I had no idea that the Friday night custom of ordering pizzas and hiring out videos was so widespread and popular, I thought it was just a special past time event enjoyed by only me and my siblings. From about the age of 5 to 12 my dad would take us to a pizza joint called Marcos Pizza (which is still in business to this day) and while the food was being prepared walk the short distance to our local video store Video Link, an Australian chain of tape rentals Looking back I can still recall the prices of the various deals they had going on along with the new releases, 3 nighters and weeklies etc. Though still a young kid my dad wasn’t strict when it came to classifications and we were allowed to choose M and MA15+ rated flicks, so long as the content wasn’t too sexual, something my friends were deeply envious of. I remember between the years of about 1998 to late 1999 the video store changed management a couple of times and tried to refresh itself with new names and new colour schemes, Movies 4 U was one of them. Now having watched this episode and learning about block busters demise I can link the 2. Man, all the money in the world couldn’t buy back those days.
@@headspin1739 "Roger that" ... Kind of like when I once found a coupon for some place called Checkers advertising a free fish sandwich. I went down the street from where I work to get said sandwich and they didn't understand the coupon I had and only had a tuna sub sandwich at best; it was a Pizza, Subs, and Chicken Wings place. Later I found out the coupon was for some fast-food burger place of the same name. Aren't there copyrights on business names?
You make a good and valid point, something I neglected to mention was that Marco’s Pizza was the name they went by back in the day, nowadays they call themselves “marcos organic pizza” a quick google search should clarify this. I can only speculate broadly that after they ditched theirs original title, through sheer coincidence, a US company learnt it was available
This episode really brought tears to my eyes, by reminiscing of a more simple but magical time. Yes, there were some negative sides of the whole video rental, especially when the movie you wanted to rent was sold out, but just the fact that you would go excitedly to Blockbuster Video with your then 6 year old daughter, get two movies, a bag of microwave popcorn, head over to the Little Ceasar's next door for a pepperoni pie, and then head to the crib to make it a "pizza and movie" day, is one of the few memories I treasure. Today, my daughter is 23 years old, graduated from College with her bachelor degree in teaching, and I am very proud of her achievements. But I will always remember the simpler times when she would spend the weekend with her then 30 year old dad, who to this day, thinks about her and misses her very much. Isabel, wherever you are, I hope you're doing well. Hope one day we can sit down face to face and talk again. You're loved.
Excellent treatment of the topic. I was a young adult recently moved out on my own when I would bicycle up to Blockbuster each Friday after work. It was magical in that I loved being surrounded by all those possibilities. Thanks Minty for commemorating the experience!
(I know I've commented twice but oh well, engagement.) Blockbuster Music was AWESOME. We had a HUGE one in my town that was bigger than the average video store, filled with CDs and cassette tapes. If you couldn't find something at Blockbuster Music, it pretty much wasn't in print anymore. I found some fantastic new artists through the employee recommendation shelves. They even had listening stations for a while before they finally shut down, where you could take basically any CD in the store up to a kiosk, scan the barcode, put on the huge headphones and listen to samples of all of the music before buying it.
@@sayjinpat4life Kind of? If you know what places like Camelot Music were, it was like a huge Camelot. Or a huge Barnes & Noble music section. Or a smaller Virgin Megastore that was strictly nothing but music. No movies.
I remember when Blockbuster Video stores started coming in, alot of mom and pop videos slowly faded away. Only Movie Gallery and Action Video store were around after that. Still, their previously viewed tapes, DVDs, and Blu-Rays fueled my home collection.
Back in the 80s, my dad was MGR of a local video store, not a BB. I remember those days fondly, helping dad prepare new releases, getting to watch them before general public, free rentals, movie posters...oh man, that was wonderful part of my childhood. Thx dad, I miss you.
I was a Store manager at Blockbuster from 2004 - 2013. Unfortunately I was only there for the dark times. The company towards the end didn't know it's arse from it's elbow. Whenever I tell someone now I worked for Blockbuster, the response is always ooohh I loved Blockbuster, my Dad would take me every Friday etc, so there is some real love for the old company. Such a shame they didn't move with the times. RIP
I'll check out this video later, but just wanted to stop by and say that my dad use to work at Blockbuster. What lead to the massive collection of movies he has that I grew up on. So guess you could say, Blockbuster was what made me the woman I am today. 😉
I miss going to the video store. I belonged to five video stores during the home video years. I was a member right up to the end. The employees didn't know or weren't letting customers know the stores were about to close.
I never rented but when they began selling 📼 and 📀 I was all in. Noticed Walmart is doing the expansion thing Blockbuster, Payless Shoes and a few others did.
I bought a lot of good films from Blockbuster rather than rent in the end, I remember they were only a few £ each or deals when you bought 5 or something like that. 👍
Spot on, Minty. Renting a movie was an experience in itself - hoping they'll have a copy of the movie you want, maybe they'll have some cheap previously viewed (i.e. former rental copies) movies on sale, maybe we'll get some munchies to snack on while watching or better yet maybe we'll pick up a pizza on the way back. Mobile devices with "an app for everything" have taken away a lot of the fun experiences the older generation had in their youth - going to the mall to rent a movie, see what new albums were out, go to the hi-fi store, go to a toy store that also carried video games. It's all been replaced by the smart phone.
BG Hoody, yes, nothing beats the experience of actually going to rent a movie. Remember the cardboard cutouts of certain characters from movies? I remember one of our local mom & pops had a cardboard cutout of Chuckie, that always stuck with me.
My family was always more of a Hollywood Video family instead of Blockbuster, but I can totally agree. The experience of a video store is something I seriously miss! My family always found the Blockbuster employees near where we lived extremely rude and played nothing but Rap music at a ridiculously loud volume. *EDIT* For number 4 I had always heard that it was a copy of Bill Cosby's Ghost Dad that led to the creation of Netflix? This is the first I've heard about Apollo 13. What I had heard was that he was so shocked at the fact that they would give him such a high late fee for such a bad movie.
There was a Hollywood Video on Broadway in Capital Hill (Seattle) when it closed down it became Hollywood flats. (Apartment building) they kept the logo and just added to it.
We didn't have a Blockbuster near us, but we had a couple local video stores nearby. Going to rent movies on the weekends was a fun adventure. Such an exciting part of our childhood. Especially for families like mine that didn't have cable. We still don't. Living in the country on a backroad, they won't run a cable down our road because they're aren't enough people living on our road. So renting movies was something I really looked forward to. Yes, Netflix is convenient, but the adventure and nostalgia is gone. It's so cool that you've created a little Blockbuster in your own home to enjoy. Great video, Minty! Keep up the great work! 👍
I completely agree with you Minty. It was magical. I like the streaming. But. Nothing will replace going to the video store. Hunting for that new release or game. And. Just socializing with other people. I wish there would still be one open where I am. You cannot put into words how much those weekends meant to those of us that lived then. Thank you for this retrospective Minty.
I remember my mom & dad renting American Pie 2 on DVD back when I was a toddler. Decided to watch the first 5 minutes but my parents caught me and they weren’t very happy to say the least. 😅
Thanks for this Minty! One of the best 10 Things You Didn't Know episodes, so far, in my opinion! Near the end of Blockbuster's & video stores runs, I too, had no idea what Netflix was at the time. I found out about it a little bit later. I've never been a subscriber to it, or Hulu, or any of the other streaming services. I will always be a physical media guy. From what I remember, the nearest Blockbuster here, was in Texarkana. The mom & pop video stores are what people around here rented from. This one called Imagination is one that I have the most wonderful childhood memories of. This video store called Movie Gallery was king, locally, in this neck of the woods. Most of the other mom & pops went under, due to not being able to compete with Movie Gallery. Yet somehow, Imagination survived almost until the end. Also, thanks for reminding me of the whole practice of having empty video cases on the shelves, with the tapes in the back. I'd forgotten all about that. All the stores here did that.
Here in the states we also have Redbox, which is essentially a video rental vending machine. Those started popping up everywhere in the late 2000’s. It was much cheaper and more convenient, located at your local Safeway or gas station. I knew then it was only a matter of time before blockbuster’s demise
Redbox is always overlooked in analysis of why Blockbuster failed. There's always a link of "Netflix killed Blockbuster" when imo Netflix was the final crushing blow in the boxing match, if you will. Redbox dramatically undercut Blockbuster in price as well as being open 24/7, and much fewer expenses, such as store rental and (the biggest expense) very few employees. One person in a van can service a huge area of Redbox kiosks, vs always needing to have at least one paid employee on premises of Blockbuster. Streaming caught on, but there was- and still is- a portion of society who have unreliable internet service, likely in poverty, etc, and these people rented physical movies, and continue to do so. Redbox still exists.
Completely agree. Going to the video store was an 'event' on itself and watching the movies later was just a conclusion of that. To me it was like walking into a toy store with sooo many fun options to choose from and I loved it. Could spend up to 30min or more choosing a video and definitely made friends with the staff haha
There was a college football game in Miami called “The Blockbuster Bowl” it was played every December in the early 1990s. We got a membership at a video store in 1984 and we rented a movie each week. It was wonderful
I'm old enough to remember when the first video rental stores opened, and rental prices were insanely high while the selection was very minimalist (usually more than half was xxx rated) and, at least in my area, these rare stores had all 3 video farmats, at least for a few years, until the big chains rolled in (VHS, Betamax AND Video2000 - yes, V-2000, the reversible cassette with twice the runtime and half the picture quality. Who remembers those?) But, even as a young adult, we loved going to the video store on Friday afternoon, hoping and praying that the good movies had been returned in time for the weekend AND were still on the shelf. It was an adventure and frequently we had to settle for some random movie, nobody had ever heard of, but that also pretty frequently introduced us to those hidden gems and surprise future cult movies which we'd otherwise would have missed. And of course there was the weekly argument who has to get up early on a Saturday morning to return the tapes so we won't get charged for a full weekend (remember, at that time the daily rental fees were in the double digits for each movie) Oh, and the "you didn't rewind penalties" also added up... I somehow feel sorry for millenials and Zoomers for never having experienced all that. But that feeling goes away the instant I gear them complain that their streaming video took more than a second to load or it wasn't a full 4k or some other nonsense. I remember teaching my k8ds, when they were around 10ish and asking about cassettes, how to connect a Video player to a TV via the coax antenna cable. As we often had to rent the player back then, too, because owning a VCR, meant not owning a car. And those rental machines ALWAYS seemed to require at least 20 minutes if "fine tuning" the channel on the TV. Ah, the memories of a 90 minute movie turning into a full evening/night with friends (and generally lots of food and drink) Or the surprise xxx rated clips that some previous renter had taped over the best parts of the movie.... Fun times.
Just renting a VCR or beta Maxx was like$20 for the weekend. The cheap round cardboard chits hanging on the hooks and the thick brown plastic cases on the tapes. Not as slick as blockbuster but better.
@@amberlinmchugh8115 V2000 was an "improvement" of the Sony Umax (?) From around 1969-1971, but don't quote me, it's been a while. The idea was good - instead of a square cassette with stacked reels and super short recording time (and the quality stank, I remember THAT the most) - it was basically an oversized audio cassette with, I think, up to 2x 4hr recording possible. But sadly, they didn't have auto reverse so you really couldn't continuously record and had to flip the cassette manually. I was a big fan of the 2000 system, because of the high cost of blank tapes back then, and here you got a lot more minutes for your buck. Sadly, they went the way of Betamax when VHS just sold their stuff basically at a loss to corner the market while the others charged a LOT. In the end, not enough consumers cared about quality but only price. Myself included. The rest is history. I just remembered one ridiculous last ditch effort by Betamax to compete with the longer recording tapes from VHS. I believe it was the very late 70s or very early 80s when one company offered a Betamax recorder with an external "magazine" that held a few blank tapes and when one was full, the machine would eject it, drop it to the floor and insert a fresh tape from the stack. You only list maybe a couple of minutes but could record basically all night so you wouldn't miss the Jerry Lewis telethon or a full pbs fundraiser, LOL. Oh, this video did bring back some long suppressed memories. I'm trying hard to remember the name of the mini tapes that were used in the 2-piece machines (the recording unit, which was portable with a shoulder strap so it could be connected to a huge camera and a 12 ton battery pack, and the unit that needed to be connected to a TV to receive tv signals and play back tapes) it was the early 80s and that contraption was insanely expensive, I think the tapes only held 15 or 30 minutes, they were right about the size of an audio cassette and of course that system was incompatible with ANY other brand or type. And live the V2000 that was only available for the PAL (maybe SECAM) system, this mini tape machine was only for NTSC and rental tapes (movies) were never available for it. I want to say that system was killed pretty fast by VHS camcorders that didn't require to drag around a huge recording machine with the camera and then VHS-C finished it off. I did a LOT with video (tapes) back in the day. But once the 8mm and digital8 era started, it was only a matter of little time before video was dead. Kinda like film photography died with the rise of the smartphone. But while it's fun to complain now about how bulky, heavy, difficult etc everything was back then, I fondly remember that a) this was close to magic at the time, not having to live by the TV guide schedule and not having to choose between 2 competing channels if broadcasting times conflicted, and b) recording, copying and viewing sessions were always like parties with friends. To this day I still own my favorite VCR. It is a "restricted", read: commercial use only, device without the TV tuner component, but a world map selection panel that allows me to convert any VHS format to ANY other with minimal loss of quality. I ran a side business for a few years, copying and converting tapes for use in other countries. (I copied a ton of cheesy wedding videos, recorded mostly in the US (ntsc) to whatever system the families in "the old country" used so tapes could be mailed back. Horrible... because video tape copying and conversion required a lot of manual monitoring. And good, because THIS was a very expensive service. (I think I paid over $6k for that one machine in the very early 90s. That's the price of a car)
@@TheSourKraut thanks, very interesting. I have a friend that still has beta. She says as long as she can watch the big chill that's all that matters. That beta copy is still holding strong
I love Blockbuster Video, although i don't remember video aisles rising up from the floor in blockbuster, ? everything is always bigger and better in America. 🇺🇸 😆
Was a manager of a Blockbuster up until about a year before they went under. I tried to tell them netflix and streaming would put them out of business but they thought their version, called total access, was better and would save them. It didn't... turns out not listening to the people who actually know what consumers want would be a companies downfall. Who knew? lol
I'm just happy i experienced blockbuster in it's prime it wasn't just renting a vhs/dvd it was the whole adventure of going out with your family or friends picking some movies together buying some popcorn, drinks and sweets maybe on the way home you would get a mcdonalds or KFC ect and sit down and enjoy the time together.
Ah the video stores. I remember we had 7 in my town: a mom-and-pop video store called JJ's Video, which was my personal favorite, 1 Hollywood Video that came and was gone within a year, 1 small chain store called 2-Day video (which was bought by Blockbuster), 2 Hastings Entertainment, which not only rented movies and games, but also sold magazines, books, and music on CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, and of course we had 3 Blockbuster Videos. To me it was like an adventure going to all the stores looking for the right movies and games to rent for the weekend. Then once home, order a pizza, usually from Domino's, as well as some Surge or Pepsi, and just make the weekend the best ever. Also we knew if one store didn't have what we wanted we could go look at another store and have more chances of finding it. I still have my original Blockbuster Video membership card as well as 2 former rentals in the rental cases I bought when they sold their VHS tapes to make room for DVDS. Nowadays, I feel we have just gotten too lazy to leave and take the time to go and just wonder around looking for something to rent. Streaming is good, but they don't have every single movie available, as James Rolfe would tell you. I still buy VHS tapes at my local Goodwill thrift stores for a dollar or can find some at pawn stores for 25 cents. also eBay and Amazon you can buy them even brand new as if you bought it from SunCoast Video. This is so wonderful as I just watched your video of Civic Video last night and now I want to find as many videos on here about the video store and even commercials.
Hastings was my 2nd home !!! LOL, Just ask the former employees who worked there. Good times.They had such good sales on everything,miss Hastings sooo much. i stopped going to the comics store because Hastings sold comics,back issues for a dollar. When they had the big going out of business sales i bought as much items as I could.
I went to college in a small town and Hastings was the main place to rent movies (though we had other video stores and places to rent), but Hastings had everything -- movies, music, books, comics, video games. You could even rent PC games back in the mid 90's at Hastings. Later on, they added toys and novelties too. It was a fun store to explore and I miss it very much.
@@hennabri Me too. When the store where I live closed down,I chained myself to the front door and cried-GIVE LIBERTY of GIVE ME DEATH !!! The police instead chose to arrest me . LOL.
This is a great video and topic me and my friends often talk about Blockbuster Video, the closed Blockbuster in my town still had its sign up for years, it was like walking past an old friend, sad to see empty shelves and pigeons living in there. 🤧
if I recall, at first Blockbuster required you to have a valid credit card. 🏦 This was stored on your account. I think they later shifted to allowing debit or credit cards as long as they were issued by a bank or credit union.
When I was a kid I remember constantly, almost every time we went to our local Blockbuster, renting this late 90s Sonic OVA. I don't know why but this one movie was my favorite and I'd be upset if it was already rented out. I also remember loving looking through the little candies and popcorn section and even got a Squidward plush toy.
From Brazil 🇧🇷 - I remember the first time I went to BB. It was wow. Jurassic Park was the big hit at the time and my local store had like 5 copies and you would be very lucky to find one at the shop. So we went to BB and they had like 200 copies 😱. However BB was super expensive. For the price of one BB rental you could have like 6 movies in the local store. Brazilians are more sensitive to price than to being family friendly, so BB shops were just a few in rich areas. They were pure luxury and the last resort when you couldn’t find something, as they always had all the movies. Even though I miss the Friday and Saturday visits. That was really magical.
I had so very many memories renting from there in the late 80s and early nineties so much so I started working there in the mid nineties at a corporate store and again in the mid to late 2000s at a franchised one. It never felt like a job, it was just pure awesomeness. I have my own video store in my garage now, but have a big plan to hopefully open one in the next 10 years offering niche titles, games stations for old to new game systems and much much more. Be selling it and I hate to say this, as a nostalgic personal experience. But yeah, Blockbuster was so fun to visit and to work at.
Back in the 2000's I was working at a Hollywood Video. One of the biggest things that I miss from this was all the discussions I used to have with people. Whether it was talking about favorite movies, giving and getting recommendations and just getting to know strangers walking in off the street cause they needed a place to hang out away from the heat of the streets. The one thing that I absolutely hated was the big business end of it where the district manager was always pushing the stores to make more retail sales either by pushing candy or having customers buy the movies they were renting. I always found this a bit sleazy and takes people out of their fun trip to the video store by trying to get them to buy other shit.
a part of me died when blockbuster closed. growing up. going to blockbuster was an event. all going in the family car to the local blockbuster, arguing what movie to rent and getting a pzza afterwards. when I got older we moved to a different state but tradition continued with a new location. there was a great pizza place next so we'd dine in and after wards rent a movie. even when we signed up for netflix we still made the trip as it was an experience. I have made the shift to digital movie services like vudu (have nearly 2800 digital movies...so my own digital blockbuster) it might be easier to rent now but its not the same. I miss going to a store and browsing. yeah i can walk to a redbox but its not the same. If i could i'd go to the location in Bend, OR
I remember the first movie I rented as a kid, it was a vhs of mortal kombat back in 1999. We picked up pizza from a local joint called bucks on the way home and we ate pizza and watched the cheesy goodness once we got home. Good times.
Growing up in a Betamax household, the video store was exciting and yet incredibly frustrating, as Sony slowly lost that format war and the Betamax shelves shrank from 6 to 4 to a measly 2 sided rack at many of my local stores. Blockbuster never really embraced Betamax and I remember slim pickings from the very beginning. I can’t tell you how many times I just went home with Raiders or Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind - a good one for Minty to cover! - yet again as there wasn’t anything new to watch on the Beta shelf. Thanks, dad!
I remember when there was Hollywood Video, Blockbuster Video, and other local video stores around at the same time. It really was fun going and picking out new movies to watch at home. I really like your set up, that is too cool 👍🎫
My biggest memory of Blockbuster, was that there was something about the stores (lighting maybe?) which made me REALLY need to fart.. smelly farts too. My gf at the time used to say “if we go to rent out a video, you promise not to fart?”
it was the perfect summer job in high school for me. i got to talk about cinema all day with other fans, make recommendations, have debates and conversations, got 5 free rentala each week etc. and an easy job. internet chats will never be as good as those in person chats at the video store.
Hey Minty! Good to see you again. I love your sense of humor! I appreciate the amount the amount of work you do, P.S. Here in the US the check out counter was part of the experience. You could get Twizzlers, Microwave popcorn buckets and all sort of candy. I would love to see if you could or would make a mock check out. Just an idea. Thanks mate for all the fun. Cheers mate! (I duck out of the view. LOL. the way you always duck away) 😁😁😁
I don't think I've ever rented from a Blockbuster store. When I was a kid we used to go to a local store, so close that we could go on foot. Although it was not that large, it was still big enough that we had dozens of movies we had no idea existed. As such, sometimes we would take a chance on movies just because of their cover or back cover story. I remember that one time I picked up The Faculty and it said that a student believed the teachers were being controlled by aliens. It looked so dumb that it piqued my interest. My friend had chosen another movie, but we played rock paper scissors and I won, so we both ended up watching it. Those were fun times. More often than not, you had more fun looking at movies at the store than actually watching them at home.
As an 80s kid, I remember when the mom and pop stores first started and you had the choice of VH1 or Betamax. You also could rent the machine to play the movies. In the 90s, I preferred Hollywood Video more than Blockbuster. They offered better deals. Blockbuster just always seemed too expensive to rent. Also, Hollywood Video gave you a free movie on your birthday. Blockbuster didn't!
Thankfully, most of the stores near my hometown were mom & pop places, so Blockbuster never really expanded into our immediate area. Most weekends we would rent movies from the local pizza place (along with video games), or the five & dime in the next town over, which had a huge video store in its basement section. The last movie I remember renting was a DVD copy of Rocky Balboa back in 2006 from a place called Family Video, which was one of the last hold out chains to finally fizzle out with the advent of online streaming. I would give almost anything to relive the those days of childhood, when it was Friday night, and the parents didn't feel like making dinner, so it was definitely going to be a pizza and movie night!
For me.... This is a relic that NEEDS to be preserved as for me; Streaming is a service that corporations can easily exploit! Sure you can giveth.... But they can taketh away..... Say after watching a series you want to keep for future viewing? OH! NOPE! it's deleted from the library as you don't own the actual intellectual property (IP) So.... When will it become illegal to own a CD, DVD, BLU-RAY, 4K?Despite buying it legally!?? (in some nightmare scenario)
My first video store experience was a store just down the road from where I lived in a nook off 41-A in Clarksville, TN called Log Cabin Video. This is of course what the creator of Blockbuster I am sure would call a seedy place, despite it really wasn't. It had all sorts of titles ranging from family friendly to adult, and each area was sectioned off. It was a quaint little store to, with the whole log cabin feel and aesthetic going for it. Also remember renting several anime from there to. I never quite understood the whole "seedy" thing because I remember when Blockbuster finally came to my town I grew up in they did have an adult section, so much so that the local KKK (yes quite literally and in full dress) went out to protest about the lecherous, sinful, and disturbing material they had in the store (aka anything they thought was either pornographic or made non-whites look good). Of course my young mind, I had no idea who the Klan was, and I thought they were Druids or something because I had just gotten into fantasy and I had a stereotype in my brain of what a druid dressed like. I was told alter by my mother who they were. The things we are oblivious to as children to only look back and go wtf at. But, back on topic, the whole video store experience there was nothing quite like it. Waiting for those days when a video game I wanted would come out for me to rent only to go down and find out that all copies were out and asking the clerk if they could check the return bin. I even remember renting Nintendos and VCRs before I actually owned one. Those were very interesting times and I do miss them. Nothing like a video store experience, even if personally I have issues with crowds and hanging around other people.
Great Video Minty! In the late 90's, I moved to Portland, Maine and discovered Portland's iconic underground video store Videoport. They had an "Incredibly Strange Film" section where I discovered many of Jon Waters films, as well as director Peter Jackson's earlier works, including my still favorite movie of all time: Meet The Feebles. Maybe a 10 Things You Didn't Know video about some of his earlier works?
I have always viewed blockbuster as the evil corporate entity that destroyed the mom and pop video stores. Were I grew up in Lincoln, Illinois in the early 80s we had 7 mom and pop shops, if you couldn't find something at one of them you would hit the next one. We even had one were you looked through a hand written binder to pick a movie lol.
