Jumbo Video was the ultimate. I miss video stores in general and they were a great job for teens. Clean, not too high-stress, taught valuable vacuuming skills. Definitely one of my favourite jobs growing up. Worked for National Video in their prime.
Dude, if Rick Moranis comes into your store to rent videos, you better the hell have those videos in stock. If I was working there, I'd give him ALL the videos. It's Rick freaking Moranis. Come back to movies, Rick! We all miss you.
He came back for a mobile phone commercial and he's supposedly returning for a Honey I Shrunk the Kids Disney + thing. It's not much, but I'll take it.
Ah the good ol’ days! Pick up a xl Slurpee, some pizza flavoured Hostess crisps, Pac-Man Mac&Cheese, play the arcades, and take home a VHS/Beta movie! 🍿 📼
@Paul Mall That was where we went too. I loved taking the parents' car in the middle of the night, grabbing free popcorn and browsing the horror section.
Yeah man I hear that. When I was a kid my parents used to go to to the one at Leslie and Lakeshore in Toronto. I think it closed in 2001. The popcorn was a bonus, but seeing all the "new" movies and video games was always pretty fun.
Dad would not allow us to get a video machine. He said once you kids are older and move out, THEN your mother and I will get one. He was like if we get one now you kids will never not be infront of the tv, and he was not having that. So us kids got older and we moved out, and he and mom got a vcr AND A TV DISH. We originally only ever had 2 channels.
This is solid gold. National Video was my jam. There was one located at a strip mall on the north east corner of Markham and Lawrence. The time I spent in there as a kid just looking at all the (mostly horror) video cases. Rented my fair share of Atari games from there too.
My town used to have no less than 3 video stores within walking distance of my house; Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and Cinema 93 (the local independent and my preferred choice). Within 3 years of each-other, they were all gone.
I remember The Video Station in the early to mid 80’s in Columbia SC although that’s interesting that Video Station was in Canada although all I remember was they rented and sold VHS & Beta only.
Back in my day (the 1990s-2019), we had Blockbuster Video, Hollywood Video and Family Video. All three of them were the major video rental players in town. Of course, we had a few independently-run local video rental stores, in addition to supermarkets and gas station mini marts with in-store video rentals... In addition to movies, some video rental stores even rented out video games, a practice in North America and other parts of the world Japanese video game manufacturer, Nintendo, tried to stop, as renting out games the same day they released in stores ate into potential profits for the company. Nintendo sued Blockbuster Video, the video rental king, for the rental of their games, in addition to copyright violations made when photo copying the instruction booklets that came packaged with each game cartridge...those lawsuits hurt Nintendo in the end, while their biggest rival, Sega, on the other hand, was more tolerant of their game cartridges being rented out... Some local video stores are still limping along, while Blockbuster Video's last location in Bend, Oregon continues to draw in tourists. Netflix tries so hard to replace video rentals, but they won't replace trying to find out-of-print films in a dimly-lit local video store. Small boxes that resemble the little free libraries that hold VHS tapes, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs started appearing in neighborhoods and communities recently, they are known as Free Blockbuster boxes and are painted blue and yellow, the colors of the former video rental king. Public libraries also rent out movies (some even rent out video games) for free with the use of a library card...
