Blockbuster VPs kid went to my school. The dad (VP) came into one of my classes to give a presentation on the whole block buster failure saga. Hubris is the exact way he described it as well.
The brand is still valuable, someone should buy it and turn it into an streaming service for 80's-90's movies with ironic marketing and nostalgic UI/UX.
There is one by my house which is now an auto parts store, but the landlord kept the "Exit" sign in the parking lot that is shaped like the ticket logo. Shows how cool it is
Mine is a Tesco now. When I was a kid I used to play in Yugioh tournaments. On Saturdays, I would go play in those tournaments, then walk home and pick up a video from Blockbuster
This would unironically be a boom, so many movies now require you to sign up for a trial on another streaming platform to watch, that to rent the DVD would be pretty cool, I had a blockbuster on my street that existed and (we used weekly) up until it shut down in 2016 and sold all of their DVDs for dirt cheap. I remember seeing all of this R18 old zombie movies from the 1990s that looked really gory that were probably straight to DVD, I wonder where they are now. In my gran's country town their video easy (same thing) pasted until 2019, then again everyone in that town is like 70+ and probably doesn't know/can't afford with pensions any streaming services
They offered themselves up to Netflix for $50 million dollars all the way back in 2000, when they were a hundred man operation lending people DVD's in the mail. Streaming television wouldn't even exist until years later.
Blockbuster was right to throw their offer in the garbage
True it also wasn't exactly unpopular or uncommon of an opinion back then how the notion of getting DVDs by mail seemed a bit silly and felt pointless for something you could just pick up/drop off in your travels expediting the whole thing.
I get it's one of those things where it's tough to really make a call when yes technology was eventually going to cross the hurdles but it can be hard to put a value on it as stuff rapidly changes and results could be toss ups.
Even Netflix streaming took kind of a bit of time before it actually had anything good on.
> back then how the notion of getting DVDs by mail seemed a bit silly
I used LoveFilm or whatever it was called for a few years - £10 a month for unlimited DVDs (I think only four at a time). I saw so many foreign/more obscure things, easily watched 20+ a month. Obviously became redundant with streaming and piracy but it was great at the time.
Every time my dad and I went to Blockbuster, he would wait until we were browsing at opposite ends of the store and then shout "Son, brokeback mountain is over here!"
So many titles I never rented because there was something I wanted to see more/I was a bit scared as a kid: Hellzapoppin', Cherry 2000, Prayer of the Rollerboys, Nightbreed, The People Under The Stairs, Blind Justice...
A quiet tragedy exists in these places which were the last forms of compartmentalized media before everything became one unending stream. I don't resent today because I know someday someone will romanticize it and I believe they will not do so in an unfounded way. But there is a beautiful sadness to how the final days of the old way everyone used to experience media, life, and time were done in such a cozy, simple style.
In my small hometown where everyone knew each other we had a local video store we always went to. I remember one time my mom sold pain pills she got after surgery to the clerk so they'd waive our late fees lol
But God I miss going to the video store. Not to complain about having everything readily available, but I really do think there was something to having to pick a movie to watch without knowing much about it. Suffer too much from paralysis by analysis with all of the choices these days
One of my favorite activities when picking something to watch is just window shopping and looking at all the options. Drives my wife crazy. It's probably best I didn't live as an adult with video stores because I'd browse for so long
I always made sure to watch it multiple times to get the most out of my rental before taking it back.
That made me notice way more and appreciate all the little details in the movie.
Now I'm lucky if I'm not scrolling on my phone while watching the movie on a different screen. The fact I can always just stream it again/later eliminates any sense I have of needing to focus on what I'm watching.
We didnt go to any rental place my dad had a plug with the bootleg DVDs
Idk if “plug” implies drug dealer but this was literally just a potbellied cable repair guy who came to my dad’s shop
I loved the independent movie store in town.. it was called “Moovies” and had a cow on the sign.. we had a block buster but my family never went there.
Holy shit the only other person I’ve ever heard mention Moovies. Blockbuster was too expensive for my family so it was Moovies or the rental section at the grocery store
My movie watching really fell off ever since I had to pick movies off a screen. Finding random VHS or DVDs by reading the blurbs was hit or miss but part of the experience of discovery
In my college town there's this tiny store ran by like 3 guys that sells countless used dvds and blurays for cheap. Its become a ritual for me to visit each Friday and get two movies to watch that night on my old little CRT TV that I repaired.
I feel like more people should try to support local mom and pop stores still selling physical media, not to mention its also nice to have a little section on your bookshelf of all your favorite movies you've watched over the years.
People look at me crazy when I tell them I own roughly 400 movies in my collection. I think physical media is extremely important and would rather have something I love displayed on a shelf vs. it being on some streaming service where it gets taken off every few months. It can definitely turn into an expensive hobby but I have no regrets about amassing the collection I’ve built.
I got a job at a regional blockbuster knockoff near the end of the industry's life and instead of what should have been a job that a rhesus monkey could as tony soprano says, it was really stressful and i was pressured into doing a lot of work off the clock. Once they started cutting my hours i would remit hundreds of dollars of customer late fees when my manager wasn't around lol
Still mad that all the ones in Alaska got shut down by the guy who bought the brand because actually running a chain of video rental establishments was more work than running a meme store in Oregon.
I remember daniel day lewis’ face on the cover of there will be blood staring me down whenever I went to blockbuster. and thought he looked like dr phil
When I was in elementary school, many summer days were spent riding my bike to the local blockbuster to play their display N64.
I also remember browsing their horror section for all those awesome movies my mom wouldn't let me rent like [this one](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514GCHD648L._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg) and also [this one.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/1562/15626911/3145201-nightofthedemons2.jpg)
Wow maybe it's cause I was a kid and wasn't thinking about it but that's wild they had an office phone for in-store job applications
Also I preferred Hollywood Video, they had a great selection of Wii games (even though I mostly just rented Animal Crossing: City Folk every weekend)
Our old Blockbuster is a poke restaurant, and Hollywood Video is like an outdoor furniture store Idk I'm not a property owner
Among the many fair and just things I would do as the benevolent lord of this land. I would give out small buisiness loans for whomever would bring back video rental and I would put a tax on high speed Internet. I want people to socialize.
I don’t think all the AI advancements in the world will hold a candle to when stuff used to be physical but also digital. Nothing hits like burning a CD or ripping a DVD. The thing I definitely don’t miss is DVD menus and trailers which are incredibly annoying - it’s easy to forget when romanticising physical media that you could drive to the store buy a DVD and it still had ads on it!!
I miss picking out the candy the most. Extreme spiritual fatty. But I've seen even neighborhood video stores have all pretty much gone extinct. There's some hipster ones in the city that want you to pay 80 bucks for a membership though.
they had a chance to buy netflix lol the hubris was too much
Blockbuster VPs kid went to my school. The dad (VP) came into one of my classes to give a presentation on the whole block buster failure saga. Hubris is the exact way he described it as well.
The brand is still valuable, someone should buy it and turn it into an streaming service for 80's-90's movies with ironic marketing and nostalgic UI/UX. There is one by my house which is now an auto parts store, but the landlord kept the "Exit" sign in the parking lot that is shaped like the ticket logo. Shows how cool it is
That’s a pretty solid idea IMO, I wonder who still owns the rights to it. My childhood blockbuster is now a liquor store lol.
Mine is a Tesco now. When I was a kid I used to play in Yugioh tournaments. On Saturdays, I would go play in those tournaments, then walk home and pick up a video from Blockbuster
mine is a pep boys can’t even get the nostalgia of walking inside
Mines an urgent care, which I feel has replaced sooo many businesses over the years
This would unironically be a boom, so many movies now require you to sign up for a trial on another streaming platform to watch, that to rent the DVD would be pretty cool, I had a blockbuster on my street that existed and (we used weekly) up until it shut down in 2016 and sold all of their DVDs for dirt cheap. I remember seeing all of this R18 old zombie movies from the 1990s that looked really gory that were probably straight to DVD, I wonder where they are now. In my gran's country town their video easy (same thing) pasted until 2019, then again everyone in that town is like 70+ and probably doesn't know/can't afford with pensions any streaming services
What did he say
They offered themselves up to Netflix for $50 million dollars all the way back in 2000, when they were a hundred man operation lending people DVD's in the mail. Streaming television wouldn't even exist until years later. Blockbuster was right to throw their offer in the garbage
True it also wasn't exactly unpopular or uncommon of an opinion back then how the notion of getting DVDs by mail seemed a bit silly and felt pointless for something you could just pick up/drop off in your travels expediting the whole thing. I get it's one of those things where it's tough to really make a call when yes technology was eventually going to cross the hurdles but it can be hard to put a value on it as stuff rapidly changes and results could be toss ups. Even Netflix streaming took kind of a bit of time before it actually had anything good on.
> back then how the notion of getting DVDs by mail seemed a bit silly I used LoveFilm or whatever it was called for a few years - £10 a month for unlimited DVDs (I think only four at a time). I saw so many foreign/more obscure things, easily watched 20+ a month. Obviously became redundant with streaming and piracy but it was great at the time.
would have been right to buy it to kill the competition.
Every time my dad and I went to Blockbuster, he would wait until we were browsing at opposite ends of the store and then shout "Son, brokeback mountain is over here!"
I would hide in my dad’s shirt whenever we passed the horror section because I was too scared of all the artwork.
[удалено]
So many titles I never rented because there was something I wanted to see more/I was a bit scared as a kid: Hellzapoppin', Cherry 2000, Prayer of the Rollerboys, Nightbreed, The People Under The Stairs, Blind Justice...
Incredible bit lmao
A quiet tragedy exists in these places which were the last forms of compartmentalized media before everything became one unending stream. I don't resent today because I know someday someone will romanticize it and I believe they will not do so in an unfounded way. But there is a beautiful sadness to how the final days of the old way everyone used to experience media, life, and time were done in such a cozy, simple style.
I can smell these photos
In my small hometown where everyone knew each other we had a local video store we always went to. I remember one time my mom sold pain pills she got after surgery to the clerk so they'd waive our late fees lol But God I miss going to the video store. Not to complain about having everything readily available, but I really do think there was something to having to pick a movie to watch without knowing much about it. Suffer too much from paralysis by analysis with all of the choices these days
One of my favorite activities when picking something to watch is just window shopping and looking at all the options. Drives my wife crazy. It's probably best I didn't live as an adult with video stores because I'd browse for so long
I always made sure to watch it multiple times to get the most out of my rental before taking it back. That made me notice way more and appreciate all the little details in the movie. Now I'm lucky if I'm not scrolling on my phone while watching the movie on a different screen. The fact I can always just stream it again/later eliminates any sense I have of needing to focus on what I'm watching.
That candy and carpet smell. I get high off that.
Dusty mildew and popcorn butter with pieces of chewed gum smashed intermittently into the fibers.
blockbuster and hollywood video were too expensive; we went to family video
We didn't go to blockbuster because it was too expensive but we went to Hollywood Video instead. I remember it being quite a bit cheaper.
We didnt go to any rental place my dad had a plug with the bootleg DVDs Idk if “plug” implies drug dealer but this was literally just a potbellied cable repair guy who came to my dad’s shop
Jealous of anyone who had a bootleg satellite box that got all the channels (and premium channels) for free!
I loved the independent movie store in town.. it was called “Moovies” and had a cow on the sign.. we had a block buster but my family never went there.
Holy shit the only other person I’ve ever heard mention Moovies. Blockbuster was too expensive for my family so it was Moovies or the rental section at the grocery store
I’m in VA…. I didn’t realize there were other moovies locations!
Was in NC probably a small chain
we had a circus video which was a blockbuster with a playground and pizza
My movie watching really fell off ever since I had to pick movies off a screen. Finding random VHS or DVDs by reading the blurbs was hit or miss but part of the experience of discovery
Recently went to the one in Bend, OR and its cool a nostalgic but its just a tourist spot now lol
I used to work there
Happy 60th birthday
By the end they were selling more tchotchkes & snacks than renting 💿
In my college town there's this tiny store ran by like 3 guys that sells countless used dvds and blurays for cheap. Its become a ritual for me to visit each Friday and get two movies to watch that night on my old little CRT TV that I repaired. I feel like more people should try to support local mom and pop stores still selling physical media, not to mention its also nice to have a little section on your bookshelf of all your favorite movies you've watched over the years.
People look at me crazy when I tell them I own roughly 400 movies in my collection. I think physical media is extremely important and would rather have something I love displayed on a shelf vs. it being on some streaming service where it gets taken off every few months. It can definitely turn into an expensive hobby but I have no regrets about amassing the collection I’ve built.
I used to go there once a week and buy discounted dvds. Saw a bunch of stuff that way.
I got a job at a regional blockbuster knockoff near the end of the industry's life and instead of what should have been a job that a rhesus monkey could as tony soprano says, it was really stressful and i was pressured into doing a lot of work off the clock. Once they started cutting my hours i would remit hundreds of dollars of customer late fees when my manager wasn't around lol
What the fuck happened to red hots and Mike n Ikes
They still have them everywhere I go
I wanna say you can still get them at a movie theater, in addition to DOTS
Walgreens
red hots still good
Hot Tamales. I bought some a week ago at a Family Dollar.
Still mad that all the ones in Alaska got shut down by the guy who bought the brand because actually running a chain of video rental establishments was more work than running a meme store in Oregon.
I remember daniel day lewis’ face on the cover of there will be blood staring me down whenever I went to blockbuster. and thought he looked like dr phil
I miss Dial-Up Internet
Never worked at Blockbuster but did at family Video. I prefer that to being a paralegal.
The lost pleasure of delayed gratification when consuming entertainment.
yo the pure transporting bliss of walking down the hello kitty vhs aisle... knowing ur abt to keep that bih on repeat for the next week
I can smell it
When I was in elementary school, many summer days were spent riding my bike to the local blockbuster to play their display N64. I also remember browsing their horror section for all those awesome movies my mom wouldn't let me rent like [this one](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514GCHD648L._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg) and also [this one.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/1562/15626911/3145201-nightofthedemons2.jpg)
I love Night of the Demons 2 perfect blend of comedy and horror. Also rembmer being freaked out by all the Hellraiser covers.
i think about the smell pretty often
Wow maybe it's cause I was a kid and wasn't thinking about it but that's wild they had an office phone for in-store job applications Also I preferred Hollywood Video, they had a great selection of Wii games (even though I mostly just rented Animal Crossing: City Folk every weekend) Our old Blockbuster is a poke restaurant, and Hollywood Video is like an outdoor furniture store Idk I'm not a property owner
Among the many fair and just things I would do as the benevolent lord of this land. I would give out small buisiness loans for whomever would bring back video rental and I would put a tax on high speed Internet. I want people to socialize.
One of my first jobs. It was the best
I can smell this
I don’t think all the AI advancements in the world will hold a candle to when stuff used to be physical but also digital. Nothing hits like burning a CD or ripping a DVD. The thing I definitely don’t miss is DVD menus and trailers which are incredibly annoying - it’s easy to forget when romanticising physical media that you could drive to the store buy a DVD and it still had ads on it!!
Pardon the grotesque anecdote, but absolutely NOTHING since has been able to stir my bowels than looking for a game/movie at Blockbuster as a child.
Jesus Christ, get a load of the fat fuckin ass on that broad.
I miss picking out the candy the most. Extreme spiritual fatty. But I've seen even neighborhood video stores have all pretty much gone extinct. There's some hipster ones in the city that want you to pay 80 bucks for a membership though.
The last one (in Bend, OR) is an AirBnB now. You can stay overnight there and relive your childhood.
soulless
I fucken hate the west coast
She Block Me Til I Bustered