The video store was just another weekend hangout for me and my friends, especially if we were after the same copy of a new release video game!

Amen to that!

We had it so good! We just didnt know about it!

@@jeanlove8510 just goes to show, you never miss something until it's gone.

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/.

I'm surprised Blockbuster was so popular in Australia. They didn't even get electricity until 1965

in the 80's that is all we had. That was it's own kind of "social media" of the time. Going to the video and record shops.

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.

And the clerk that worked there always had a couple of action figures up on the shelf behind the counter.

@@Viking_Luchador That's untrue, of course. You must be a TAZ-MANIAC, Right GOV.?

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. :)

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.

Ah the memories, so much good fun. The simple pleasures were the best. Still are, though now you have to do it a little different.

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...

thank you for being the seemingly only person to realize it is still very much a is and not a was.......

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. 😭

Same here I miss it so much

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

Sean. I rented some games from Hollywood video. Returned them on time and they lost it they wanted to charge my dad 120 bucks for the games

Sean? , what were you doing here commenting on a Minty vid

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.

Do you remember the Minty Checks Out series , I’ve been urging Minty to bring it back

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

Blockbuster sounded and operated like the BORG collective of Star Trek TNG. LOL.

capitalism is cutthroat you wanna be the best you ha e to destroy the competition Netflix killed blockbuster but who doesn't love Netflix

Mom and pop video stores were the best.

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.

Did they have Gallo films displayed prominently?

@@Viking_Luchador maybe XD

Sorry for your loss, man. You'll always have the memories.

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 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.

@@kriscynical where you from?

@@nsasupporter7557 The Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

@@kriscynical really?? So am I 😳 I was born and raised in Dallas but moved to Fort Worth last year

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.

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!

my dad bought our first VCR for $500 in 1985 (10 years before i was born though)

Where do you live that still has a video store? Hot damn, I want to live there too!

Was block buster music like FYE?

@@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.

@@kriscynical Okay

your blockbuster had a little ceasar's next to it? mine did too! it was the perfect weekend stop.

Someone must be cutting onions here.

I remember Batman 1989 was sold out. I had to wait like forever for one copy. And that was in Pathmark shopping center with a video store section

We have marcos in the states also another big company that uses old world pepperonis and that is donatos pizza best thin crust ever Both from ohio

I don't know if it's the same chain/franchise, but there is a Marco's Pizza here in North Carolina, USA that opened up recently.

Nah this one’s completely independent of the US one

@@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

Movie Gallery was big around here before Hollywood Video. North Alabama resident

Netflix started out renting out physical media through the mail. Gamefly still does it with movies and games.

Should we really be surprised that the last Blockbuster is In a suburb of hipster hell Portland?

@@FigmentForever I forgot about Movie Gallery! There was a Movie Gallery where I live too, along with Video Zone, and Video City.

@@Viking_Luchador not surprised they want to be retro , but never really experienced it .

💯 👍

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. 👍

Me too, spent an hour looking around sometimes. 📼🍿👍

@@211inprogress miss those days.

“More of a Hollywood video family”…….your family should be banned from reproducing

Hollywood was better. They let you rent movies if you had late fees. They just asked you to pay a little bit of it.

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'd go to Hollywood video often when I was a kid. That place is an auto parts store now.😞

@@ricardoaguirre6126 Go figure, thats what happened to the Blockbuster I went to that was rude! The Hollywood Video is now a Physical Therapist! LoL

I've been to that one back in the day.

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.

@@brandonpage7087 The "Standees" as they were called. Yep, I remember those.

The very last Blockbuster is in the state of Oregon. And it’s still going strong as far as I know

And since streaming services change shit so often, most of what i want to watch isn't there.

Me to mate. 📼👍

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.

Video 2000?? I don't remember that. Crazy that everyone thought Betamaxx would win because they were smaller

@@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)

@@amberlinmchugh8115 😆👍

@@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

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.

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.

gods i miss hastings

@@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.

I worked at Hastings in Alamogordo, NM in the 90s. Great times!

I still have my Blockbuster card 🪪

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.

They lost touch

They got too big for their britches.