Earlier this week, our very own Lisa Kay found a vintage video clip on X. Footage from inside a video rental store in the 90s. And she was cool enough to share it with me!

Not only did I have epic memories of venturing to the video store, but I also couldn’t get enough of this swole bro’s Looney Tunes t-shirt at the end of the clip. Man, were the 90s totally rad or what? And with that, I felt compelled to throw it back to the video rental store for this week’s trip down memory lane.

No matter what store you had in your neighborhood, chances were you took advantage of one of life’s finest luxuries, renting a video cassette tape from your local video rental store. 

The most popular chain of stores by far, the world famous Blockbuster Video. Founded in 1985, Blockbuster Video became the benchmark of the video rental industry. About a decade-ish later, the DVD was invented and stores quickly had to adapt. Pretty sure you could rent laser disc as well, although oddly not as popular. My best friend at the time had a laser disc player though. And the very first movie I ever watched on laser disc? Big Trouble in Little China.

Back in the 90s I remember frequenting our local video rental place, Videorama. Our local grocery store also had a small video rental section in the front. Both had their own rewards program (or punch cards) that allowed you to earn free video rentals. 

The other widely-known chain was Hollywood Video (although, probably just mostly on the west coast to the mid-west). And I believe, also one of the last to survive.

There are some pretty nostalgic things to remember about the video store. Things like rushing to the video store after school on a Friday afternoon to get the latest “new release” before everyone else did and they ran out of copies. And what about that transition from the days of the tape itself being on the shelves to just the empty box. You’d have to bring the empty box to the front so the cashier could fetch the tape from the back. (Was this a theft issue?). Or who can forget getting zapped $2 if you returned a tape without rewinding it. And of course, most importantly to us kids… wondering what on earth was behind the red curtain in the corner of the video store.

The concept of renting movies (and video games) from a store exploded in the 90s and hung in there for over 20 years. But no one could have predicted what was going to come next. All of a sudden you could rent a movie (on disc) over the internet and have it shipped to you! And as long as you mailed it back, you could continue renting movies all from the comfort of your home. These were the early days of Netflix. Fast-forward several years and the age of digital streaming took the world by storm. Not only now do we have endless access to almost any and all media, we no longer have to worry about returning a movie to the store. Or rewinding a VHS!

So as you can see, the decline of video stores plummeted over even just a decade. The last of the Blockbuster stores still survives where it all began in Bend, Oregon. Although it’s no longer a true Blockbuster branded franchise, the store has been given special permission to continue to operate by the Blockbuster name.