I think there's probably a lot of people who have that from their childhood.
Similarly, CVS sells cheerios for $7 a box. I don't think CVS is evil, sometimes I'm just lazy.
For Blockbuster selling snacks, no one is under any pressure to buy snacks there. If you're really pressed for time or don't want to drive to another store for snacks, then maybe the ludicrously high price is worth it. If it's not worth it to you at that moment, then don't buy there.
It's only bad if there's a monopoly or some other form of coercion involved, which is clearly not the case for Blockbuster selling snacks. And yet, to some people, it proves that Blockbuster is the devil...
As it turns out, they did a really good job of insulating us as kids from the backup plans for broken VHS tapes, late fees, mis-boxed movies, returns that were accepted but never registered, out-of-stock hit movies, and other 'adult' problems. Their memories of movie nights did not have quite the same golden hue, but they were happy that they'd fostered that kind of memory in spite of the stresses of parenting.
Lol, I grew up overseas and TGIF was where we'd go to celebrate "American style" as a family, like on the 4th of July or whatever. First time I ever had potato skins. Didn't even know that was considered an edible food source until that day. Blew my mind as a kid.
The fast casual restaurant chain still exists, and is definitely still cartoonishly embellished with Americana, and surprisingly decent food for what it is.
It happened with record stores, too, via Tower Records and other national chains I can’t remember now
TBH I'm a bit surprised no one has tried to buy the Blockbuster brand from Dish and restart the company. I feel like you could effectively run one much like a comic book store, there's always a niche that will patronize the business.
They'll also name the song playing, if any.
It's interesting that Lucasfilm ostensibly invested in the xanaverse but instead of doing something like this, they somehow became focused on creating an MMO instead.
I’m ok renting or buying digital movies from a big corp like Apple or Disney now that I don’t have to drive to a store.
Though the pipe to my house doesn’t need a big corp because we should have a free national municipal fiber network.
Best of both worlds?
I actually liked our local Blockbuster, and have fond memories of it, but only because it was run by the same employees from the independent video store it drove out of business. I liked that one even better.
Mostly because Amazon decimated corporate chains, which freed up more market for independent stores.
Most of them are tied to a coffeeshop though. But if you check your local map you might be surprised.
I loved B&N by the way, more computer-related books than WaldenBooks, but not as many as Borders.
They've broadened out into being general "gift stores". My local Barnes and Noble has a large toys section (mostly LEGO and educational stuff), board games, puzzles, music (lots of vinyl), stationery (fancy journals).
It's essentially "stuff introverts like" in a nice space.
Is there a source for this? Usually, both rise and fall together with consumer demand. When I grew up, Blockbuster was one of a dozen options in town.
As an example, there are more independent coffee shops today than before Starbucks expanded.
essentially blockbuster operated at larger scales than many small video businesses and so had smaller unit costs while also having more selection.
I didn’t play games much but I recall them also renting out Japanese nintendo games and also sold the necessary cartridge converters to play Starfox.
The "name" of the reason might be Blockbuster, but the actual reason was that Blockbuster had a larger selection. Those mom and pop stores were really small, so if you wanted something else you had to go to Blockbuster anyway, so why bother dealing with more than one store even for the stuff they had? Just get everything at Blockbuster.
It's the same with retail stores - I don't go to the small stores, even if they might have what I want - why should I? I can go to the larger store and get everything and not have to think about it.
People drink less office/gas station coffee than they used to, and so can drink more Starbucks/independent coffee. The same didn't happen to the mom and pop video rental places (though the ones that survived blockbuster, usually by being in a market too small to support a Blockbuster, often outlived them (the one near me closed a few years ago finally)).
In another town we lived in, the video rental place was a local chain with fewer than 10 locations, maybe just around 5. I don't remember if a Blockbuster even existed locally.
If it was Friday night, and you'd just sent back your netflix disc -- or you were looking to watch something that wasn't at the top of your queue, the mom and pop video rental place was your only option. At least in NYC, it seemed like this kept those places going a little but longer than anyone would have guessed when Block Buster was still around.
Though once streaming became prevalent they all disappeared pretty quickly.
It’s more discomforting than ironic.
But for me, it's not really about Blockbuster. It's about the format of home video. All the ritual, the excitement surrounding a new release that everyone wanted, sitting down to watch it together. It's about the object of video, the thing you can hold, and is similar to why I like to collect vinyl. I like the artifact in and of itself, along with what's encoded on it.
Wait? It was? I grew up through the 90s and have nothing but fond memories of Blockbuster
[0] Well, if they had it and it was in stock.
Speaking of which, I miss video game rentals. I spent so much time as akid at Blockbuster looking for games to rent. Even now, I'd like to be able to play with a game for a few days before committing to paying for the whole game.
(and of course, I say this with a hundred unplayed games in my Steam library...)
I distinctly remember 2 specific problems: 1) Being unable to get the latest release you wanted to watch. This was a big problem when video stores (not just Blockbuster) would only get in a few copies of new movies. Eventually Blockbuster got some sort of deal with the studios where they would get in something like 100 copies of the latest releases and the problem became #2:
2) Being unable to find anything but the most popular movies. If you wanted to watch that slightly less popular artsy film (but not anything as obscure as a foreign film, just not a (lowercase "b") blockbuster movie), they'd only have a few copies of it, and they'd inevitably all be rented out whenever you wanted to watch it.
I just remember going around the entire store and saying, "seen it, seen it, seen it, don't want to see it, seen it," etc.
I'm sure their parents who were responsible for rewinding the tapes, late fees, etc. remember the video stores less fondly.