15 Photos of and In Blockbuster, the Place We Miss the Most

Blockbuster was, first and foremost, a business. You’d go and rent movies on VHS or DVD, watch them during the week, and return them to the store. It also had rentals for videogames and even music records, working much in the same way. It wasn’t exactly looking to revolutionize the industry, yet it ended up becoming a symbol of how the world of entertainment used to be.

Nowadays, with the dominance of streaming, you have everything in the palm of your hand. And it feels like you own less things than in the past. A rental felt more honest than a subscription, and physical media feels more and more like the only thing we can trust. These few pictures are shown in honor of how we used to be.

The Classic Sign

That lettering in all caps, the blue background, the striking yellow. For many of us, that color combination can only mean Blockbuster, and if a different brand uses it, it better be something to do with movie viewing.

Choosing a Movie

We still get that feeling of having too many things to watch, but we weren’t being spied on by an algorithm that wants to maximize our screen time. The clerks filling the movie shelves didn’t know our shopping history, after all.

New Releases

Seeing a movie at home used to mean having the same quality as a cinema viewing, but with selective bathroom breaks. Now, not only do you need an internet connection, but the movies on offer might be of a far lower quality.

Simple Browsing

Browsing nowadays involves looking through far too many options. That can be a plus in some ways, but we yearn for a time of less options, where decisions were made with ease.

Radical Gaming

Blockbuster was known mainly for movie rentals, sure, but the gaming scene was also a big deal back then. Mostly marketed for children, it was a place of wonder where you could see what the next weekend of wonder would bring.

Cap’n Crunch Video Deal

There were a lot of promotions involving Blockbuster back in the day, even with cereals. With Cap’n Crunch in particular, you could gain some free rentals by buying that specific brand of cereal.

Barney

Another kid-friendly character that joined the Blockbuster craze was Barney, the purple dinosaur. This one was all about Christmas, although we didn’t need an excuse to go rent movies during a holiday.

Restocking

Before even opening the store, the clerks needed to make sure every video was in place, not to mention putting up the returned VHS and DVDs.

Pokemon Snap Pictures

Pokemon Snap is a videogame where you take pictures of the series’ most iconic creatures. You could then go to a Blockbuster and print the different pictures you took.

Be Kind And Rewind

Once you return the VHS tape, the Blockbuster employees made sure that the tape was placed the right side up on the box, but they didn’t rewind it. That’s why they’d ask customers to do so once the movie was finished.

Wait In Line

Blockbuster had its own premieres, just like the movie theatres, with people making a line for hours just to be the first ones in. This line in particular was for the release of Titanic on home video.

The Wiggles

The market for kid’s entertainment was big in Blockbuster, hence why performers like The Wiggles would record or perform shows on special locations like this one. They seem to be using the location more for recording purposes than anything else.

A Vibe You Can Feel

There were other brands of video rentals back in the day, yet few had the brand consistency of Blockbuster. This is why a lot of people around the world can share the same feeling of nostalgia from the place, since they remember the same sights and smells.

Blockbuster Music

We said it before, but Blockbuster had music-specific stores too, even if less known as the movie counterpart. Their locations and catalog was mostly framed around buying local businesses, avoiding unnecessary competition.

I Am Legend

The last movie to show Blockbuster as a relevant thing was Will Smith’s I Am Legend, where his character uses mannequins to play-pretend at his long-lost everyday life. And a core part of that life was Blockbuster.