Microblog Memes

"Owned on tape" was for rich people. "Taped from NBC or ABC, or, if the weather was just right, CBS and you tried to pause the recording during the commercials and that's why 8 minutes are missing from the middle of the movie" is more like it.

on saturdays the local station would broadcast scifi b movies. we'd record them and keep the good ones.

Or, what movie you dubbed from a rented VHS tape and watch 200 times until The quality had degraded so bad that it was almost unwatchable. I'm looking at you Short Circuit.

Mom: why do you want to rent that You've watched 500 times at home Me: our slp copy's looking pretty bad. Mom: grrrr

Swiss Family Robinson

Nobody remembers Swiss Family Robinson

That’s parental failing for not torrenting

We had a tape that had Asterix in Britain followed by the Only Fools And Horses feature-length episode where they go to Florida and Del-Boy gets mistaken for a mob boss.

To this day, I can probably quote both from beginning to end.

And commercials. My wife and I were just talking the other day about shared commercials we saw growing up that kids today will never experience. “Ancient Chinese secret”, “Don’t squeeze the charmin”, the crying Native American, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”, “Where’s the beef?”, “My bologna has a first name”, “I’m stuck on Band-aid”, “Calgon take me away”, “Mikey likes it”, “Sometimes you feel like a nut”, Joe Isuzu, “Avoid the noid”, “York peppermint patty gives me the feeling…”, Stompers, Micro-machines, “Who wears short shorts?”, “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter” … and these are just the ones I remember. They have none of those shared experiences.

I mean just making this list gave me such a wave of nostalgia.

Not obscure but shout out to milo and otis. I must have watched that movie hundreds of times then a hundred more when my sister started watching things.

LA Story! I still love that movie. Our movies were whatever the people that lived in the house before you left when they moved back to wherever they were from (expat life in the Middle East). Also my grandma taped all the Fairy Tale Theatre episodes for me. The three little pigs was the best! Billy Crystal as the runt and Jeff Goldblum as the big bad wolf, so so good.

Tremors FTW!!

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Like, the shitty one with Grounder and whatever the chicken robot's name was... Had like the whole collection of those when what I wanted was the more anime like series where Sally Acorn came from. 😔

They still have that today, though. It's just on streaming alongside the big films.

I don't doubt a portion of the Disney remakes would have ended up being direct-to-VCD sequels you'd only find in a video rental store.

Beyond The Mind's Eye was my jam.

The Miracle on Morgan's Creek. I never liked it much, but my family did. Also The Princess Bride, but that's not obscure so it can't count here.

In the 80s it was Freddy's Revenge and The Woman in Red. Early 2000s was The Matrix on VHS.

You kids with your fancy “tapes!” In my day we had to watch whatever the hell was on the three or four channels we could pick up with the rabbit ears, and we were damn glad to have it!

Once a year they’d show a Bond movie or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or maybe even that Willie Wonka movie. Such an event!

VCRs didn’t exist until I was a young adult. Doggone spoiled kids!

Children of the DVD era also know this life

I had a friend that recorded every single episode of the power rangers on VHS from pay tv.

Also, borrowing DVDs from the library was a thing back then (probably still is but noone does it).

I grew up with The Legend of Zelda. "Well excuuuuuuse me, princess"