Please Be Kind, Rewind-VCRs Rocked

A blast from the past

Does anybody else remember the heady days and unlimited promise of going to a video store like Blockbuster on the weekend? We would plot and plan, scheme and dream all week about what choices we would make.

All the dazzling array of VCRs on display, a feast for the senses!

Inside every VCR case was a plaintive message: Please Be Kind, Rewind.

VCRs at the time were the only way people could see movies that were no longer available at the theaters without buying them.

They were wildly popular. Everybody wanted the newest releases.

As quaint, old-fashioned, and nostalgic as this sounds today, renting videotapes was the focus of almost every American household in the late 70s through the early 2000s.

Stores like Blockbuster ruled. It was the weekend social hot spot to be.

In the beginning, there was a time limit on how long you could keep the VCR tape, usually 48 hours, without incurring an extra rental fee for another day.

These were unpopular. As time passed, they developed boxes for late Sunday dropoffs.

The admonition to be kind was being both polite and thoughtful.

Maybe it was the seed of an idea that was planted in so many young, impressionable minds growing up in the 1980s.

Kids and their parents made a big evening of going to the video store and picking out their fave movies of the moment.

Families would stay home together, pop up some microwave popcorn, (conveniently stocked in the checkout lane), and watch movie after movie on the weekends.

Going to the VCR store was a major social event, and watching the movies back home together was solid family fun.

If your favorite VHS tape was out of stock, which happened to the newer, hotter tapes you would groan and pick the next few tapes on your list.

Then everybody would pack into their car and fly back home, ready to watch the first movie.

It was a social event as well. You would often see your friends and neighbors at the Blockbuster, all sharing in the excitement.

They would be searching for new titles, standing in lines to check out their newest rentals, or passing through to drop off the older ones, just like you.

But it was an irresistible urge to bypass not picking up some new ones or renewing some older ones to take home if it was still the weekend.

I remember in my excitement the first time I went to the Blockbuster store I rented “Cleopatra,” a two-part video, with several other movies.

All with a 48-hour time limit to return them or be charged!

I didn’t have a chance, and the cash registers never stopped racking up late fees or re-rentals for many people.

Blockbuster was the undisputed king of video rental stores, starting at a single location in Dallas to a chain of over 9,000 locations in its heyday.

There were other big chains, like Hollywood Videos, and even smaller mom-and-pop shops. But Blockbuster was first.

This single original store in Dallas stocked an inventory of 8,000 VHS tapes, which promised something for everybody.

If you liked romance, adventure, action, or scary movies, they were all there for the renting.

It was always worth it, and the magnetic pull of the video store beckoned almost everybody.

But nothing lasts forever. The heyday of the VCR stores like Blockbuster lasted all through the 80s and 90s, and longer in some parts of the world.

DVDs and DVD players made VHS tapes and VCRs obsolete by the early 2000s. People ate up the new technology with scarcely a nostalgic look back.

VCRs started going the way of the dinosaurs.

DVDs were more compact, cleaner, and crisper than VHS tapes, and they didn’t require rewinding at all.

Now most people have DVRs, capable of recording and rewatching endless streaming content to watch at their own convenient pace, and able to record off your home TV even if you are not home.

Rewind at your leisure to recapture key big-game moments or rewatch a favorite movie or event whenever.

No more madcap racing to the Blockbuster store on a Friday night.

Many people today don’t even have TVs, they just stream what they want on the internet as it passes. Tempus Fugit.

It was fun while it lasted. Sigh.

But that was yesterday, and yesterday is gone. We are all connected…