Dollar Tree being only a single dollar on everything.
I didn’t know Dollar Tree existed further back in the years like the 80s. But, I didn’t discover the store until like late 2000s. That store was a godsend for my then mostly broke ass. Sure the quality of products could’ve been better and the food selection could’ve been better, but they were there for me and others who’re strapped on budgets.
And it was a good 16 years while that lasted. It is a little annoying at times to shop there and know it is no different than Dollar General and Family Dollar. But it could’ve been worse.
Blockbuster and similar video rental stores. Shit was magical before streaming or even getting movies in the mail.
Yeah, every Friday, we’d go to Blockbusters and peruse the aisles until we found a video. It was a nice tradition.
It WAS magical compared to bring forced to watch/play all the stuff that was otherwise available to you, but your definitely spring some rose colored glasses here.
Yes, I also have great memories of walking the shelves searching for the Nintendo game we’d play this weekend while my parents picked out a movie or two, but I think you’ve forgotten the feeling of seeing that the one you REALLY wanted was out of stock, or rushing to head out the door in order to avoid a late fee, or forgetting about last week’s late fee and having to pay twice as much to rent this weeks entertainment.
It was an experience that no longer exists, but it was objectively inferior to what we have available now.
Inferior in convenience, superior in experience. (unless you’re a forgetful slob, but like… don’t be one?)
Blockbuster generates 20% of its revenue through late fees. My lifestyle does make a difference! By strategically failing I am proactively participating in a concerted effort to expand this nation’s GDP.
This is my contract with America!
It is arguably preying on this trait that made the pricing possibleAsode from that, you can’t honestly suggest to that just ‘not being that way’ is a valid option. Sure that can work to a small degree for specific individuals, but ‘just don’t be the way you are’ to solve some specific challenge, likely at the detriment to many other traits you may not want to break, is thoughtless and ignorant advice.
Hey you can recreate the experience by simply going to your local library, except most libraries have eliminated late fees and there’s of course no checkout fees either
Sounds like communism to me smh
🤣 What?? Blockbuster was shit, renting was shit. From unavailability, to fees, to rewinding, the whole industry deserved to die.
I can’t believe people remember that shit fondly…
I knew a family growing up who’d check out movies from the library instead of Blockbuster usually, and as DVDs became more relevant they kept going for VHS tapes because they were less likely to be scratched to unreadability. I can’t remember how much my family went for VHS tapes vs DVDs but it may have been purely based on availability. I do however remember my dad had a strong preference for widescreen despite our setup letterboxing widescreen films (like most home theaters of the day) and quite a few times being sent back to swap the full screen release I grabbed for the wide screen one
For any young’uns reading, in the early 2000s with broadcasters shifting from transmitting a 4:3 image to a 16:9 image, home media soon followed but since many people didn’t yet have hardware supporting widescreen, fullscreen releases typically had the edges chopped off to fit in a 4:3 aspect ratio while widescreen saw less cropping compared to the version seen in theatres, but then for older home theatre hardware that only knows 4:3 video formats it would have black bars on the top and bottom whereas fullscreen would of course fill a 4:3 screen