Oh my goodness, I remember for some reason people kept giving or lending my parents all these long play VHS tapes full of movies. Random video mix tapes where you didn’t know what you’d get next. Now and then some of them had kid movies (like the Sesame Street movie, Follow That Bird and there was at least one muppet movie), but most of them were PG and occasionally R-rated stuff, and I still watched it (except the R-rated stuff, but thankfully they were mostly pretty tame as I recall). I think my fave childhood movie was always on TV though: The Goonies.
An American Tale for me and my closest(in age) siblings. Bonus because while my older brother and I were American born, we moved out of the country when I was 2, and my younger sister was born outside the states. We saw the movie first overseas, then often when we came back to the US (7 for me).
I’m gonna have kids just so I can make sure to raise them on the correct media diet. They’re getting all the classic video game consoles, in order of generation, so when they get to something like Elden Ring they have the context all the way back to Space Invaders to appreciate it. And we’re going to be a home of physical media, god damn it. We’re not streaming things. We’re putting CD’s and vinyls and blu rays in their respective players. No iPads. Only books, comics, coloring books and notebooks.
How the fuck did parents start giving their kids iPads, anyway? Nintendo Switches? My first Gameboy cost $90 and I bought it with my own birthday money. A children’s book from a young reader series cost $6 new in the 90s and is probably not much worse now. Less, if you buy it used, which is much easier now. And people are just like, “here, my 12 year old child, have an Xbox Series whatever, and an iPad, and a Galaxy phone. They’re all pre-connected to your YouTube account. Don’t let your other parent know that I told you that for Christmas we’re getting you a gaming PC, Logitech C920, condenser microphone, wireless headset, gaming chair, scissor arm, and LED lighting array so you can chase the completely impossible dream of being a professional streamer. Can I kiss your feet while I’m at it? Will that make this a good half-birthday for you?” Unfuckingthinkable. Knock it off.
Not a movie, exactly, but we had the VHS of the extended version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the making of the video. It was over an hour long. And amazing.
I can’t recall my family having obscure movies. Don’t remember what it’s actually about, but I at least remember we had one Home On The Range VHS. Don’t recall ever watching it once, but this post made it come to the forefront of my memory
My movie was princess and the goblin. I watched it on a 10x10 in monitor that had the VHS in while I worked at my family’s business where I did labor at 10 years of age 30+ hours a week. Good times
My family watched the movie Clue about a million times. Can quote every line by heart. To this day, we only have to look in one another’s eyes whenever a quotable opportunity comes up. “Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?” “You don’t need any help from me.”
I had a VHS copy of the Empire Strikes Back that my uncle recorded for me when it played on one of our 3 local TV stations. For the holidays I had a recording of a bunch of the old holiday cartoons that would play in a marathon every Christmas, and one of Ghostbusters (for some reason it used to play every Christmas in the evening, so it became a Christmas movie for me).
Aside from that I’d mostly just rent the same VHS tapes from our local hole in the wall video rental place every weekend (Neverending Story and Inhumanoids) from the ages of 4-6. Then I think we got a real video store and my movie watching experience improved a bit. To be fair, the hole in the wall rental shop was probably only about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide inside, and the shelves of movies lined the walls, so there wasn’t a lot to choose from.
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