My daughter asked me what a VHS Player was last night. It was in one of her books, and I couldn’t tell her how it works. But I got to tell her why we say “rewind” when we reverse a movie.
The daycare I went to after school when I was a kid had a few that got a lot of play, but the most obscure were a 1994 ABC Family animated rendition of The Secret Garden and a 1985 Hanna-Barbera Pound Puppies TV special.
“I still don’t understand…what’s a hooker?” “Ok,its him.” Im glad somebody mentioned D.A.R.Y.L. That and Police Academy 2 were my go tos as a kid,since we lived in bfe.
When we moved to the middle of nowhere and couldn’t even get channels over the air, my sister and I wore through every tape in the house.
The worst was being 9 years old desperately trying to find the second half of Lonesome Dove because you only got most of the episodes on some random VHS.
We must have worn the sound off of The Princess Bride, splash, Aladdin and the little mermaid. For a 9 year old boy living in the hinterlands after growing up in a city, Ariel singing “I want to be where the people are” hit me right in the feels.
Even though it was from 1966, I think the youngest person in it was Mako.
I couldn’t find a single person from it who is still alive.
It’s on Disney+. It’s not great, but it was on a tape my parents used to put on for me so they could be undisturbed for an hour. I didn’t even like the film that much, but there were two Chip and Dale cartoons at the end, so I watched it to get to them.
My mom liked that movie a lot. I also ran across it on Disney+ a while back and watched it with my kids. I watched a lot of those 60s and 70s Disney movies as a kid in the 80s… Herbie, etc.
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.
Part of me wants to show The Land Before Time to my kids, cause it was such a great movie. The other part of me knows that Little Foot’s mom dying (sorry, 1980s spoilers) would absolutely wreck them.
Idk how obscure, but “Puff the Magic Dragon” was definitely a weird one for me. Kinda glad it got lost (probably thrown out, who knows). Almost feels like a fever dream, so much so, that I had to double check the movie even existed
Full-disclosure… I found it online and am about to re-watch it. Loved it as a kid, but does it hold-up? 23 minutes will tell
Edit: It… oddly holds up for me lol. Just as weird as I remembered, but kinda sweet (I truly thought when they sang “Honoli” they were saying “Harmony”. It’s been a long time)
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.”
Add comment