Several months ago, Daniel and I stumbled across an old independent video store we had never been to before.  Upon entering, we discovered aisles and aisles of VHS tapes, as far as the eye could see. It is so rare these days to come across a video store that has a large variety of tapes in stock. 

We headed straight for the kids/family section.  Popples! Care Bears! Pound Puppies! Strawberry Shortcake! Voltron! they had a little of everything. And not just a single copy of each, oh no, most of the iconic 80s series had an offering of several volumes available.  I was ecstatic.  Even better were the rental prices, which were next to nothing. So we walked out of there with a huge stack of tapes, which made for a good weekend.

We continued this new tradition a couple more times,  proudly cashing-in on the untapped plethora of 80’s animated goodness.  Unfortunately one time some woman made the mistake of embarrassing me by saying it was a shame I wasn’t getting anything for myself, which, me being a sensitive girl, was upsetting.  But I bounced right back, and discovered it was actually a pretty cool place.  A couple of the other employees who worked there were glad to see someone checking the tapes out, and agreed that they were now in fact rare treasures. 

 I found this store in a rather unpleasantway. My grandma was in the hospital, and I discovered this store en route to seeing her.  It was an upsetting time for me. Discovering this nostaligic little place seemed like a time warp (cue the singing!)  everytime I went back.  I think it was God’s way of bringing me a little comfort via magnetic tape and plastic clamshell boxes.

Thanks to my amazing boyfriend’s online discovery, we discovered that this store was closing. Which was sad, but exciting.  It was an opportunity to make the contents of that video store my own.   I loved going to video stores when I was a kid. Not like today when the only option you have is whatever crappy new release title DVDs  you find at Blockbuster that you’re sure to forget by next week. 

Remember how great it was to be able to pick up several tapes at once on a weekend as a special?  My usual routine as a little kid was to stop at Crazy Mike’s video for some Jem and Rainbow Brite tapes and then go next door to Safeway for pizza or a frozen kid’s meal. 

I also loved it when you’d be able to buy those little individual bags of warm popcorn for $1 (amazingly enough there still is one small store near me that does this) .  Such good memories.  Since this store that was closing was the closest thing I had to recreating that experience from my childhood (except without Jem tapes, unfortunately) I decided to throw logic out the door and stock pile as many tapes as I could. Nevermind where I was going to put them.  If it gets to be too much, I suppose we could go ahead and fill the entire bedroom with VHS tapes.  But, there really isn’t anywhere else for us to sleep. And that couch really isn’t big enough for two people.  Here are the results of my round.  I purchased a total of 36 VHS tapes. 

I’ve broken them down in to smaller categories for better visibility.

My findings in the comedy section were quite good.  Rare Disney clamshells,  Terrible forgotten sequels, and some undiscovered made for TV gems.   An excellent example of your basic video store classics.  Speaking of which, there is rumor that my beloved Daniel may perhaps be considering a return to blogging focusing on that very subject.  God knows I have enough ammo for him to get started with. I know I’m not the only one who thinks that would be awesome!

VHS desciptions L to R:
Hiding Out with Jon Cryer 1987
Like father like son Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron 1987
The boy who could fly, 1986 with 2 child sitcom stars for the price of one! Mindy Cohn and (drumroll, please) Our man, Fred Savage!
A night in the life of Jimmy Reardon starring River Phoenix 1988
Happy Together a.k.a. the other movie titled after a 60’s pop song that Patrick Dempsey was in.
TRON Classic. Isn’t that such a great clamshell box? I love the cover art.
Night Crossing a rather obscure 1981 Disney film.

The Peanut Butter Soultion 1985 family fantasy
Heart and Souls with Robert Downey Jr. 1993* (because Daniel keeps telling me I should see it)
Rock and Roll High School Forever 1991 sequel to Rock and Roll High School starring none other than.. Corey Feldman!
Big girls don’t cry.. they get even! 1992. I picked this up only to confirm that it is the same movie that I’ve been trying to remember the title of for about 5-10 years now. It is pretty bad as I recall. Not bad in a good way, bad in a ‘I’d rather watch My super sweet sixteen ‘way.
The Night Before Keanu Reeves and Lori Laughlin. 1988
High School USA This is my biggest prize out of the lot. 1983 TV movie starring (again, drumroll please..) Nancy McKeon, MICHEAL J. FOX (we love him. ) Todd Bridges and Dana Plato among others. I think this one might be getting its own seperate entry upon viewing.
Mannequin Too: On the move! 1991 sequel to Mannequin starring Kristy Swanson.

There is so much here that its probably too much for one post, but for now I’ll give a brief overview of the Kid-Vids I picked up, too:

Captain Planet vol. 1
Noozles I loved watching this on Nick Jr.
Pirates of Dark Water
Hanna Barbera All-stara: Dino and Juliet
Yogi’s great escape
Pound Puppies
My pet monster (animated series)
Wonderful World of Disney
Care Bears
G.I. Joe the movie ( a Celebrity’s Just for kids release. yay! )
Blinky Bill
Faeries A Family Home Entertainment release. I’ve never heard of it, but I just noticed on the IMDB page that Brian Froud was involved, so now I’m really intrigued to see it.
Popples
Care Bears family treasure chest (in an oversized Kideo Video box)
Voltron
Rainbow Brite’s San Diego zoo adventure A rare live action TV special featuring Rainbow Brite costume characters from 1983.
 

Last but not least is the Christmas section.  I LOVE Christmas, and one of my favorite Christmas time traditions is to watch as many holiday related movies and specials as possible.

Tiny Toons: It’s a wonderful Christmas special
Doug’s secret Christmas
All I want for Christmas
Yogi Bear’s All-star comdedy Christmas caper
The Bear who slept through Christmas
Benji’s very own Christmas story Excellent Children’s Video library clamshell release.