In the 80s there was VHS - actually it was the 70s…

a very old VCR

Can you remember your first VCR?

I remember mine, well my parent's first VCR. BUT when my dad actually bought it is kinda fuzzy. I know we were very late to the VCR owning party. I feel like our first VCR was not until maybe 1985-1986. I know for a fact it was maybe a year or two before the G.I. JOE cartoon movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093066/, which came out in April 1987. Being a huge G.I. JOE fan I remember this very well because I recorded the movie by sheer luck. The more and more I think of it, that might have been one of the very first things I recorded.

You know, when I think of it, all those years ago my family really only used the VCR for movies we rented. We did not record much on it… well… not until around 1990…

Can you remember your first VHS movie purchase?

My first VHS movie purchase was Excalibur. It was my favorite movie as a child (often tied with Ghostbusters). It came in a huge plastic clam shell box, which I kept for years and years. Before writing this I tried my hardest to date my purchase, the best I could come up with was… maybe in 1986. BUT what I do know, and with 100% accuracy is where I got it.  It was inside a video/music store in the Village Mall. (back before Acme consumed 1/3 of the mall)(the store was on the Acme side).

Behold, Excalibur! This is exactly what my copy looked like.

You know, if I was to list the top 25 things that remind me of the 80s, the Village Mall would be there. What was this place? The Village Mall was a tiny, indoor mall in Hatboro, PA, the town where I grew up. In the 70s and 80s it was a busy spot. With a good assortment of shops from clothing to jewelry, a bank, book store, a pet shop, a drug store; the place even had a small arcade and a two screen movie theater. Many of my first movies were seen there: Indiana Jones, Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, Jaws 3, even E.T.

This is the only picture I could find of the original Village Mall.

My favorite spot in this tiny mall was a hobby store where my parents purchased most of my early Dungeons and Dragons books and figures. Ah… the Village Mall… Anyone who lived in the area has a story or two about the place through the years…

Anyway, my fondest memories of owning a VCR come from the fact that I started taping all my shows around 1992. I was kinda OCD about it. A crazy hoarder of shows. This was back in the day that they did not release TV shows in box sets, so I lived with the fear that if I did not tape my favorite shows they would one day vanish from TV and my life. (OH NO!)

This stems from losing shows like Matt Houston, I bet, and a ton of great Saturday Morning cartoons like Spiderman and his Amazing Friends and Thundarr the Barbarian. (I own the latter on DVD now)

Yep, I started recording all my favorites. Starting with super hero shows... The Flash (live action) and Batman the Animated Series. I quickly learned to record my shows on LP, the middle grade of quality, so I could fit 5-6 hours on a tape, but inevitably I ran out of tapes quick. This is when my dad started a new family tradition that lasted until maybe 5 years ago.

Every X-Mas my dad gave me and my two cousins a 8-10 pack of VHS tapes. I used between 20-40 tapes a year. So I was normally in need of a new stock.

Remember these?

Yeah, you really know where your problems lie as a collector when you move homes. My first move from my parent's house to a townhouse in Bucks County, PA I realized I had a lot of comics and they were a real pain in the ass to carry up and down stairs. But worse than that were my VHS tapes. At this point in my life I had a pretty substantial VHS tape collection too. I would estimate I had about 6 of those UHAUL standard boxes filled.

Since it was the late 1990s I had my own massive line of recorded shows like Star Trek: TNG, Quantum Leap, Forever Knight, Batman - TAS, X-Men (90s), Star Trek: DS9, and many others. BUT I was also building a pretty hefty purchased movie collection too. I owned Anime, fantasy movies, and yes, finally shows like Twin Peaks collected in box sets.

Oh, did I forget to mention I worked in a video store in a big mall for about 6 months… um… yeah…. and I spent a lot of my paycheck on movies all in VHS format.

Like my father before me, I drug my feet when new technology arrived. I had a collection of over 600-700 VHS tapes! I did NOT want to switch to DVD!!! That meant having to re-purchase all my movies. (I wrote an article about that before, here is  the link) (nothing worse than having to buy something you already bought before)

http://www.literaryescapism.com/16486/guest-author-kevin-james-breaux

So, it must've been 2002 before I started renting and buying DVDs. And in 2004 I moved houses again.

Moving all my VHS tapes AGAIN, this time in Rubbermaid bins, made it all too clear I had too many of them. But hey, things like THE TICK were not on DVD…. but I had all the eps. on VHS tape! YAY! I could watch them whenever I wanted!!! Same with Buffy, Angel and Mutant-X! 

…but slowly those shows started getting released in awesome DVD box set collections. Slowly, my closet full of VHS tapes, my awesome collection, was becoming antiquated. No one wanted to borrow VHS tapes. And Blockbuster… you were phasing out tapes before my very eyes…

*cry* ...be kind, rewind…. *cry*

The first DVDs I bought were of my favorite movies, ones I had, admittedly, already bought 2-3 times before on VHS. Once in original plain old VHS, then later in VHS... but glorious letterbox and rarely a third time for anniversary editions. So there I was buying a movie like JAWS a fourth time. What the hell! 

In 2009 I moved homes again. This time from PA to Oregon. It was a big move, a costly move, and the hard reality was… some things were not coming with me. I remember the day I sat on the floor next to the closet with all my VHS tapes. I had a box of "keep" and a box of "throw out" and a box of "give away".  I meticulously went through all my movies and when I was done I had a large pile of things to get rid of and two smaller ones to keep and give to my dad.

A day or two passed and when I returned to the organized tapes I made a command decision… heartbreaking in some ways. I must have had 700 tapes and I tossed most of them out into the trash.

Out went my Twin Peaks box set, which I bought when I was working at Sun Coast Video for 50% off (still costing me over $100). Out went all my X-Men cartoons, probably 20+ tapes. My original copies of Star Wars. My letterbox copies of Star Wars. My copies of extended Star Wars…. ug…. And yes, in the trash was the first anime movie I ever bought, something I shared the cost of with an old friend, AKIRA. (I need that DVD still)

To be honest I threw out my VCRS too… well, two of the three. I kept one. It's in a box in storage now. Why did I keep it? I kept it for a few home movies I have on VHS. A few videos I made with my friends, all of us dressed as super heroes, some wearing costumes made of card board. (you know who you are)

Funny story, my dad only ever bought one VCR. I kinda remember it being a Sanyo brand, but he used that thing for many years, probably almost 20... until I bought him a VCR/DVD combo.  He now owns a good Sony DVD player. My dad loves movies. :)

Do I regret my old VHS ways? Yes and no. I mean how was I to know the day would come where TV show box sets would be released? How was I to know DVDs would be invented? That all being said, I will admit, I have nightmares of a future media change… and yeah, you guessed it… I have a large DVD collection now. No, I never went to Blu-Ray and I never will.

Kevin James Breaux

Thinking I could have bought a Ferrari like Magnum's with all the money I spent on VHS tapes.

 www.kevinbreaux.com