The Release of E.T.- a "just for fun" look back at the golden age of VHS

From the spring of 1987 (a few months before I graduated from college) to the spring of 1991 (when I was in the process of finishing up my Master's Degree and preparing to move to New York with my fiancee) I worked for a video rental store chain in the DC/Northern Virginia region.  I started out as a part-timer and ended up managing several stores, making enough money to pay my tuition, take girls out to dinner, and generally have the kind of fun you are supposed to have when you're in your mid-twenties and getting ready to start Real Life.

E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial was released on VHS in October 1988, a month after I had started grad school and right after I had been bumped up to Assistant Manager at The Video Place's hole in the wall store in the underground mall at Crystal City, Virginia.  I can remember taking multiple pre-orders every day for months beforehand, taking down deposits of 50% for the $24.95 tape (minus the $5 Pepsi promotion) and answering one "is it there yet" call after another (nobody seemed to quite understand what the term "release date" meant, and in the pre-Google age nobody seemed to know how to find it anyway.)

There were a lot of big films released on VHS while I worked at The Video Place- An American Tail, Lady and the Tramp, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Rocky Horror Picture Show where probably the biggest, but I can also remember selling Janet Jackson and Phil Collins and Tears for Fears concert compilations at a pretty quick clip.  I wonder if they are still collecting dust somewhere.  But I don't think we ever experienced anything from our customers that approached the excitement of the E.T. video release.  It was even bigger than the rush to grab a copy of Legend of Zelda they were experiencing across the hall at Waxie-Maxies.  I think we sold about 300 pre-order and hundreds more off the shelf before that Christmas.  I still have a copy lying around somewhere, I'm sure.

Anyway, like all Golden Ages, this one didn't last forever, and The Video Place didn't long survive my departure- in fact, three of the four stores in the chain had been closed before I left, and the final one shut down before the end of 1991.  I spent most of my last months with the company going from store to store organizing close-out sales- I've mentioned before at this site that when I closed one store there was exactly ONE unsold VHS tape on the shelf- Satisfaction, "starring" Justine Bateman but including Liam Neeson and Julia Roberts.  I didn't know it then, but the rental industry had passed its peak and the internet was looming on the horizon.

Thirty years after it's release, E.T. is still a solid seller on Amazon (I don't know how well An American Tail aged) and a generation is growing up less susceptible to the charms of the brick and mortar store, so I guess the idea of a place where you could go and browse movie titles on the shelf is going to sound more and more alien as the years go by.  For us, it's still a loss, just one that's going to be harder to describe and explain to the next generation.  I like to remind myself of those days anyway.

Consistent Fidelity to the wealth of rich white people

These Fidelty Investment commercials, with their endless parade of self-satisfied, grey-haired white people whose favorite pasttime is to look whistfully into the middle distance  who obviously have plenty of money but who are forever fussing with brokers to make sure they have even more in the future, never fail to warm the heart, do they?

I guess it's all about making sure that you get to travel all over the world when you retire (while in your mid-50s, of course) while still leaving a buttload of money to the kids.  It's every couple's dream, but it's only available to people who make enough money to live in big houses and spend freely yet still manage to keep brokerage offices busy with the excess for several decades....in other words, to a smaller and smaller percentage of people every single year.

Anyway, I'm sure we're all super-happy that the reward for settling for that one huge suburban mansion and only the ocassional overseas vacation and one car per person in the household is a long retirement filled with exotic places and robust health because, as I've implied, these people are retiring in their mid-fifties having spend their entire adult lives with excellent medical care, the best of nutrition, etc. while performing jobs which weren't the least bit physically taxing.   I know I am!

If I worked at Best Buy during the Holiday Rush....

"Here's my list- I wrote it out on a register slip from 1975, don't ask me why....my daughter.  She's getting into gaming."

Me:  "Ok, let's nip that right in the bud.  Why not head over to Barnes and Noble and ask what's big this month in the Young Adult genre?  Because you don't want to feed that particular passion.  I mean, unless you WANT her to be a fat, housebound, socially isolated tribble."

"But she really likes games...."

Me:  "That's great!  Maybe it's not too late to get her on the neighborhood hockey team.  Or ask her if she prefers non-contact ice skating.  How about signing her up for skiing lessons?  And keep an eye out for softball and baseball tryouts when spring comes.  Fresh air, exercise, and new skills...no downside there!"

"Um...ok.  Now, for my husband...."

Me:  "I was told to tell every female who comes in here that guys are really into drones.  Since drones have only been available gifts for maybe 2 Christmases, I'm not sure how anyone could possibly know that.  So I'm not going to tell you that your husband wants something that is insanely dangerous to use unless you live on an isolated farm somewhere.  Since you're one of the 90 percent of Americans who live in an urban area, a drone would be a really stupid, senseless, and as I just mentioned dangerous toy, I suggest the hottest video game."

"I thought you didn't like video games...."

Me:  "I fight the battles I can win.  If your daughter is 'really getting into gaming,' you probably already have a nice gaming system, which means your husband is an overgrown child who likes to waste his life staring at a screen.  It's probably too late to save him.  So here's the latest Pretend to Be What People Who Have Never Seen Combat Think A Soldier Is game...."

A Good Day to revisit this classic from Folger's, with more questions....

1.  How far did that Volkswagen go to bring Peter home for the holidays?  It's caked with frost when it drops him off.  I know that Volkswagen heaters were notoriously bad, but jeesh...at least the back should have been clear of snow after twenty minutes or so.  That's where the engine was, after all.

2.  Does Peter just assume there isn't already a can of coffee open?  I mean, he starts right off by opening a new one.  Maybe he brought that one? 

3.  Why does Peter set out the glass coffee pot with no lid on it instead of leaving it on the heating plate until people begin to wake up?  That coffee is going to get cold in about five minutes.  And it's already Folger's- the only thing nastier than Folger's coffee is cold Folger's coffee. 

4.  Why is this family drinking the coffee out of those stupid tiny teacups?  Oh, right, because it's a commercial and it's important to show the coffee as much as possible.  Doesn't seem at all important today- generally in modern ads we see people carrying around huge mugs.  Maybe today it's all about the consumption level.

5.  Why is this family drinking Folger's in the first place?  Oh, right- because it's the 70s, before gourmet coffee was a thing.  I bet the only place to get a good cup of coffee in this town is the local diner or maybe McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts.  So Folger's is the standard for this family at this time.  Which is probably why nobody is nostalgic for the 70s. 

Warm Holiday Exchange, brought to us from Portal

They aren't having an "ugly sweater" party.

She isn't having a "burnt cookie" party.

They are both having a "stupid, passive-aggressive party."

They are both better off being hundreds of miles from eachother during the holidays.

They only own Portal so that they can continue to be stupid and vicious to eachother even while hundreds of miles away.

And in keeping with television commercials in general, the woman with the burnt cookies has a kitchen larger than my apartment.  Happy holidays to you, too, Portal.

I remember when Stouffers and the Holidays were inseperable

This hilarious throwback to the glorious 1980s reminds us of the time when every holiday party simply had to include plate after plate of toasted bread topped with cheap cheese, tomato sauce and something that at least looked like pepperoni.  I can remember every party being pretty much over as soon as the Stouffer's ran out.

But until it did.....wow, such awesomeness.  Big smiles, laughter, and gathering around the piano with friends to sing in between scarfing down flavored toast from the freezer aisle.  Everything was so perfect back then.  I'm pretty sure President Reagan had a lot to do with it.

As a sidenote- notice that nobody in this ad is texting or taking photos with their phones, because nobody- except the owner of the house- has a phone.  Yet, they all seem to be having a good time, despite the fact that they are totally unable to take photos of their chunks of crunchy bread or anything else and where forced to socialize with the people in the room rather than people not in attendance.  They couldn't even update their Facebook pages back then!

We were so weird back in the 1980s.  Better, but weird.

These Febreze Commercials are all really, really weird

The woman in this house can't understand why her gleaming-white house doesn't smell as good as it looks despite the fact that she clearly spends 99 percent of her time polishing it to a high gloss.  She can't understand why it smells bad because in all her cleaning she totally forgot that she owns a dog that she lets stink up the couch.

Now that she's been reminded by her eyes than she owns a dog, she's put two and two together and figured out the whole Cause and Effect thing, and it's time to reach for the bottle of chemicals and start spraying it all over the place.  The problem is, as soon as she's done spreading House Deodorant she's going to forget that she owns a dog again, and if she does that often enough that dog will probably die of malnutrition. 

Then she'll have a dead dog, which will start to stink, and then more chemical spraying until the nice people from the state show up to remove the carcass and take the woman to another gleaming-white building filled with nice people wearing lab coats.