V for...

VCR, VHS, VIDEO GAMES AND VIDEO RENTALS:

It wasn't until 1988 that my house finally got a VCR, and going out to rent VHS tapes and recording stuff from TV became a habit. 

I never recorded porn or football games😁🤣, and we did not have a camera for recording videos. I did, however, have an ever-growing collection of various tapes like these. Whenever we'd get free previews on cable for pay stations like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, Encore or Disney (back when it was a premium station), I often went crazy taping movies and shows, making sure to label them on the stickers that went on the tape spine. 

Before Blockbuster came to my town, there were several local video rental stores, all of which rented videos in solid-colored plastic boxes. Most of the local ones had closed by the early 2000s, leaving Blockbuster the lone video rental place in town until it closed in 2011. By that time I'd transitioned to DVDs, and began getting them via Netflix beginning in 2007. And now that Netflix will be ending the DVDs-by-mail service at the end of September, I plan to keep it going until then. I also get DVDs from the library, which I may continue to do after Netflix ends it mail service.

Does anyone remember--or did you even have--the CED, an early failed video format that had an even shorter and worse life than the Laser Disc or Beta Max? My aunt and uncle had a CED player which I vaguely remember. CEDs were like a vinyl record.

I was never big on video games. I never had a player myself, and did not attempt to play the one at my aunt and uncle's (the same ones mentioned above) house. They had Atari when it was big and later got into Nintendo. I cannot ever recall playing this standing video games either. There were no arcades in my once-really small home town, but these games often were (and still are) at pizza places. This just was not my kind of thing.

VIEW MASTER:

In case you don't know or have forgotten, watch this video to see what the View Master was:

Though I was sure there were some of you out there who knew what this was 😃 It was always fun to look at this things. I cannot even speculate what reels I had as just about every movie or TV character or star imaginable had a reel made. Though I never knew how to make my own film to view on the View Master--didn't even know this was a thing.

VENDING MACHINES:

We still see ones like these in stores:

But some can remember when they looked like this. And when they had machines for stuff like cigarettes. A burger joint in my hometown had one of these. It's obvious why these don't exist now.

And it seems there were ones for weird stuff, like toilet paper. Who knew? Never saw any of these. And the Playboy drink machine is quite bizarre!

Putting coins into vending machines is like gambling for youngsters. You might hope for a pink toy in the claw machine or a blue gum ball and get something else.

VELCRO:

Velcro could be found just about everywhere, including on shoes or backpacks. One or more of my Trapper Keepers had a velcro closure (some had snap closures) and I may have had a velcro-closure wallet (not too sure about that one, though). I wasn't much on velcro shoes, as far as I know.

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VERY glad to have you stop by. WE'LL be back tomorrow.