Yes, I remember them. We used a smaller, less well-known video rental store in the town I grew up in. It was a 5-minute drive from my house, and was right next door to the drugstore. I loved going there. Every time we went there were always new videos to look at. You walked in and it felt a little bit like a bookstore, with all the shelves everywhere. The video tapes to rent were each put inside of plastic cases that would be kept at the store while you took the tape home in a temporary sleeve.
There was a limit to how long you could keep it [obviously], and you could pay for different time lengths to rent. The price of renting was usually much lower than buying video tapes in those days, hence why many people rented. In fact, it wasn't much different than checking out a book at the library. (Incidentally, our local library also rented out tapes, but their selections was much more limited). If you were late in bringing the video back, the rental place would call and remind you, and you had to pay a late fee for each day the rental tape was late. Eventually, if you damaged the tape or failed to return it, you had to pay the rental place the price of the tape, and they probably would put you on a list of people not to do services for later. This place we used also had a warning poster by the exit door that showed precisely why you should not leave plastic video tapes in hot cars on a summer's day. The poster had a real tape that had been melted by heat attached to it, to show they weren't lying.
Blockbuster was much more formal than some of the rental places we used. Every rental tape/video game/DVD we rented had a sleeve with their blue and yellow brand name on it. Their rental places also doubled as stores, and you could buy cheap toys, a few glossy photo books, and even snacks. The trouble was, Blockbuster was more expensive with their rentals, and people often only went to use their services because they were the only rental store in the area
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