Remember back in the day when TV was 5 channels?(it’s an Australian thing) And the big movies were on Sunday night’s at 830? So if you wanted to watch something else you took yourself and the family to the good old neighborhood Video Store.

Our local store was a ‘Movieland.’ It opened in the late 80s and it was a treat for the senses. It was a massive store with each genre sectioned off and on the wall above the shelves of VHS tapes were these amazing 3d Styrofoam pictures. The action one was a car busting through a red brick wall and the sci-fi one was two space ships shooting lasers at each other.

In the back corner was a pink castle. You could walk inside to watch a video on the two screens inside. Remember that this was back in the days when most families had one TV in the whole house! So for a castle in a video store to have two screens was revolutionary!

In the other corner was 9 tv’s set up as one big screen! This was out of this world back in the 80s! They would play trailers of new releases and some times a whole movie! Big day when that happened!

Then there were the times when they had a video game system set up for you to have a turn on while your mum and dad couldn’t decide on “Father of the Bride” “The Naked Gun” or “Fletch.” I distinctly remember playing a NES Kung Fu game and being blown away by the gameplay and the graphics! I didn’t get a SEGA master system until years later!

Flash forward to the late 90s when the wrestling boom kicked off and I was hiring WWF and WCW vhs tapes by the wheel barrow load! I hired so many that when I graduated to a PS2…really it was my sister’s boyfriends PS2…i would go to ‘Movieland’ which had halved in size over the years and become a ‘Blockbuster.’ You had to put down a $20 deposit to rent a game…well the regular peasants did but not me! I had hired so many WWF tapes over the years that I had taken my family into the VIP section! Life was pretty good at the top!

I won’t talk about the decline of the Video Store but i will always hold the memories of those Saturday and Sunday nights watching family movies and seeing my Dad laugh at silly jokes and my mum shift uncomfortably when something inappropriate was on screen!