Such a loss

You kids with your fancy “tapes!” In my day we had to watch whatever the hell was on the three or four channels we could pick up with the rabbit ears, and we were damn glad to have it!
Once a year they’d show a Bond movie or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or maybe even that Willie Wonka movie. Such an event!
VCRs didn’t exist until I was a young adult. Doggone spoiled kids!
- I vividly remember being a teenager and channel 5 coming out. It was a huge deal
  
  Is it not batshit insane that we were throwing movies around via radiation before video tapes at home?
  Turns out it is, so much so that we decided to bury light across the country to make movies get here faster.
  
  We had to get a VCR in order to get our fifth channel - it was on UHF which our National Panacolor TV could not receive.
  
  I was so confused when i found out not everyone had channel 5. And we had the vhs tuned to 5 on the tv so channel 5 was on 6...
  
  Hosted by the spice girls?
  
  It would've been, but I didn't get it until the mid/late 2000's. First I lived in Herts which only got it if you had Sky, then just before it came out there, I moved to Brighton, where it wasn't allowed because it interfered with radio signals along the north coast in France. Still not sure if I've ever watched anything on Channel 5.
- “You think boredom is your ally, but you merely adopted the boredom, i was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t even see the invention of VCR till I was a man, by then it was nothing to me but unknown technology!”
- We must be about the same age. The VCR was a game changer. As I recall, the answering machine came just before it, and it's kind of amazing how fundamentally that changed things, too. People from more recent generations just don't get what a different paradigm it was when you couldn't necessarily contact your friends. You'd call their house, but if there wasn't an answer that didn't necessarily mean much. They might be outside, or maybe not home. Maybe they were on their bike heading to your house.

Children of the DVD era also know this life
- I'm in-between both. As a little kid I watched Bambi and Winnie the Pooh etc on tape and then later we hired all kinds of dvd's in the library and that's how I discovered Star Wars. Good times.
- That's pre-streaming as well. I recently volunteered on a film festival and was surprised how many people still watch DVDs when I worked at the merchandize.
- The Robots DVD radicalized me
- The early online pirating era still remembers it as well. When the torrent is already taking more than a week to complete the old dvd and tape collection had to be revisited.

I had a friend that recorded every single episode of the power rangers on VHS from pay tv.
Also, borrowing DVDs from the library was a thing back then (probably still is but noone does it).
- Borrowing DVDs is absolutely still a thing. Hell, now you can even borrow console games from your library. I do it all the time.
  
  Some let you straight up borrow consoles, kitchen supplies, tools, etc. The central library in Los Angeles has a 3D printer and podcasting studio, among others.
- I recorded the entirety of Star Trek TNG on VHS from local network broadcast. It turns out that its the commercials that are priceless now.
  
  Watching old commercial segments on YouTube from when we were kids hits right in the feels every time.
  
  I wonder if people will fondly remember any YT ads of today in the next 10-15 years.
- I think I can stream movies for free at home from my library. It has some limitations on numbers and selection, but the general idea lives on.
  
  Yeah I did the same with ebooks on my tolino with onleihe for some time. The device itself has amortized pretty quickly that way.

I grew up with The Legend of Zelda. "Well excuuuuuuse me, princess"

We had Spaceballs. It's still awesome!
- Us too! That and Innerspace.
  
  Same, and flight of the navigator. "I don't leak, you leak, remember."
- Spaceballs? We're fucked!

Indian in the cupboard.
Though even as a child I remember thinking how annoying the main kid was and how bad he was at acting
- Was this an obscure movie? I thought a huge slice of US Gen X and Millennials loved that book.
  
  There’s really no obscure movies for 90s kids. The most obscure film will have a big following. I didn’t know everyone also watched an American tail and little giants as much as I did
- Oh man, I remember the books! Exciting. I should never read them again so to preserve the good memories lmfao

Enemy Mine. That's the movie.
- Such a great movie. You aren’t human if you didn’t shed a tear during that film.
  On a side note, the book is amazing, too. One of the rare instances where both are excellent.
- Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who ever saw that flick. Concur there's some lasting life lessons in there. And space turtles!
  
  Happy to see some fellow lemmings enjoy it as much as I did.
- Earthman, your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

The Last Unicorn and Titan A.E. loved those movies.

You know what I think is missing more? Complete lack of context.
Digital cable that had the menu of what was playing was a novelty even in the 2000s so television used to be "you turned it on and what was playing was playing." You'd catch a movie halfway in and not know what the hell it is and that was all you could learn. Even if you had an internet connection you wouldn't think to use it to look up what this movie was, and if you did, IMDB and such didn't exist yet. Maybe Yahoo! would turn something up, probably not.
Then the file sharing days were wild. There are people convinced to this day that System of a Down did a song about The Legend of Zelda.
- Not to undermine your point but IMDB actually started on Usenet in 1990, 3 years before the World Wide Web became public. So it did technically exist, but it certainly wasn't a household name at that time.
  HTTP 1.0 wasn't even finalized until 1996! Although browsers and web servers supported the 0.9 spec and implemented proposals from the 1.0 draft before it was finalized.
  
  I remember at one time it was possible to download the entire IMDB data. I used it for a UI project in a CS class in the early 90s.
- Eh, the printed TV guide was a thing, and around here just about every newspaper had daily and/or weekly listings of what was on the different channels. Most cable subscriptions came with their own monthly TV guide as well.
  Fond memories of going through the TV listings with family, circling the things each one wanted to see on the single TV in the house 🙂
- Similar thing applies to music. There are still web radio stations and web broadcasts of good FM stations out there, and what a relief it is to fall back on these, especially i f you're getting playlist burnout. There's something to be said for a queue of music that some person has just slapped together for the day that fits whatever the overall feeling of a station is. The original algorithms before the final algorithms took over, I suppose.

Yeah, kids today certainly won't watch the same shit over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and
- Zoomer here. I had this with random YouTube videos. We had cult classics like asdf, and YouTubers were special.
- like a monkey with a miniature cymbal
- Depends on the movie and the kid.
  My first kid watched Coco about a million times. Probably most underrated Pixar film, imo. I still tear up during My Strong Corazon.
  Can't tell you how much I've seen the Mario Movie.
  Or the same episodes of Bluey.
  So blockbusters still get tons of rewatch.
  But...there's soooo much independent content out there. And kids aren't beholden to what's physically in the house.
  Honestly it's amazing to me that modern kids have a cohesive culture with so much media variety.
  I suppose as long as there are huge franchises, people will always grasp onto them in some way, and they will be kind of beacons for an array of subcultures. You'll still have kids that gravitate towards Minecraft...or Star Wars...or Sonic...or LotR, and then discover more niche stuff on a tangent from those.

"Owned on tape" was for rich people. "Taped from NBC or ABC, or, if the weather was just right, CBS and you tried to pause the recording during the commercials and that's why 8 minutes are missing from the middle of the movie" is more like it.
- How about "lacked a VHS player altogether" lmao. My movie ingestion growing up was basically 100% up to the whims of random people, strange way to do it.
  Really dig the scrappy approach y'all used tho, that's the good stuff. Being broke taught me a lotta the most important stuff TBH.
- Bootleg that was taped in a movie theatre and then rented from the guy down the street that had a room in his house set up with shelves and a shit ton of movies. And/or the collection that was left from the last people that lived in your house. Along with their furniture. My movie was LA Story. The good old days in Saudi Arabia.

Children definitely still experience something similar via small/unknown YouTube channels, games, Roblox games, fandoms, etc. Sure everyone knows the big famous stuff, but that's the same as pre-2000s kids too.
- Yeah, obscure interests are hardly a thing of the past. If anything it's only gotten stronger, people of all ages can now be sucked so far down the fandom rabbithole that they lose sight of it being their obscure interest.
  Although the way it used to be, kids would have access to one obscure thing, and so that's their one chance at having an obscure interest. That's changed, kids now get much wider choice.
  Edit: Clarity
- Soft of, but it's not the same as watching golden child and half of jewel of the Nile 100 times.
- yeah but they're choosing to watch that out of millions. It's not because that was literally just what was in the house so it was that or nothing.
  
  Ah, good distinction!

The Master of Disguise.
I uhh, can't really say its good tbh.
- Was he not turtley enough for you?
  
  The entire movie is immersion therapy for those who suffer second-hand embarrassment.
  Except one character that was genuinely fun. And a crack to the didgy-donch!

Little Rascals (1994)
So many quotes burned into my brain, particularly from buckeheat and porky. To this day, I sing "We got a dollar" and "I got two pickles", ask "Quick! What's the number for 911?", and recite Alfalfa's "Dear Darla" letter.

Oh man, we had so many weird movies.
While my mom was in charge of nurturing a broad taste in music, my dad was in charge of taping movies of all kinds and showing them to us.
He waited for me to turn 13 to watch Seven Samurai and several other Kurosawa movies. We watched all the old Pink Panther movies, a couple of Jacques Tati films (Mon Uncle being our favourite when we had the flu), Le Ballon Rouge, multiple Soviet animated movies, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush, Gloria, The Blues Brothers and on and on and on.
I owe a lot to my parents for instilling a broad music and movie taste in me super early.
I'm sure kids of today form their own valuable memories, but their reality is so foreign to us that we only see it as a threat.
I'm a pretty big fan of the podcast Creepcast on youtube and one of the cohosts grew up on creepypastas online which is very interesting to listen to whenever he talks about the nostalgia for him and many others. I was already in my 20s when creepypastas became a thing online so to me, it is interesting to hear what childhood was like for the 20somethings of today, who all grew up on the internet and have fond memories of it.
The kids of today will have their stories too and they will also be interesting to listen to, I'm sure. It is differnet than growing up on worn out cassette and VHS tapes, but it doesn't make it all bad. Things just change over time.

on saturdays the local station would broadcast scifi b movies. we'd record them and keep the good ones.

Or, what movie you dubbed from a rented VHS tape and watch 200 times until The quality had degraded so bad that it was almost unwatchable. I'm looking at you Short Circuit.
Mom: why do you want to rent that You've watched 500 times at home Me: our slp copy's looking pretty bad. Mom: grrrr

The animated Robin Hood with the animals. Maid Marion probably cracked my egg lol, just wish I broken all the way out sooner
This is also kind of the beauty of physical media. Or at least “private collections”. Like even if you digitize stuff you really only have the drive space you are willing to commit. Back when mp3 players could only fit a few hundred songs, I had to be really sure I liked those songs. I’ve gotten back into this a bit with ditching streaming services. I’m ripping my own cds and movies again, streaming them from my home server. It’s the combo of the tech we have now, and the curation we had to do then.
- Is a Disney film really obscure though?
  
  Some certainly are, like the Black Cauldron.
  
  I mean fair, makes sense that was Disney. Didn’t even process it as such at the time.

That’s parental failing for not torrenting
- Wasn’t really an option when you were trying to see the titties in Titanic
  
  Internet nowadays is merciful

Ah yes, Harry and the Hendersons.
Also The Great Outdoors
- https://clickhole.com/awkward-john-lithgows-episode-of-criterion-closet-just-shows-him-looking-for-harry-and-the-hendersons-for-45-minutes/
  
  i assume thats some kind of parody/joke website?

Swiss Family Robinson
Nobody remembers Swiss Family Robinson

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

Erik the Viking. I think it came with petrol coupons or something. Never seen it mentioned anywhere since.

Transformers (the animated movie)
Still good today and I rewatch it from time to time.
- YOU GOT THE TOUCH
  
  Banging soundtrack through and through.
- This is exactly what I thought of when I read this!
  I still watch it every year, the night before my birthday. No matter what else happens or changes, TFTM has become my touchstone.

Chronicles of Riddick, and Titan A.E
I had a great childhood

We had a lot of VHS tapes that got worn out over time because they got watched so many times. My little brothers watched chitty chitty bang bang so much that the quality of the entire film was noticably worse by the time the tape got accidentally stepped on and destroyed.
Also mysteriously all the sex scenes with the incredibly attractive women in the Pierce Brosnan James bond films were worn out too. I wouldn't know anything about that nor does it have anything to do with why I'm now a masochist whos into women that bite, scratch and even stab me from time to time... No correlation whatsoever.

Not obscure but shout out to milo and otis. I must have watched that movie hundreds of times then a hundred more when my sister started watching things.
- I loved that movie until I learned how they treated the animals.
  
  Dont tell. I want to remain ignorant.
- I saw Milo and Otis as an adult many years ago. At one point the narrator says, I shit you not, "The chickens left the henhouse in a clucking flurry!"
  Oh my god, brilliant shit.

We had a tape that had Asterix in Britain followed by the Only Fools And Horses feature-length episode where they go to Florida and Del-Boy gets mistaken for a mob boss.
To this day, I can probably quote both from beginning to end.

Canonball run 2 It was the shit back in the day

My go to was The Sandlot, but whose wasn't? Sprinkle in some Surf Ninjas, with a dash of Twister, and that was me for a good many years.

And commercials. My wife and I were just talking the other day about shared commercials we saw growing up that kids today will never experience. “Ancient Chinese secret”, “Don’t squeeze the charmin”, the crying Native American, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”, “Where’s the beef?”, “My bologna has a first name”, “I’m stuck on Band-aid”, “Calgon take me away”, “Mikey likes it”, “Sometimes you feel like a nut”, Joe Isuzu, “Avoid the noid”, “York peppermint patty gives me the feeling…”, Stompers, Micro-machines, “Who wears short shorts?”, “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter” … and these are just the ones I remember. They have none of those shared experiences.
I mean just making this list gave me such a wave of nostalgia.
- You forgot Alka Seltzer's "Mama mia, that's a spicy meatball!"
  
  Yes I did.
- I understand nostalgia for commercials but every time I've watched anything with ads (streaming or live tv) it's absolutely awful to watch now. Maybe it was because it was all I knew as a kid but I cannot stand ads breaking up shows anymore.
  I don't watch much tv anymore anyway

Star Wars Episode I recorded off its debut on German TV by my grandpa for my older brother. Watched that so often, I had it partially memorised. That and Disney's Hercules and The Sword in the Stone. And apparently I was really keen on watching TV ads when I was little :D
- SW E1 was our once or twice a month movie growing up. My parents had a half dozen different editions of it, from standard VHS, to SE VHS, DVD, blu ray, etc. I bet you, contrasting that, that I’ve only seen E3 once. Maybe twice. The let down was real.
- None of those are semi-obscure though.
  
  Yea fair point, missed that

Monkey Trouble is my wife's jam. We have it on Laserdisc even because I like collecting junk :)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110557/
- Oh god…I remember my mum taking me and my sister to buy a video with some money we’d been given, but we just argued all the way around Woolworths (Woolies is now gone so another memory.) about what to buy, and eventually settled on this. Another was Pete’s Dragon.

It's funny because it's true. Little children should not be in front of screens. Period.
- Nonsense, Boomers were the first generation to grow up in front of the TV, and look how they turned out!
  Oh, I see your point.
- If you sit too close to the tv you could go blind!

Tremors FTW!!

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Like, the shitty one with Grounder and whatever the chicken robot's name was... Had like the whole collection of those when what I wanted was the more anime like series where Sally Acorn came from. 😔

They still have that today, though. It's just on streaming alongside the big films.
I don't doubt a portion of the Disney remakes would have ended up being direct-to-VCD sequels you'd only find in a video rental store.

The Court Jester (1955)
My grandparents had it on vhs, recorded from a tv broadcast. We watched (and quoted) it obsessively every time we went to visit them.
- your grandparents had taste

Mom and Dad Save the World!
"Pick me up...? Okay!"
- Diabolical isn't it?
  That's another one for the "what's a critically panned movie you'll defend" thread.

LA Story! I still love that movie. Our movies were whatever the people that lived in the house before you left when they moved back to wherever they were from (expat life in the Middle East). Also my grandma taped all the Fairy Tale Theatre episodes for me. The three little pigs was the best! Billy Crystal as the runt and Jeff Goldblum as the big bad wolf, so so good.

During the 80's I remember watching Clash of the Titans on Saturday morning TV repeatedly.
- The stop motion monsters still hold up.

The cabin we vacationed at a few times had exactly two VHS tapes, as I recall:
Green Eggs & Ham (Side 1) / Star-Bellied Sneeches (Side 2)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Also we watched fuzzy news coverage of the Olympic bombing in Atlanta and it briefly seemed like it was the end of the world for like 2-3 hours. Probably because I was a kid + fuzzy TV in a cabin in the mountains + dramatic parents, etc.
Edit: I realized I said Side 1/Side 2 like it was a record. Anyway, it was just a 2-part Dr. Seuss VHS, not a rare dual-layer VHS.

My uncle had a vhs player many years before we did. He had 2 movies.
Smokey and the bandit probably more then 100 times in total. The sting probaly around 40-50 times.

Junior year of college, there were a few months where the only tapes in our house were Yellow Submarine, Slackers, and something I can't remember

The Miracle on Morgan's Creek. I never liked it much, but my family did. Also The Princess Bride, but that's not obscure so it can't count here.

I think it can still happen, we had movies saved on my little brother's computer and he was quoting the political scenes of the Star wars prequels.
- Nobody likes politic because It's coarse and rough and irritating.... and it gets everywhere

We got cable when I was about 10. In my country even on cable we had very few channels. Game changer! Those Saturday morning cartoons!

The Tenth Kingdom cult reporting in

For us, it was Condor Man
- Mad Max for me, I even cut up my bike gloves to match his worn out driving gloves.

Thx to my mom we had Star Wars. I'm persuaded this set the course of my life in some ways. Thx mom!

There's a certain irony in me working in robotics, yet my favourite movie is The Missing Postman.

Honestly somewhat surprised parents don't automatically take the route of getting their kids thrown into their own niche world of focus beyond "here, phone.. phone good.. good luck"
- It's mostly because the phones make the kids "calm down", aka it stops them from being kids for periods of the day, much like TV and videogames did.
  When you think about the situation, it's a downward spiral. Parents have to work harder to sustain kids than people did 30-50 years ago, there aren't many places for kids to just play and fool around unsupervised, homes are getting smaller

Also, we all watched the exact same shows at the same times, because that was what was on the 2 or 3 channels at the time.
Meanwhile, the next generation who knows what show from what time the other kids stream from who knows what service.

Having a random movie come up on YTV or Teletoon or some other channel only to never be seen again was a painfully common occurrence as a kid.