Blank Tape Bazaar Vol. 6

Hey all. For the last edition of BTB, I'll be posting what I'm sure a lot of you still have kicking around in your junk drawers or behind your TV wall units - blank VHS labels.

I must confess I was pretty anal about properly labelling tapes back in the day and since my collection at its height numbered over four-hundred tapes, I had to often get a little creative as each brand seemed to supply their own amount of digits and symbols.

I distinctly remember the oldest labels by Embassy Gold above had a glossy finish which made them more difficult to write on. I had to forego using pencil for the finality of pen.

As I said before, in the later stages of my recording days, the gold Memorex became my go-to, so I literally have stacks of those above. 

I always liked the symbols on the one above and used the cartoon one on all my anime tapes.

I spoke about the surprisingly high quality of the Blockbuster brand, which is why that one above is the only unused label I still have.

I was always grateful of the brands that gave you letter options, as I used letter suffixes for all my television stuff - X for X-Files, T for Twin Peaks, V for music videos and so on...

So that's it! I hope you enjoyed reminiscing with me. If you want to relive them in all their musty glory, check out the links below.

Blank Tape Bazaar
Blank Tape Bazaar 2
Blank Tape Bazaar 3
Blank Tape Bazaar 4
Blank Tape Bazaar 5

Until next time, stay safe kiddies!

Blank Tape Bazaar Vol. 5

This week, I've got a few more recordable VHS from the past starting with consummate electronic brands in Sony and JVC.

Perhaps the most distinct looking brand, next to maybe Polaroid, would have to be Kodak.

I mean, you can spot those off-yellow jacket covers from across a room, amirite? To round out things here today are a couple of others I found lying around.

 

Again, with the lifetime warranty. I still wonder if anyone ever called them on that.

And with that, I have now tapped out the blanks I have at my disposal, but check back next week for one last edition of Blank Tape Bazaar. See you then.

Blank Tape Bazaar Vol. 4

As like my own piles of recordable VHS, when looking through my mom's old stash (which is ninety-five per cent old Days of Our Lives episodes) I noticed some brand trends. Also like me, the older tapes were Embassy Gold & Studio, but when they blinked out of existence, my mother seemed to settle on BASF.

BASF may be the brand that kept its jacket designs the most similar over the years. As you can see, they stuck to the grey with rainbow highlight, only changing up the emphasis on the 6-hour recording length. I wonder if I could call them out on their lifetime guarantee if need be.

On the tail end of my VHS recordings, I found myself recording more television shows than movies and the brand I predominantly used for this was Maxell. During HBO's uncontested years of the 2000's, I found myself taping shows like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Carnivale for people at work.

They'd supply the tapes which just happened to be those blue Maxells. I'd put two on a tape and they'd get passed around. That was before the age of rampant Internet spoilers so they didn't mind waiting a week or two to see the next episodes. Also, I liked using the sleek black ones below for anime, or as I called it back then - Japanimation.

Blank Tape Bazaar Vol. 3

In the inaugural BTB post I mentioned that, much like their rental counterparts, recordable VHS often had colourful covers to catch the eye of the consumer. This week I wanted to showcase some of the louder examples and considering it was the eighties you can imagine they were cranked to eleven.

You may have noticed that black and grey were the industry standard so I think Polaroid had the right idea in shaking things up. Perhaps taking a cue from Key Video they added in an instantly recognizable rainbow motif.

Now thankfully - for archival's sake anyway - my mother still has totes full of tapes with old Days of our Lives episodes on them so if you're thinking that there would be several one-off brand VHS in them... well you would be correct!

Damn... Towers?! That is going back aways. That's it for now, but I've still got plenty more to post in the future so stay tuned.

Blank Tape Bazaar Vol. 2

Now as I said before, there are likely millions of blank VHS (if they haven't been melted down) made by dozens of different electronics companies languishing out there. At the end of their run, they cost peanuts, but in the early eighties they were actually quite expensive. When I was a kid, VHS tapes were often used as stocking stuffers at Christmas and oft requested items for birthdays.

I don't remember buying my own in great quantities until I started working at the video store. When it became a Blockbuster in 1992, they had their own brand and I frequently snapped them up using my employee discount. 

I found those orange ones above to be significantly good quality, so I used them for a lot of my important recordings.

I obviously just keep these first ten or so for nostalgic purposes, but I really liked how they looked all lined up on my shelf back in the day. About a decade later, after when the BBV brand stopped being made, I switched over to Memorex because their affordability and durability.

I think by the time VHS was on its way out, I could get a ten-pack of the gold one above for about $12.99 at Wal-Mart and they are definitely the ones I have the most of still. Memorex also gave you many different length options, which I appreciated because I was still recording tons of stuff.

I shudder to think about all the time I wasted re-dubbing televisions shows in order to take out the commercials so I could fit eight episodes per six-hour tape. And the final rub is that now I wish I had those commercials because of their historical value. You really can't win!