The Video Mailbox TV Commercial

This is a television commercial from 1987 for a company called "Video Mailbox." To learn more about the history of Video Mailbox, visit us at: http://sites.google.com/site/videomailbox/. This commercial is an interesting piece of history. Video Mailbox was one of the first companies to allow the customer to rent an unlimited number of videos via mail. Each subscriber would create a "queue" of their favorite list of titles. When they mailed back their tapes, two more from their queue were sent out. This pre-dates companies like Netflix that today use a similar procedure. The commercial also predicted the death of the video store, portraying a video store owner complaining about mail order rentals.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• video rental
• netflix
• queue
• mailorder
• patent
• blockbuster
• vhs
• dvd

[foxxyloxx]

"They deliver the darn things right to your mailbox!" He's gettin' mad now!

[codecub]

Nobody would've wanted to go into that warehouse to rent videos anyway...

[milowent]

shit. video mailbox is going to come looking for my copy of Howard The Duck now, aren't they?

great video. the promise of no initial "membership fee" to join a video store was a big deal back then.

[layton59]

Did Video Mailbox rent p0rn movies? That would be the real market niche back then. Mom and Pop stores often kept p0rn tapes in a backroom. Video Mailbox could do well if they carried more titles than the local store carried.

[jpickar]

"Listen to what a magazine said about Video Mailbox." A MAGAZINE?! More like AMAZING.

[lonegun121]

Guy: I would like to rent more than one VHS.

Video Mailbox: Sorry but that would cause your mailbox to explode.

[amandafrench]

Great ad! Fascinating stuff.