Nostalgic VHS Tapes - Not the usual films and cartoons (those are fine too)

Judge Dredd

Judge Dredd

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When discussing nostalgic favourites, especially from the 80s and 90s, the usual stuff comes up. Cartoons like Swat Cats and Gargoyles, films like Jurassic Park and Ghost Busters. Those are fun, but something I never see discussed is the glut of VHS tapes and shows that were popular with people (especially kids) at the time.

To start. As a kid I remember watching a bunch of tapes about monster trucks. Blood Sweat and Gears and Battle of the Monster Trucks spring to mind, but I had a bunch of these back in the day.

The archive of this one is crackly.

A bunch can be found here.

Another genre of videos I never see discussed are videos about diggers, trains, and large industrial vehicles. Again, I loved these as a kid, though I completely forget the names. While I owned the monster truck videos, a friend had the digger videos. But a YouTube search brings up this.
This one about a mititure railway I did own.

There was also a show called Chris Barrie's Massive Engines, where the Red Dwarf actor nerds out over diggers and trains each episode.

Dashcam videos are still popular today, and shows like Police Stop!, Worlds Scariest Police Chases (with Sherrif John Burnel and his teeth) and Police Camera Action were doing that way back then. 999 focused on accident reconstructions and gave many kids nightmares. I vaguely remember a show about deadly animals and how they kill you horribly that aired around the same time.

There's a bunch I want mention Blooper shows like It'll Be Alright On The Night, and weird TV mocking shows like Tarrent on TV. But this OP is already too long.


As you might have noticed, archives are thin on the ground and vary wildly in quality, partly because there's no love for this stuff. I can only speculate why. I think a lot of it is stuff you grow out of. "Look at the cool digger!" doesn't really appeal to anyone over the age of 12. Although there's still a lot of appreciation for Look and Read and Playbus, even though people grow out of those too. Police chases likely look tame when modern dashcam videos have people almost being hit by lightning or trucks getting hit by trains. A guy doing 20 over the speed limit and crashing into a fence doesn't cut it any more?


Post your favourites, your memories, anything really.
 
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Beavis_and_Butthead.jpeg

(Image stolen from Reddit.)

I didn't get the channel (probably MuchMusic) that showed Beavis and Butthead in Canada in the mid-1990s so I had to buy the VHS tapes, most of which didn't even have the music videos for licensing reasons. I have/had most of the ones in the picture, the one I know I never had was Butt-O-Ween. I'm not sure about Hard Cash. I did have the Christmas special that this guy is missing.
 
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Veggietales are the most nostalgic for me. Still the best way to watch the show.
IMG_9221.jpeg
 
Morph and Pingu dominated my toddler years. Pingu of course needs no introduction but I don't see many people outside the UK talk about Morph so here you go:


They don't make stuff like this anymore. :heart-empty:
 
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I feel like an absolute schizo typing this, but we had 2 separate Daniel Boone cartoon tapes. I'm not sure if it was the same short on both (probably was). Keep in mind I'm Australian so we had no concept of who Daniel Boone was or anything about American history.


On one of the videos there was a bunch of other completely unrelated cartoons. Not even the same theme as American history or folk heroes. I don't remember most of them but I distinctly remember this one:


It scared the absolute shit out of me. 2 and a half decades later it merely fills me with dread. Nostalgia can include stuff that scared the fuck out of you, right?
 
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Judge Dredd said:
Another genre of videos I never see discussed are videos about diggers, trains, and large industrial vehicles. Again, I loved these as a kid, though I completely forget the names. While I owned the monster truck videos, a friend had the digger videos. But a YouTube search brings up this.
This one about a mititure railway I did own.
Click to expand...
There was one called Mighty Machines, which had plentiful videos at my grocery store bargain bin.

There was also a Matchbox video like this called Construction Kings. I think it may have come with a construction vehicle.
 
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Haven't seen them in a long time but Everything Is Terrible might be something you are interested in. Video art of old vhs programs. Sometimes edited, sometimes just supetcuts.

Old vhs tapes have a nostalgic factor and for being in that sweet media spot where the creation process was widely avaliable but there was still some level of gatekeeping in the process to stop no effort garbage. Gives some truly unique creations.

Celebrate Nite said:
View attachment 6093175
Fast Food Kids Toys used to be fucking great back in the day.
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I had the first episode of xmen from pizza hut.

They don't make them like they used to. What do kids get now? Digital codes for data harvesters.
 
This was my first introduction to The Odyssey, and Greek mythology in general as a kid. Watched the hell out of this tape growing up.

 
Too lazy to grab pics, but y'all should totally know about the sing-along tapes that I think stopped being a thing when DVDs dominated. Seemed like a lot of musical franchises had at least one. Still baffles me Land Before Time had one, but it did come with a demo CD-ROM of the activity center you were supposed to activate or go track down the proper full version. It also had an Easter egg about the company behind it, unless I'm thinking of one of the JumpStart games where it was literally a second activity center inside the activity center. I swear I'm not making it up, I just never could replicate it again.
 
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