Sometimes I look over my home media collection and sometimes I kinda miss VHS tapes of the wrestling from years ago.
I was a huge VHS collector years ago. Most of the stuff I had taped was taped off TV like Raw on Monday nights but I had the commercial stuff too. The first wrestling tape I ever got was the two tape collection of Wrestlemania 4 with Hogan popping up in between the two tapes.
They split up the Hogan/Andre match so that made the 6-minute match seems a lot longer, but that was the event I grew up on. I still have those tapes today, even if I play the DVD version of it now.
But it brings me back to those days of Coliseum video and the tapes the WWF released. Sure there were the big events like Wrestlemania, Summerslam, and the like, and then there was the compilation tape like Super Tape or especially those “Best of the WWF” tapes that were released between 1984 until 1989. All kinds of things would be put on those tapes. Sometimes you would get hosts like Gene Okerlund or Gorilla monsoon with all kinds of things to add to the tapes, and sometimes it was little things that added to those tapes as you watched then. Remember those old Collesium openings?
Back in those days, those MADE those old WWF videotapes! Eventually, they did a newer version in 1987 and that played on a few tapes. But the classic opening is what I remember most from renting VHS tapes, oftentimes years after they were released.
But WWF didn’t have the corner on that market either. Although they didn’t release nearly as many tapes, NWA wrestling, and those old T.H.E. videos were just as memorable. I remember those old Starrcade videos with the T.H.E. commercials to start things off.
Nobody bothered to tell the Turner people that those commercials often spoiled the endings to those match but we didn’t notice that stuff back then. Also, that Danger Zone tape was an hour-long clip show with one match on it. Piece of crap!
But I will admit it, but the NWA Turner Home Entertainment stuff and the WWF Colleseum video stuff are part of me and what I grew up on way back as a youngster. Stuff like that reminds me of being a kid and going to the local tape rental places like Home Vision Video or Sounds Easy Video and getting the latest releases for a few days.
Those were the days!
