KITCHENER -- VHS are popular again at a local movie store.
Jason Robinson is a movie buff and makes a bi-weekly trip to his favourite store to grab something to watch.
"I usually walk away with about 20 movies," he said.
His love for film started when he was a child, back when things were all on VHS.
"I've burned out VHS, I've eaten tapes on them," Robinson said. "I'd watch the movie over and over and over again."
Business is booming at Kitchener's Far Out Flicks. Staff said sales have increased by more than 30 per cent since the pandemic began, with more people choosing to buy rather than rent.
"VHS was popular in the 1980s," University of Waterloo lecturer J. Andrew Deman said. "It was really the cultivation of the home movie rental experience."
Deman said he's not surprised more people are buying them.
"VHS is a brick," he said. "It is this giant piece of plastic with moving parts in it."
He said the tape is a tangible, if large, item to create a sense of occasion, nostalgia and escape to simpler times.
"At a time when they were facing similar sorts of lifestyle constraints, in terms of having to stay home, because in that case because their parents made them," Deman said.
Far Out Flicks owner Rolf Glemser said a trip to the movie store offers in-person help.
"My staff and myself are far more accurate than the algorithms that they have," he said.
