What better way to celebrate Terminator 2: Judgement Day than with an old-fashioned VHS retailers’ promo and the T-1000 hawking his liquid metal soul to chain stores to sell a few copies for consumption?

Oh and we’re throwing a couple of free copies of Drop Dead Fred too and a cheesy sitcom style family to boot. Because that’s how we roll in 1991.

In case you’re new here, VHS retailer promos are my Achilles Heel. It throws back to an era where video stores were the go-to spot for a night in and also gives some insight on the films themselves. Albeit this information was solely usually seen by video chain owners and Mom/Pop shops, thanks to the world-wide web we can now taste what prompted these rental stores to buy movies in copious amounts. Remember walking into Blockbuster and seeing three shelves worth of the same damn new release? These VHS retailer promos may or may not have had something to do with it. I mean, as stated above with free video tapes of Drop Dead Fred how could anyone say no?!

I gotta say, the not so subtle way studios would pimp out their talent to star in these retailer video ads, is goddamn legendary. Horror icons like Chucky and Freddy Krueger saw no shame in this, so why not the T-1000 get on the promo train as well?! The movie being hawked, is of course the 1991 smash Blockbuster, TERMINATOR 2. If you know your VHS retailer history, you’re well aware one video cassette alone could rape your wallet for up to a hundred bucks. Rent out that video at least fifty times and then you get your money back, and then enter your own profits. Now, in an effort to get you to buy as much as you could, perks and bundles were thrown in to convince retailers to buy a bunch of copies for their store. And these types of deals, with their promo swag (I’d literally sell my left arm for those glasses now), was just how it all worked back then. So those bad-ass movie standees’ you’d see at your go-to video store growing up; were very likely a part of a bundle deal such as this.

Now sit back and marvel at what the movie- pimpin’ business used to look like back in the early 90s’.