Retro Videos | Nightmare Nostalgia

The ’80s were a grand decade for the little plastic nightmare known as Chucky and I think it’s fair to say, this era belonged exclusively to the slasher. From Freddy, Jason, to Michael, the 1980’s coined the word slasher and turned it into an unstoppable phenomenon. Between brilliant marketing from all those inducing ass-whoopings from calling 1-900 numbers to every kid on your block dressed up as Freddy; sporting a plastic garbage bag Ben Cooper costume on Halloween. The era of the slasher was a glorious time to be alive for horror fans. And in 1988, a small but fierce force entered into that iconic fraternity of slasher legends in the form of what looked like, a My Buddy doll from the seventh layer of Hell.

When Child’s Play opened in theaters back ’88, no one expected the pint-sized Good Guy to launch the kind of fanfare Chucky brought to the horror game. The movie made on a less than stellar budget of only $9 million ended up pulling in almost four times that amount worldwide upon its theatrical release and ended up spawning seven sequels over the past 30 years, including an upcoming Child’s Play series in the works!

Back in the glory days of the Polaroid cassette videotape, studios such as MGM would send out promotional VHS screeners of new releases to mom and pop video stores in an effort to get that movie lined up on their shop shelves. On a side-note, I remember the first time seeing Chucky’s face at my local one-stop rental shop Action Video and my seven-year-old self, fresh off a viewing of Dolls, was immediately impulsed to rent the little sucker. Not knowing a thing about it, and so glad I did.

Anyway, these VHS screeners sent out apparently also contained some extra promotional material intended to fancy up the marketing. In this case, a six and half minute promo of a stiff as fuck Chucky salesman breaking into a rap about his movie and the cheese is so delicious my friends. Also, you gotta appreciate the gangster aspect of good ole’ Chucky taunting both Freddy and Jason in this promo.

“Jason? HA! He’s so scared of me, he’s gotta hide behind a mask.”

Beautiful. Check the video out below uploaded by YouTube channel DoctorSnowcone!

When the Nintendo Entertainment System finally made its glorious US debut in the late 80’s, all of us kids just about lost our shit at the video game quality coming from this grey box of sorcery. Retailing at the time for the Action Set (NES Zapper, two controllers, and the Super Mario Bros./ Duck Hunt duel cartridge) for now what seems a mere $149.99 just in time for the 1988 Christmas holiday, sold nearly seven million systems that year. And according to this splendid video below, blowing that number out of the water 2 years later with a whopping 90 million NES systems bought in 1990.

That’s a lot of virtual dead ducks. Fantastic.

So yeah, one can only imagine the headaches retail workers had to endure concerning the new system that every one of us damn kids HAD to have, (it’s cool, I was one of them). Most likely no different than the average migraine customer service deals with on a daily with those “customer is always right, consumers“. But hey, as time has told over again throughout the past 30 years that when a new system comes out, you better damn well be prepared Mr. Electronics section of Wal-Mart. And after a few years of booming sales from the system, Nintendo thought they would do the retail workers of America a favor and make a proper training video for handling consumer complaints and ridiculous customers involving returns with the NES. This includes any bullshit scammers attempting to nab a refund after some careless kids spilled soda all over the control deck.

Oh yes, that’s actually in there. “What are you supposed to do? Tell them what you really think? Of course not!”

And that’s why folks, yours truly could never work a successful retail position.

Anyways, I couldn’t help but laugh especially at the bit about the blank color screen issue WE’VE ALL experienced at one point due to a bit of dust settling inside the deck. Clearly, this guy never figured out the “blow and go” solution. And guess what? 30 years later it’s still 100% effective. Which brings up an excellent point: The Classic Nintendo I have sitting in my house is getting dangerously close to that age bracket and still works like a dream. Just goes to show the highest quality built into that little sucker.

But hey, it’s 2018 and if you’re having any issues with your NES, all your answers can be answered right here in this handy retro video uploaded by Retro Games TV Commercial HD!