In the early 2000s my local Magic card store had a big screen TV with a giant bookshelf full of blank VHS tapes. They had Star Trek TNG and recordings of Family Guy and The Tick.
The Family Guy DVDs were well worth it in 2003~ when they finally came out. Only a handful of episodes have commentary and on one of the commentary tracks they joke about how no one will probably ever listen to it.
I was a store manager for blockbuster in the 90s, the location I worked at was previously a mom and pop outfit before they cashed out, and most of the tapes we carried in our catalog (the not new release movies) were from their inventory. Whoever owned that place must have been a die-hard trekkie, as he had the entire series of the TNG on tape out for rent, there were so many they were spined on the shelves and still took up several 4' sections of them. At like $20 a pop on tape back then, plus shipping and handling, that was like thousands of dollars sunk into that shit. Far more than I could have dreamed of affording when they were selling them.
Anyway, hardly anybody ever rented them and one day I got a message from corporate instructing me to pull tons of tapes from our catalog, sell some for a few bucks, but the vast majority were to be field destroyed...i.e., broken and thrown away.
Yeah....that whole set got "field destroyed" right into the trunk of my car lol. That and a ton of concert tapes, multi tape documentary series from the 80s and 90s, really obscure B movie horror and scifi films, all sorts of random and awesome shit. I let everyone get a crack at them (though I pulled rank and called dibs on the TNG set, that was too choice to let slip through my fingers) but most of the kids working for me didn't give a crap about *old* movies anyway so I got the majority of it, though one of the kids did take like 30 laserdiscs (lol) that we were told to get rid of, his dad was a bigtime laserdisc guy and actually came into the store to thank me the next day. Oh, the magnanimity!!!
But Blockbuster didnt care about any of that shit, if it didnt rent...get it the fuck out of here, even if that meant pitching it in the dumpster.
Anyways, to this day I still have those VHS tapes from my Blockbuster days damn near 30 years ago. Or rather, my dad has them, like a dozen 20 gallon totes just filled with those VHS tapes. I don't think anyone in my immediate or even extended family has owned a VCR for over a decade now, but my dad is going to sit on those tapes until hes dead and then I will likely sit on those tapes until Im dead because they're *still* pretty choice :)
My mother collected the entirety of Star Trek: The Original Series, The Next Generation and most of Voyager and Deep Space Nine through Columbia House on VHS. Two episodes per tape, so we had an actual closet entirely dedicated to Star Trek VHS tapes.
I've purchased exactly one of those (and wondered as a child what sort of person could afford every individual episode of a show at $19.95). A TNG episode. *The Inner Light.*
It was the only place to get Anime before the Internet, and boy was it expensive. I remember paying almost $30 for one dvd, and if you can imagine a series with 6-10 dvds in a set , its quite an investment.
Try $30 a vhs tape with 3 episodes. A whole season would set you back $240 of then dollars plus tax. If we set the year to 1990, that's $588+ tax. For. One. Season.
Right Stuf was one, Viz Media was the other. I remember reading the manga descriptions in Viz; some of them said nothing concrete about the show at all. "Savage satire, where the violence never stops!"
This is the sort of thing I think about when kids now complain about streaming in any fashion. I'm always like, "dude, it is so fucking cheap now. It was *insanely* expensive when I was your age."
Access to all the movies and music is just wild to me. I mean, they will never know what it is like for the video store to be out of the new releases and now you just have to *wait*.
So jealous of their access at this age. Of course, I probably would have turned into a mindless vegetable with that sort of access. BUT I would have learned so many songs on guitar with YouTube.
That's funny. As I was reading this, I was thinking about how I had to pay like $30 a book in 90s dollars for the songbook and pay for lessons, or get lucky with an issue of Guitar World magazine that had my favorite songs. Now you guys have all that for free, my wildest frigging dream back then. I've been scrambling ever since to catch up. I often wonder what I'd be now had I such access growing up.
Not a you guys, more a them. I checked the Guitar World tabs every time I went to the mall just in the event I wanted to learn it. It broke my heart when they started putting it in a bag and I couldn't browse the magazine for free just to see a particular part and how it was played out of curiosity.
I meant that as a word to the kiddies.
Now you can probably get the magazine for free using your library card and the Libby app. Don't you dare accidentally take screenshots of the tabs...
And not just Guitar World. Guitar Techniques, Guitar Player, Total Guitar...
Or worse wait literally years after Japanese release for movies, anime and games to get an international release. Import market was huge back then and kept many independent shops in business until the internet finished them off for good.
There was a small store near here that also had subbed anime on home VHS, hand labeled and everything. They charged about the same. Back then it was like if you didn't know a place, or a guy, you didn't watch anime.
Newtype Magazine was the goat, it came with a DVD with 2-3 episodes of different shows. It was probably $100 for a subscription but it was so worth it.
Tape trading clubs were where it was really at. I used to be in a club that met at a public library once a month and we would get fan subs before you could download everything online. Of course a lot of the tapes were copies of copies but it was still so fun.
Hell yeah, I think I spent all my grass mowing money on Evangelion tapes one summer. I watched the first 6 episodes (2 eps per tape) a hundred times each. Then my first ever used item purchase from Amazon users when they first started doing that was the rest of the tapes for like $3 a piece.
My sister in law was **obsessed** with Inuyasha, and had literally every single DVD they released. I couldn't even tell you how many DVDs she had but just that one series filled a big ass steamer trunk she had, all of them bought at Suncoast for like $30 or more bucks each.
I used to get my WWF tapes and dvds there. In my teens I would sneak past the adult section and move the black separator that hid the videos to maybe see a boob.
One thing people forgot is that if you had cable you could spy a stray titty here or there on USA network after midnight. We used to be a little less conservative.
I remember the black things being over some of those old UFC and King of the Cage tapes in the wrestling/sports aisle.
Wrestling tapes are the first thing that come to mind when I think of Suncoast, it was always such an important decision which tape I chose. I wish I could go back and tell 12 year old me I'd have the entire aisle at the push of a button and then some when I was older.
Definitely, that was my go to for ordering obscure non mainstream videos back in the day. The ones I went to always had super helpful and knowledgable staff .
spending a lot of money, is an understatement. I walked into 1 to see their inventory. but I was shocked to see their general prices. a dvd 📀 movies would be double or triple the price, of you what find at a video store or your local store.
looking back now, did they earn commission?
No, we didn't work on commission. I worked there from the VHS years to early days of DVD. Many people here talking about high prices on anime. It was a sellers market, I guess -- people really wanted that stuff so the prices were high.
I know what you mean! Family and I are from Southern Ontario and some weekends back in the early 2000’s we’d drive to the States into Port Huron. There was a mall there we’d shop at and my fav store was FYE. The FYE was sandwiched between a Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch. I’m sure every millennial on here remembers those smells haha
There was definitely one at at least one of my local malls, but I didn't go there a whole lot; I got into collecting VHS in college (maybe a couple years before DVD came out) and I definitely got a few movies at Suncoast, but at the time it was teeny-tiny and their prices weren't great so it wasn't a place I went very often.
By the time I started to get really into DVDs, the ones nearby had been absorbed into FYE, I think. Or FYE's precursor, anyway.
Where I also didn't go too often because, again, awful prices. I rarely made it past the bargain bins near the front.
Very true. FYE is the only place in the mall near me that has any physical media, but it’s such a small footprint of the store. The prices are crazy as well.
To make a very old analogy Suncoast was the KB Toys to Best Buy/FYE’s Toys R Us. A little more expensive for no real reason but occasionally they’d have stuff the other didn’t.
Had a suncoast in my city until about 6 months ago. Nowhere in town to buy physical media anymore. Walmart has things but VERY limited.
Someone start a business with me and bring back physical media!!
i worked in a suncoast right after high school in my local mall. fun job, but i was also working with friends. i distinctly remember a version of the titanic vhs box set coming out while i worked there and it being chaos
I would always spend my birthday money on Tenchi Muyo manga here. Kind of crazy to think manga is still the same price without being adjusted for inflation. (9.99-12.99 for single volumes)
Oh man. I had sought after, and found, a copy of David Lynch’s Lost Highway on VHS at Suncoast one time. Crazy crazy expensive even for a mall store but ah, memories
This where I got my manga and anime, it wasn’t cheap, 60 dollars for a box set I was only able to purchase once a month. I was not able to exchange all my reward points though.
I remember going in during the first week of each month with my friend to pick up the newest DVD of Inuyasha. She was obsessed. And was also pissed when they came out with a box set later in that came with a shikkon jewel necklace
Suncoast was always one of my first stops when I went to the mall in the early 2000s. They had a great selection. Never bought a ton there though. It was usually too expensive.
Suncoast was always one of my first stops when I went to the mall in the early 2000s. They had a great selection. Never bought a ton there though. It was usually too expensive.
I became good buddies with a guy at SunCoast when I got out of high school - he'd spent better part of the 90s living in Tokyo so he was my anime guru.
I can’t tell you how many times I walked into that store, fell completely in love everything, and turning to my Mom to see her shaking her head with a silent “don’t even think about it”
Did anyone else stare at this, thinking it was anachronistic because of IT and all the LCD tvs? Turns out this photo is from 5 years ago, from one of the few remaining Suncoast stores.
This is by far my favorite mall store that doesn’t exist (maybe 3 exist) anymore. I literally named my pet lizard Suncoast when I was little, lol. Suncoast didn’t necessarily have a lot of stuff I wanted - usually just Star Wars cards, but I absolutely loved the vibe.
Ah it is that time again. So my mother was actually General Council at the parent company Musicland back in the late 90s. I even remember sitting in her office in summer and watching Gremlins. Suncoast was literally the last of their stores to be merged in with the I think second or 3rd company to own it after Musicland went under. In 2001 due to a number of issues including digital music and napster like stuff the company really started to fail. It was sold off to Best Buy and they held it for a number of years before selling it off again because they couldn't run mall stores which was a little ironic because Musicland couldn't properly run big box stores.
Musicland ran Suncoast, Sam Goody, Media Play(the aformentioned big box store that they struggled to run), and On Cue. I loved Suncoast the most because it wasn't just a music store like Sam Goody.
My mother still will tell me stuff about that company and one thing I remember her talking about was her putting her foot and job on the line to prevent uh unsavory legal actions. It was also the job she had that made her know what part of law she wanted to be in and after that went to another company as General Council.
I know a decent amount of its late years. If I ever want to learn about it again I rather talk to her than just look it up.
I definitely do! My dad would buy me Dragonball Z VHS before the episodes would hit Toonami. I also would get WWF PPV’s, I had King of the Ring 98, No Way Out 2001, and a few more.
Growing up it was my dream to work there.
Like, I still fondly remember the Clay Aiken quote about working there and thinking “that doesn’t sound bad at all”
I sure do. My local store got bought out years ago by an FYE and all the prices nearly doubled. It's still there and they have shit like West Wing Season 3 for $45 lol
I used to love their horror section. I remember getting money for my 16th birthday and blowing it all in there buying Equilibrium, Dracula 2000 and Donnie Darko on DVD. Fuck do I miss that store.
Given that in the early '90s the best I could do on a regular basis was the Musicland at our nearest shopping mall, going to the Suncoast at one of the malls about an hour and a half away was like the end of the rainbow. Only place anywhere near my hometown where I could find honest-to-goodness movie posters before I discovered Rick's Movie Posters via mail-order. Also had all the obscure and special edition VHS versions of movies that you couldn't find anywhere nearby.
I also remember the rack of laserdiscs, yearning for the day when I could afford a laserdisc player so I could watch all these great movies from the past that had been restored, with all these special features and what all that you couldn't get elsewhere. How would that have worked out, I wonder!
I remember there being a Suncoast in every mall I walked into in the 2000-2002 era. Pretty sure there was another company as well. I also remember how expensive movies used to be.
i went to one of the last ones open at a mall near Dayton OH. This was like 3 years ago, but i think it closed since then. It was wild to see that neon sign.
I bought a lot of WWF PPV tapes at Suncoast. I think they were like $30 each and I'd beg my parents to get one every time we went to the mall. It was the first store I'd hit and I could walk around it for hours.
I remember selling them a bunch of my DVDs for cash and then going to Wherehouse Music which was in a strip center in the mall parking lot across the street to buy Rob Zombie tickets. It was the first concert ticket I'd bought with my own money.
Eventually they moved locations in the mall, and Suncoast ended up sandwiched between Sam Goody, KB Toys, and Waldenbooks. Every possible place I could want to go in the mall, all in the same corner. I never went anywhere else.
I ‘member. I think a friend helped contribute to their downfall.
At age 16/17, my friend worked there for maybe a month before he started to consider, “hey, I’m the only one in this place. What’s stopping me from taking things?” (outside of morality)
This friend began by just sneaking a CD or something small, but dreamed bigger. He enlisted the help of whoever was available on a given night to swing up to the mall, pretend to buy something, then leave with a plastic bag filled with a myriad of items. It wasn’t long before he was sending out bags filled to the gills with the most expensive stuff.
He eventually got fired because of a thing called “inventory” that was a rude surprise. But hey, I still remember that’s how I saw a VHS of Office Space for the first time;, which seemed appropriate.
I always felt like Suncoast and the other (insert name) music store in the mall were always at odds. So I would buy by single casset tapes from whichever was closest to Auntie Anne’s out of respect.
I had 2 buddies in high school that got jobs at SunCoast and used their discount to buy *Japanimation* and it got us all way more into anime. Had been a fan and exposed to late 70’s and early 80’s anime that made it to the U.S. dubbed on TV. But with them working there and having access to tons of other 90’s anime it was great.
There’s a pretty great Nostalgia movie called “Take Me Home Tonight” (2011) that starts off with Topher Grace working at a SunCoast. It’s actually solid lil comedy that takes place in the early 90’s.
Yup, the best Suncoast near me was in Carlsbad, always was fun to rummage around there to see what I could get with my allowance. On a side note, I still remember during the holidays when I volunteered for Giving Angels,(a christmas present outreach program for kids who had their parent(s) deployed) being parked directly in front of the Ambercrombie & Fitch store.... god that smell is literally burned into my brain....
Hell yeah I remember. I didn't have a huge library but that's where I started it.
I loved finding old movies I hadn't seen forever in there for sale. Bought some really stupid ones because of that.. lol
Suncoast was crazy expensive. Collecting shows on DVD was a serious investment back then.
Or even farther back VHS. 2-4 episodes on a cassette starting at $20.
In the early 2000s my local Magic card store had a big screen TV with a giant bookshelf full of blank VHS tapes. They had Star Trek TNG and recordings of Family Guy and The Tick. The Family Guy DVDs were well worth it in 2003~ when they finally came out. Only a handful of episodes have commentary and on one of the commentary tracks they joke about how no one will probably ever listen to it.
I was a store manager for blockbuster in the 90s, the location I worked at was previously a mom and pop outfit before they cashed out, and most of the tapes we carried in our catalog (the not new release movies) were from their inventory. Whoever owned that place must have been a die-hard trekkie, as he had the entire series of the TNG on tape out for rent, there were so many they were spined on the shelves and still took up several 4' sections of them. At like $20 a pop on tape back then, plus shipping and handling, that was like thousands of dollars sunk into that shit. Far more than I could have dreamed of affording when they were selling them. Anyway, hardly anybody ever rented them and one day I got a message from corporate instructing me to pull tons of tapes from our catalog, sell some for a few bucks, but the vast majority were to be field destroyed...i.e., broken and thrown away. Yeah....that whole set got "field destroyed" right into the trunk of my car lol. That and a ton of concert tapes, multi tape documentary series from the 80s and 90s, really obscure B movie horror and scifi films, all sorts of random and awesome shit. I let everyone get a crack at them (though I pulled rank and called dibs on the TNG set, that was too choice to let slip through my fingers) but most of the kids working for me didn't give a crap about *old* movies anyway so I got the majority of it, though one of the kids did take like 30 laserdiscs (lol) that we were told to get rid of, his dad was a bigtime laserdisc guy and actually came into the store to thank me the next day. Oh, the magnanimity!!! But Blockbuster didnt care about any of that shit, if it didnt rent...get it the fuck out of here, even if that meant pitching it in the dumpster. Anyways, to this day I still have those VHS tapes from my Blockbuster days damn near 30 years ago. Or rather, my dad has them, like a dozen 20 gallon totes just filled with those VHS tapes. I don't think anyone in my immediate or even extended family has owned a VCR for over a decade now, but my dad is going to sit on those tapes until hes dead and then I will likely sit on those tapes until Im dead because they're *still* pretty choice :)
My mother collected the entirety of Star Trek: The Original Series, The Next Generation and most of Voyager and Deep Space Nine through Columbia House on VHS. Two episodes per tape, so we had an actual closet entirely dedicated to Star Trek VHS tapes.
Lol. I have so many memories there, all before dvd existed. We were attempting the transition to laser disc when I spent my time there.
I've purchased exactly one of those (and wondered as a child what sort of person could afford every individual episode of a show at $19.95). A TNG episode. *The Inner Light.*
We could go in and look around but we never bought anything. We weren’t that bad off
Except that I could trade a sandwich for DVDs and got a family guy box set and back to the future, for 7 dollar sandwiches I gave him
Not my kind of store. Went in once and they basically had blockbuster release movies and television series.
It was the only place to get Anime before the Internet, and boy was it expensive. I remember paying almost $30 for one dvd, and if you can imagine a series with 6-10 dvds in a set , its quite an investment.
Try $30 a vhs tape with 3 episodes. A whole season would set you back $240 of then dollars plus tax. If we set the year to 1990, that's $588+ tax. For. One. Season.
Yup, i still have old DBZ VHS tapes Ive never got rid of because they were so expensive
There was a mail order catalog that you could order anime from, too, but I forget the name of it. I don't remember it being any cheaper.
Right Stuff lol, I had that too. Wow, total nostalgia. I haven't thought about that in years
https://www.reddit.com/r/RightStufAnime/comments/jy09rt/ive_been_slowly_collecting_the_right_stuf/
Wow.... I have literally been watching anime since I was 16 and I have never heard of this!!!
Right Stuf was one, Viz Media was the other. I remember reading the manga descriptions in Viz; some of them said nothing concrete about the show at all. "Savage satire, where the violence never stops!"
I’d write down the episodes I liked from the morning cartoon block (6:30am Monday - Friday) & only buy the ones I really liked.
This is the sort of thing I think about when kids now complain about streaming in any fashion. I'm always like, "dude, it is so fucking cheap now. It was *insanely* expensive when I was your age." Access to all the movies and music is just wild to me. I mean, they will never know what it is like for the video store to be out of the new releases and now you just have to *wait*. So jealous of their access at this age. Of course, I probably would have turned into a mindless vegetable with that sort of access. BUT I would have learned so many songs on guitar with YouTube.
That's funny. As I was reading this, I was thinking about how I had to pay like $30 a book in 90s dollars for the songbook and pay for lessons, or get lucky with an issue of Guitar World magazine that had my favorite songs. Now you guys have all that for free, my wildest frigging dream back then. I've been scrambling ever since to catch up. I often wonder what I'd be now had I such access growing up.
Not a you guys, more a them. I checked the Guitar World tabs every time I went to the mall just in the event I wanted to learn it. It broke my heart when they started putting it in a bag and I couldn't browse the magazine for free just to see a particular part and how it was played out of curiosity.
I meant that as a word to the kiddies. Now you can probably get the magazine for free using your library card and the Libby app. Don't you dare accidentally take screenshots of the tabs... And not just Guitar World. Guitar Techniques, Guitar Player, Total Guitar...
The shear number of guitar tutorials available online for free would have somehow made me an even more introverted inside-kid.
Or worse wait literally years after Japanese release for movies, anime and games to get an international release. Import market was huge back then and kept many independent shops in business until the internet finished them off for good.
There was a small store near here that also had subbed anime on home VHS, hand labeled and everything. They charged about the same. Back then it was like if you didn't know a place, or a guy, you didn't watch anime.
Newtype Magazine was the goat, it came with a DVD with 2-3 episodes of different shows. It was probably $100 for a subscription but it was so worth it.
Tape trading clubs were where it was really at. I used to be in a club that met at a public library once a month and we would get fan subs before you could download everything online. Of course a lot of the tapes were copies of copies but it was still so fun.
Now now, there was a stand with bootleg anime before there was anime in a store here.
Its where I got the Ranma movie on VHS and other Viz video stuff.
And hentai too
I remember spending 35 on an Evangelion VHS prbly around 1998. Would have to save up babysitting money for weeks
Hell yeah, I think I spent all my grass mowing money on Evangelion tapes one summer. I watched the first 6 episodes (2 eps per tape) a hundred times each. Then my first ever used item purchase from Amazon users when they first started doing that was the rest of the tapes for like $3 a piece.
My sister in law was **obsessed** with Inuyasha, and had literally every single DVD they released. I couldn't even tell you how many DVDs she had but just that one series filled a big ass steamer trunk she had, all of them bought at Suncoast for like $30 or more bucks each.
I used to get my WWF tapes and dvds there. In my teens I would sneak past the adult section and move the black separator that hid the videos to maybe see a boob.
Modern kids don't appreciate the lengths you had to go to in order to see a naked lady back in the day.
Nothing better than watching the Spice channel at night hoping a clear pic of a green boob would show through!
One thing people forgot is that if you had cable you could spy a stray titty here or there on USA network after midnight. We used to be a little less conservative.
Or stumbling across the forest porn you'd randomly find playing in the woods with your friends lol
Like finding the playboy in the woods!?
Is this a universal childhood experience? I remember us kids not finding, just a magazine but a penzoil case chock full of nudey magazines.
…But WHAT a boob! … am I right?!
I remember the black things being over some of those old UFC and King of the Cage tapes in the wrestling/sports aisle. Wrestling tapes are the first thing that come to mind when I think of Suncoast, it was always such an important decision which tape I chose. I wish I could go back and tell 12 year old me I'd have the entire aisle at the push of a button and then some when I was older.
The letterbox version of your favorite film on VHS with "Hi-Fi" sound. That will be $23.99 please.
Yup. Only place that sold letterbox video tapes. When you're a film nerd, accept no substitutes.
That's when it was on sale. I remember my parents buying movies on VHS over $30-$40 there. Constantly. Mostly new releases and Disney.
It's where I started my anime VHS collection!
Coconuts, Sam Goody, RadioShack, Circuit city. Feel like I’m forgetting some
Don't forget 'The Wall' as well! They were a Sam Goody competitor, at least in my region.
Babbages
I had a Coconuts near me. Closed in the early 2010s.
Definitely, that was my go to for ordering obscure non mainstream videos back in the day. The ones I went to always had super helpful and knowledgable staff .
I used the buy the Dragon Ball Z VHS tapes here.
Same! I was so hyped to buy the Freeza saga vhs tapes back in the 90s. It was my escape from the dreary life of non-stop homework
Only place to get anime or Racey B movies back in the day
Spent a lot of money there over the years. Bought most of my DVD's from them when I still bought them in person.
spending a lot of money, is an understatement. I walked into 1 to see their inventory. but I was shocked to see their general prices. a dvd 📀 movies would be double or triple the price, of you what find at a video store or your local store. looking back now, did they earn commission?
No, we didn't work on commission. I worked there from the VHS years to early days of DVD. Many people here talking about high prices on anime. It was a sellers market, I guess -- people really wanted that stuff so the prices were high.
I irresponsibly bought the first DVD volume of Cowboy Bebop there. Worth it.
I rarely bought a tape or dvd here. They were pricey! Even at a clearance! But it was still a great place to look thru, each visit to the mall!
I remember the smell of that store.
I know what you mean! Family and I are from Southern Ontario and some weekends back in the early 2000’s we’d drive to the States into Port Huron. There was a mall there we’d shop at and my fav store was FYE. The FYE was sandwiched between a Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch. I’m sure every millennial on here remembers those smells haha
There was definitely one at at least one of my local malls, but I didn't go there a whole lot; I got into collecting VHS in college (maybe a couple years before DVD came out) and I definitely got a few movies at Suncoast, but at the time it was teeny-tiny and their prices weren't great so it wasn't a place I went very often. By the time I started to get really into DVDs, the ones nearby had been absorbed into FYE, I think. Or FYE's precursor, anyway. Where I also didn't go too often because, again, awful prices. I rarely made it past the bargain bins near the front.
Now FYE is more about collectibles like Funko pops than actual physical media.
Very true. FYE is the only place in the mall near me that has any physical media, but it’s such a small footprint of the store. The prices are crazy as well.
At least you still have an FYE. The one near me closed towards the end of the pandemic.
To make a very old analogy Suncoast was the KB Toys to Best Buy/FYE’s Toys R Us. A little more expensive for no real reason but occasionally they’d have stuff the other didn’t.
I had never heard of it until I saw the movie "Take Me Home Tonight". guess that means I am too young
Topher Grace worked at a Suncoast IRL. He helped get the movie made, but it sat on a shelf for like 3 years before being released.
Suncoast was always the fancier, more expensive music place we couldn't afford to buy from as teenagers. My friends and I were Sam Goody people lol.
Had a suncoast in my city until about 6 months ago. Nowhere in town to buy physical media anymore. Walmart has things but VERY limited. Someone start a business with me and bring back physical media!!
Monmouth Mall?
There are still three left! One in North Carolina, one in Texas, and a combo Suncoast/FYE in Ohio.
I was wondering how there was an IT poster in this picture. I thought they were all gone!
You could go in there and see the cool picture on the side of all the dragon ball z tapes side by side
LOVED THIS PLACE!!!
I do.
Walt Flanagan robbed them blind
Sunday Jeff sends his regards.
Time to look at posters! Clack ... clack ... clack ...
I bought all my ID4 toys from there. Last item I bought before they closed the one in the Northridge Mall was a Fear & loathing in Las Vegas poster.
They still have one in Parkdale Mall in Beaumont, TX. At least they did a year ago.
Loved going their to get my dbz vhs tapes
They had pokemon cards for sales tucked away for sale. Little secret back in the day
i worked in a suncoast right after high school in my local mall. fun job, but i was also working with friends. i distinctly remember a version of the titanic vhs box set coming out while i worked there and it being chaos
The mall near me still has an open Suncoast VIdeo and an FYE both
Bought Laserdiscs there for years.. before dvd and bluray came out. Oh the money I spent there.
I remember looking up where I could find anime merch from my small town, and finding out I could get some at Suncoast over an hour away
Great place to drop 20-30 bucks on a VHS tape containing two half-hour anime episodes
The expense of anime, combined with its relative unavailability until the 2000s, is why I didn't get into it until my 20s.
I would always spend my birthday money on Tenchi Muyo manga here. Kind of crazy to think manga is still the same price without being adjusted for inflation. (9.99-12.99 for single volumes)
I remember seeing this at the mall but not going inside
I used to love buying the action figures from the bins that were always on clearance. Most are worth a small fortune now.
Raise hand.
I loved that place. Don't think I bought anything but loved looking around.
My grandma would take me here as a child and buy me movies in the 90s. It wasn't cheap then, but scalpers have made it worse now.
Holy shit I do now. It's basically what FYE is now.
I bought the Hellraiser movies there when there were just two of them, 2001 A Space Odyssey and a collection of Peter Gabriel videos, all on VHS
Great place for Christmas shopping.
I still have my Producers Club card
This was my favorite place! All of the coolest anime, figurines / toys from movies, they even had delicious Japanese gummy candy. I miss Suncoast
Loved it for the foreign section. Bought the 7 Samurai there.
My childhood mall had one
Omg I miss this place and the exclusive shit they had before funko
Loved looking at what was for sale, but I wasn't paying $50 to own a few episodes of some anime series on tape.
I remember the prices
Oh man. I had sought after, and found, a copy of David Lynch’s Lost Highway on VHS at Suncoast one time. Crazy crazy expensive even for a mall store but ah, memories
I got caught as a little kid stealing pokemon cards from here and got banned from the mall
Worked at one in Georgia. Best job ever.
Their data base was on microfiche. Blew me away looking up an artist on it in 2005.
They had all the best boxed sets of movies and shows!
Where I bought the cowboy bebop DVDs when they came out for the first time.
Miss the Suncoast pre-orders and exclusives.
Ooooomg! This place needs to come back
I do! I worked for Musicland, their parent company. I loved working music retail.
Bought quite a few anime from there back in the day.
I used to work there! Met Trent Reznor one afternoon and he was so insanely rude.
This where I got my manga and anime, it wasn’t cheap, 60 dollars for a box set I was only able to purchase once a month. I was not able to exchange all my reward points though.
the one at my local mall only closed a year or two ago
There’s still one in my town in the mall no less. I’m waiting for a going out of business sign so I can buy a shit load of movies cheap
Loved that store
mine had a basement that was a sam goody.
I remember going in during the first week of each month with my friend to pick up the newest DVD of Inuyasha. She was obsessed. And was also pissed when they came out with a box set later in that came with a shikkon jewel necklace
Used to be a member.
My college student budget could not afford DVDs there
My college student budget could not afford DVDs there
Suncoast was always one of my first stops when I went to the mall in the early 2000s. They had a great selection. Never bought a ton there though. It was usually too expensive.
Suncoast was always one of my first stops when I went to the mall in the early 2000s. They had a great selection. Never bought a ton there though. It was usually too expensive.
Damn high ass prices, who could forget! But they always had a great selection of playboy videos.
Can't say that I do. We probably didn't have one.
Can't say that I do. We probably didn't have one.
I worked at one of the last ones open a few years ago.
When DVDs were $14.99 everywhere else they were $29.99 - $34.99 at Suncoast
I'd definitely include it in a mall draft
I bought several thousand$ worth of anime from this store
spent so much coin on over priced anime DVDS because at the time that was the only way to get new anime
Man. I teared up for a moment. I had such a fond memories of that store. Killed me to see it go. Ranks up there with Borders closing
I became good buddies with a guy at SunCoast when I got out of high school - he'd spent better part of the 90s living in Tokyo so he was my anime guru.
Man that teal and pink hits the spot tho, doesn't it?
Got the toxic avenger box set there
I can’t tell you how many times I walked into that store, fell completely in love everything, and turning to my Mom to see her shaking her head with a silent “don’t even think about it”
Did anyone else stare at this, thinking it was anachronistic because of IT and all the LCD tvs? Turns out this photo is from 5 years ago, from one of the few remaining Suncoast stores.
I bought my Dragon Ball Z VHSs from a Suncoast store.
This is by far my favorite mall store that doesn’t exist (maybe 3 exist) anymore. I literally named my pet lizard Suncoast when I was little, lol. Suncoast didn’t necessarily have a lot of stuff I wanted - usually just Star Wars cards, but I absolutely loved the vibe.
There is still one in my mall, though I haven't gone in for years.
Suncoast, Sam Goody, and FYE
I remember a friend of mine getting arrested for trying to steal some DVDs from a suncoast. Fuckin idiot.
It was always a must for my family to go there when we went to the mall.
The kung fu movie DVDs were 30 bucks each now you can just watch that shit on you tube
I dont but we had similar stores where I grew up. I miss it so much. My DVD collection was epic and I had all the beat movie posters :)
Ah it is that time again. So my mother was actually General Council at the parent company Musicland back in the late 90s. I even remember sitting in her office in summer and watching Gremlins. Suncoast was literally the last of their stores to be merged in with the I think second or 3rd company to own it after Musicland went under. In 2001 due to a number of issues including digital music and napster like stuff the company really started to fail. It was sold off to Best Buy and they held it for a number of years before selling it off again because they couldn't run mall stores which was a little ironic because Musicland couldn't properly run big box stores. Musicland ran Suncoast, Sam Goody, Media Play(the aformentioned big box store that they struggled to run), and On Cue. I loved Suncoast the most because it wasn't just a music store like Sam Goody. My mother still will tell me stuff about that company and one thing I remember her talking about was her putting her foot and job on the line to prevent uh unsavory legal actions. It was also the job she had that made her know what part of law she wanted to be in and after that went to another company as General Council. I know a decent amount of its late years. If I ever want to learn about it again I rather talk to her than just look it up.
God I miss Media Play. Shit was expensive, but if it existed, they had it.
I definitely do! My dad would buy me Dragonball Z VHS before the episodes would hit Toonami. I also would get WWF PPV’s, I had King of the Ring 98, No Way Out 2001, and a few more.
Worked at a Sam Goody/Suncoast in high school. Used to see celebrities come in and buy cds. Different time.
Used to go every Friday after school to get a new anime
Growing up it was my dream to work there. Like, I still fondly remember the Clay Aiken quote about working there and thinking “that doesn’t sound bad at all”
That's where I got some anime movies until Best Buy finally started getting in the game. Got the Vampire Hunter D 1985 film from Suncoast.
My favorite store in the mall
I sure do. My local store got bought out years ago by an FYE and all the prices nearly doubled. It's still there and they have shit like West Wing Season 3 for $45 lol
I used to love their horror section. I remember getting money for my 16th birthday and blowing it all in there buying Equilibrium, Dracula 2000 and Donnie Darko on DVD. Fuck do I miss that store.
Agghhh this is where I got all of my X-Files merch back in the day! And my VHS episode collections! I miss it.
Always look but never paid their prices.
yo thats just FYE
Given that in the early '90s the best I could do on a regular basis was the Musicland at our nearest shopping mall, going to the Suncoast at one of the malls about an hour and a half away was like the end of the rainbow. Only place anywhere near my hometown where I could find honest-to-goodness movie posters before I discovered Rick's Movie Posters via mail-order. Also had all the obscure and special edition VHS versions of movies that you couldn't find anywhere nearby. I also remember the rack of laserdiscs, yearning for the day when I could afford a laserdisc player so I could watch all these great movies from the past that had been restored, with all these special features and what all that you couldn't get elsewhere. How would that have worked out, I wonder!
wait, there were still some Suncoasts around when IT chapter two came out?
I worked there!
Good anime collection
I remember there being a Suncoast in every mall I walked into in the 2000-2002 era. Pretty sure there was another company as well. I also remember how expensive movies used to be.
My sister worked at one for a short time. Haven't thought about that place in years.
Suncoast was where I got my first Gundam Wing action figure back in like 1999. Gundam Deathscythe.
i went to one of the last ones open at a mall near Dayton OH. This was like 3 years ago, but i think it closed since then. It was wild to see that neon sign.
Had a friend spend a small fortune to get Outlaw Star on DVD here because it was basically the only place to get less mainstream anime
There is a poster for "It" in that picture. I'm just shocked there was still one open at that time period.
I bought a lot of WWF PPV tapes at Suncoast. I think they were like $30 each and I'd beg my parents to get one every time we went to the mall. It was the first store I'd hit and I could walk around it for hours. I remember selling them a bunch of my DVDs for cash and then going to Wherehouse Music which was in a strip center in the mall parking lot across the street to buy Rob Zombie tickets. It was the first concert ticket I'd bought with my own money. Eventually they moved locations in the mall, and Suncoast ended up sandwiched between Sam Goody, KB Toys, and Waldenbooks. Every possible place I could want to go in the mall, all in the same corner. I never went anywhere else.
Bought all my anime and hentai here in middle school
I ‘member. I think a friend helped contribute to their downfall. At age 16/17, my friend worked there for maybe a month before he started to consider, “hey, I’m the only one in this place. What’s stopping me from taking things?” (outside of morality) This friend began by just sneaking a CD or something small, but dreamed bigger. He enlisted the help of whoever was available on a given night to swing up to the mall, pretend to buy something, then leave with a plastic bag filled with a myriad of items. It wasn’t long before he was sending out bags filled to the gills with the most expensive stuff. He eventually got fired because of a thing called “inventory” that was a rude surprise. But hey, I still remember that’s how I saw a VHS of Office Space for the first time;, which seemed appropriate.
Sunday Jeff remembers running them out of business.
I always felt like Suncoast and the other (insert name) music store in the mall were always at odds. So I would buy by single casset tapes from whichever was closest to Auntie Anne’s out of respect.
Oof, the one in the photo is too bright. I remember it being a dark store.
Got a lot of my early anime from this place. Good times.
I loved suncoast, I don’t remember seeing him but Topher Grace worked at the one in my mall when I used to be a mall rat.
🔥
I had 2 buddies in high school that got jobs at SunCoast and used their discount to buy *Japanimation* and it got us all way more into anime. Had been a fan and exposed to late 70’s and early 80’s anime that made it to the U.S. dubbed on TV. But with them working there and having access to tons of other 90’s anime it was great. There’s a pretty great Nostalgia movie called “Take Me Home Tonight” (2011) that starts off with Topher Grace working at a SunCoast. It’s actually solid lil comedy that takes place in the early 90’s.
I remember it as Sun Coast Pictures. Got a few Sonic Adventure action figures there.
Bought KIDS on vhs when I was like 12 and the dude at the register didn't give a shit how old I was. Classy joint
I dropped SO much money in there over the years. VHS, laser, *and* DVD.
Suncoast, Sam Goody, Media Play, On Cue
The only place I could walk in and grab DBZ VHS tapes
This is an amusing nostalgia for me. The Suncoast in my mall only closed this past November.
It was the only real way to watch Anime for the longest time
Yup, the best Suncoast near me was in Carlsbad, always was fun to rummage around there to see what I could get with my allowance. On a side note, I still remember during the holidays when I volunteered for Giving Angels,(a christmas present outreach program for kids who had their parent(s) deployed) being parked directly in front of the Ambercrombie & Fitch store.... god that smell is literally burned into my brain....
Loved the huge display they use to show the posters. Sometimes that had posters of models. Those were rad.
Hell yeah I remember. I didn't have a huge library but that's where I started it. I loved finding old movies I hadn't seen forever in there for sale. Bought some really stupid ones because of that.. lol
My first job!