Leather Bound Video (Not Like That)

I watched the BBC series Video Nasty the other day. It's pretty good. The trailers made it look like a period comedy set during the 1980's video nasty scare -- of which I am a bit young to have direct experience, but I remember well its legacy -- and it is sort of that, but let's just say the trailer is a bit misleading.

Anyway.

One early scene takes place in a video shop, one of the hundreds of independent -- and slightly dodgy -- establishments that dotted the nation before the chains took over. This shop had its own branded VHS cases, as you'd recognise if you'd ever been in a video shop from 1990ish onwards. Except that's not how I remember 1980's shops operating.

I remember that you'd browse the shelves in the pokey little room behind the newsagent, pick your film, take it to the counter, and then you'd get your rental VHS in a case that looked like a faux leather book. Like this:

I find this both cute and weird. Not only because people thought the appropriate way to display a VHS was to make it look like a generic leather-bound book, but also because there was apparently some need or desire to display or shelve a film you were only going to have in your house for two or three days. It looks eccentric and odd from 2025. To be fair, it looked eccentric and odd from 1995!