Blockbuster Video's Super Bowl Sunday Ad is Now Online

By Russ Burlingame

Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon, have released the store's first commercial in over a decade -- only on VHS. But now, you can see it (via a VHS rip, so still in low resolution) on the store's Instagram account, following a debut last night timed to Super Bowl LVII. The ad had debuted in-store as part of a Super Bowl viewing party at the location, but they promised in advance that those who don't live in and around Bend would be able to see the ad at halftime on the Bend Blockbuster's Instagram page. 

Instagram was key to building hype for the ad. In a pair of social media teasers, both bearing the date February 12, 2023, cockroaches and Blockbuster were put in the same space -- once, with a Blockbuster Video standing alone in a blasted-out landscape with a giant stylized cockroach on top of it, and another featuring an employee typing on Blockbuster's DOS-based point of sale system while a cockroach works its way along the counter.

You can see the "Big Game Ad," titled Blockbuster: Til the Bitter End, below.

Blockbuster was a household name for decades, with thousands of stores nationwide at one point. Now, it's down to one -- after years of several franchise stores hanging on by a thread long after Blockbuster had closed its corporate stores in 2014. The Bend store, the subject of the documentary film The Last Blockbuster, also trades on its status as the last vestige of an iconic American brand by selling branded merchandise for what has effectively become a tourist destination.

The documentary itself, crowdfunded on Kickstarter, debuted at a local drive-in theater during the pandemic, and then became a viral hit when it came to (irony of ironies) Netflix. A VHS copy of the movie is currently available on Lunchmeat VHS, and the Blockbuster Bend website has it available in more contemporary formats.

Last year, Netflix ran Blockbuster, a multi-camera sitcom about a parody version of the world's last Blockbuster Video, for a single season before cancelling it.

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