90s Commercials on VHS Tapes Nobody Saved

Calvert DeForest. You might know him as Larry “Bud” Melman from Late Night with David Letterman. In 1989, he starred in a 35-minute parody fitness video called The Couch Potato...

A Polaroid Supercolor T-120 labeled “NEVER ERASE” in someone’s handwriting. Six hours of EP mode sports recordings spanning 1979 to 1991, all from central Ohio broadcasts. This was someone’s prized...

A BASF Extra Quality T-120 with a sticky note label listing four titles: The Child, Steven, Hurricane Del, and RoboCop. Six hours of EP recording from KAKE-TV 10 in Wichita,...

A plain black VHS cassette. No label. No sleeve. No markings. The kind of tape that could be anything. It turned out to be a TiVo-to-VHS transfer from 2006 with...

Six hours of Columbus, Ohio television from August 1992 on a single Veratron T-120 tape. Someone hit record and let it run across WCMH-4, WSYX-6, NBC, ESPN, and C-SPAN. The...

It Opens Like a PSA The spine label says “WATER TREATMENT PROGRAM.” Reasonable assumption: some industrial or municipal training tape about water filtration. The kind of thing that circulated through...