"Ive been using factor long before...." Really. You think we dont know you just got greedy, agreed to let them sponsor you, opened an email with jpgs and a script to read and told when and where to put their ad. Sponsors are destroying youtube channels. I suggest you part ways and just make content. We already have enough ads. Thankfully RUclips added the "skip sponsor ad button" which I just used and will now unsubscribe.
@@briangasser973 you can't shorten it you need to say Chicken Soup For The Soul Entertainment just to show how baffling the stock market is, like who came up with that name
It was another trashy SPAC that is among this decade's scourges (ranking appropriately alongside reverse mergers last decade) that was the beginning of the end. Guess calling them blank check companies fell out of style. Just like LBO firms were rebranded as private equity
There was a Redbox at the CVS that I rented from occasionally. Around the beginning of July I went to get some prescriptions filled and saw a RedBox employee emptying out the machine. I asked him if they were getting rid of the machines, and he said probably. I then asked what they were going to do with the DVDs, and he said he wasn't sure, but that everything was a mess right now and he was probably going to be laid off within the month. He then asked if I wanted a few DVDs, and now I am now the proud owner of about a dozen of them. Unfortunately he couldn't let me keep the RedBox DVD containers, but still pretty cool. A week later the machine was gone.
There are videos on RUclips from former employees detailing how they were shafted by CSSE. Not to mention service techs left with cases of DVDs and nothing to do with them.
The red kiosks will always be a part of my childhood. Whenever a new film came out & my family could barely afford tickets to the theater, we were always told "wait for it to be on redbox." And we would wait for it to be available on redbox, late nights at the 24/7 walmarts, we'd rent a film & watch the movie during a late dinner when my father came back from work. Distant times.
I always preferred video stores and kind of resented Redbox for taking jobs away from store clerks so I have no nostalgia for them whatsoever, never saw the appeal of renting DVDs from a box when I could rent them from my library for free.
this describes my child hood but years prior. I think growing up I was at a movie theater 5 times. However we stopped at the rental store almost every Saturday night. We would get a family movie and my parents would rent something they wanted to see. If was doing good in school and doing my chores they would let me rent a Nintendo game! The good old days of VHS. I still remember my mom making me check to see that the movies were rewound so they wouldn't get an extra charge from the rental store.
@@jadedheartsz in a lot of areas it can take years for new movies to get to the libraries and even if they get a new movie early you have to get lucky and be the first person there if you want to rent it. I get where you are coming from when it comes to taking away jobs, but a lot of people couldn't afford the $5 a night cost from a store and so those people wouldn't have been active customers anyway. redbox had a great market and targeted the lower and lower middle class and they did a great job of making their rentals easily affordable for those people. It is honestly a shame that it is gone and I can only hope those people learn how to download the movies they would have rented. ("legally" ofc ;) )
There was no better feeling than going to the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner with my dad and him telling me and my siblings that we could grab a redbox while he shopped. Then wed go home, eat, and watch a movie. Glory days.
Redbox was a game-changer on road trips. The family car I grew up with was a minivan with a DVD player, so being able to rent a movie, return it 150 miles away, and immediately get another one for the next 150 miles was pretty nice.
Red Box didn't live long in the grand scheme of things. But they did one hell of a job streamlining and extending the rental industry's life, for a couple decades.
Yeah, Blickbuster closed around what 2009 or so? That was like an extra 15 years to be able to rent physical media that otherwise you wouldn't have been able to do so.
Last year, my modem router went out at my house. For several days, while we waited for the new one to arrive, my family would rent 2-3 DVDs a day to watch from Redbox. It was a lot of fun and almost nostalgic for me as I grew up going to rental stores with my mom. RIP Redbox.
@@bigqwertycat Yes, that's definitely an underrated source! I visited our local library with my family a few weeks ago, and was seriously impressed with the selection.
I was raised by a single mom and we didn’t have enough money for cable or internet, but my mom would always rent out a couple of $1 movies every weekend from these Redbox machines that we would watch. Those memories of sitting in front of our TV in our small apartment in the projects are very dear to me and this video and the story feels somewhat cathartic.
Same. Especially when mom could get a box of popcorn to go with it. You can finally take a break from all those movies of people recording their TVs with a camera.
I was born in early 07, and after the 08 recession my family had lost most of our money. So we couldn’t go do whatever we wanted all that often, but my grandma still wanted me to be happy. So every Saturday night we would go to McDonald’s, and then CVS to buy candy and rent a movie. We did this for several years as my siblings came along and I loved it. Thanks for the memories🙏🏻
One time, my grandma was staying at my place with me and needed to return a Redbox DVD. I told her we could return it at the local grocery store. When we got there, we found out it was actually a red "cineflix" box. We had to go all the way to the next town to return it. In my defense, it was a "red box" 😂
I used to refill Redbox machines and you forgot one aspect that they don’t want to mention but definitely played a role into its downfall: when they rented games, some people would put a photo copy of the disc cover in the Redbox case and steal the games. That also led to them not renting them in 2019
To be fair, I'd just rent the DVDs and BluRays to rip them and store them on my Hard Drive. I kept my physical Netflix sub active well into the 2020s just for that reason too. $1 or so to keep a movie forever was a steal.... pun intended.
they could have lasted longer if they focused more on games esp in markets where DVD sales were dwindling - their parent company was literally a ponzi scheme. You rarely see this, a company that was chugging along doing its thing just be shut down for no reason versus all the other stories on this channel of gross mismanagement. Hope the employees win their lawsuit
Same, i heard from a friend that it could be easily exploited by buying a stack of blank cds, printing out the covers to games, put them on the disc, rent the game on redbox and return the fake Now obviously i have never tried this out myself before!
I'm not- to the very end I saw people using the machine at our store regularly. It was the perfect cheap alternative to streaming services for people who only occasionally watched movies.
I will genuinely miss Redbox. I think I'm the only person I knew who still used them up until they stopped stocking new content. But as a physical media collector, I was able to buy so many movies to own from Redbox, typically for $4-6 a piece. The Redbox cases don't look the cleanest next to regular Blu Ray/4K packaging, but I was getting releases 1-2 months after they dropped for way cheaper than they'd even be on Prime Day/Black Friday/etc so I wasn't complaining. I'm not sure many even knew there was a "Buy" option from Redbox. They offered it when they carried video games too and I got Dark Souls 3, Minecraft, Mega Man 11, and more for like $5 a pop. Good times. It's a shame hearing about Redbox's decline, but I'm glad they existed when they did.
i remember getting redbox movies to own when i was a kid as well!! i still have many of the cases and movies. my dad telling me we could keep the movie i enjoyed instead of giving it back was such a good feeling for me when i was younger. good memories
@@thystaff742 Yea, people act like physical media is the end all be all, but in reality the only true way to archive something forever is to rip it to a hard drive and make sure it gets backed up regularly to multiple hard drives in case any one drive fails. No one piece of physical anything survives forever. Copying is the only way to keep a thing around forever, but you have to make sure to copy it over in the first place.
I had thought about redbox at one point cuz I surley thought they died. I can't believe they triumphed for this long; I really took them for granted in these later years. Sad to see a company who operates so strong independently be part of a wreckless, sinking parent company who never cared
I mean it's not really surprising. The space they take up is small, they just need a few technicians per region to keep things working and to lease vending machine space. Other than that the business basically runs itself. The fall of Redbox is all on parent companies not recognising how valuable it was.
That's what private equity is; "We kill companies for profit..." They swoop in, cut every penny they can, borrow as much as they can against "Red Box", line their pockets with "management/investor fees", then 86 the joint, to prey on their next victims...
Of all the bankruptcies I've seen on this series, this one seemed to be the least necessary. Redbox may still have ultimately gone out of business as the world shifted away from DVDs, but from what I saw here, it did not have to happen this quickly.
Growing up during the recession redbox was how my family went to the movies essentially it was a family movie night thing, I loved redbox sad to see them go like this
I can tell you the Grim Reaper is really going around a lot these days. Especially with businesses that today really are more trying to keep afloat than really living in it.
I actually have fond memories of redbox from my middle school and highscool years (mid 2000's-early 2010's). It became the Friday night Blockbuster run for my family. We had them at our grocery store and and CVS. Can't believe it's took me watching this realize how much of a little tradition it was for me.
Living in a rural area, I am fortunate to have gigabit internet service. The next neighborhood to ours has 5mb/s service. Redbox in town was the only way many in our area could rent movies for the last decade. Their departure means the Walmart DVD dollar bin will no longer be overflowing.
You can stream all of these movies and tv shows for free via 3rd party websites. I've never paid for HBO, but watched Game of Thrones for free. Funny how I'd watch HBO back in the day for free too through cable, but I had to watch it through the white snow. I'd watch a lot of tales from the Crypt!
So basically the parent company misused funds, screwed over their employees, and in an attempt to not get sued for billions, they filled chapter 7 which in turn instantly killed every subsidiary they had, and screwed over more people, nice. More like "Chicken Soup for the Corrupt CEO" hope the guy enjoys his island retirement.
"Sort of"... Appollo snuck in a bunch of unsecured debt onto CSSE's books, while over estimating earning potential (Somehow???), directly after tanking the IPO. Chicken man had no idea what to do after being informed of his major mistake, and just let it do whatever; Which, is never a responsible move...He thought he could save CASE, but was promptly informed by his forensic acct, everything had to go. Drone at the office quit, leaving poor guy without the new heart he was promised...
Oh, no; This ones actually broke, broke...No CEO bonus check for him! He %100 leveraged his house/savings/shares (every penny he had), to secure the deal...He tried with the chapter 11 filing, but was soon informed of his 300 million $ accounting error...Red Box had no assets to borrow against, and Apollo had already loaded it all the way up to their necks in unsecured debt...
Yeah it really is a whole lot of things we used to deal with as kids and before our times of advanced Internet and smartphones are now gone and this is the most recent casualty of our times.
@@kellychuang8373 I remember renting BioShock Infinite for Xbox 360 from Redbox when it came out and then beating it in 12hrs and returning it the next day.
@@kellychuang8373 I remember renting Bioshock Infinite on Xbox 360 from Redbox when it came out, beating it in like 12hrs and then returning it the next day.
Where I live, there used to be a McDonalds + Blockbuster location. Once Blockbuster died off, a spa took the place of the video rental store. Funnily enough, a Redbox was placed outside the spa when it opened. We went from blue to red, and now red is on its way to join blue.
SAME! McD's and one block away was BB. In Vancouver. The plan when I was a kid after getting a VHS/DVD, just go to McD's before heading home to watch. I miss hearing those tapes/DVD's being returned 5 PM at the return bin.
RIP Redbox. The streamers finally got you. I’ll still keep supporting physical media. The kiosk at the Walgreens by my house is still there. Sad to see her sitting there alone.
It's unfortunate that another business that actually cared for their workers & cared about making them comfortable at work is closing. You really don't find that often anymore.
I work at a large technology company and the people that we have hired that came from other companies after they close down, will sometimes say how their previous company had some great perk or benefit that our company doesn’t have. I will say that is probably very true, but that company no longer exists and this company still does. Working for a generous employer is the dream, but it’s rarely the reality, especially in the long run.
End of an Era. Blockbuster destroyed small video stores. Redbox ended Blockbuster. Streaming ended Redbox. We still end up paying over and over and over for the same content that we bought years ago.
No more late fees. Don’t have to leave the house. Hell RUclips has better free movies than Redbox ever did. We pay for it yes but the service and convenience is much better. The movie I want to rent is always available is the best part
redbox brought new releases to my house, it was an amazing opportunity for my family to be able to enjoy them while we couldn't afford subscriptions, movie prices and the occasional bad internet we had sometimes........being able to enjoy even a little bit of modern entertainment for a poor family is an escape and redbox brought that around for many
The irony of a company calling themselves "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and being such an s-show behind the scenes that its employees lost their healthcare. Thank you for the good times, Redbox.
@@warmachine5835 There are large enough holes with the NHS in Britain that people pay for private healthcare instead of using the NHS. Other countries, I'm not familiar enough with the systems they have in place to comment on them.
Nothing lastsforever, Like our lives. We need to follow Jesus all the way to the kingdom of heaven before it is too late. All of this depressing news from the world can be overcome by the power of Jesus and his Kingdom, which is here on the earth and is spreading. We can repent from all sin, get baptized, recieve the holy spirit, and become born again into a new person, having victory over sins, mental disorders, emotional pain, and if we endure to the end, in holiness and righteousness, can avoid hell and make it into the kingdom of heaven.
I live in a small town about 30 minutes north of Green Bay, WI. As of August 16, 2024 two of the RedBox Kiosks in town are still active and working. I didn't get any, but I did watch people getting DVDs from each of them.
Redbox got me through YEARS at work. I worked alone in a lab from 10pm - 8am SIX DAYS A WEEK for years straight. We had a DVD PLAYER & 20 INCH TV that I’d always try and rent a movie from Redbox and I also had a SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO too.
To be honest, what really makes me upset is that while physical media is on the decline, Redbox itself could've easily survived for years to come through consolidating and reinventing itself. DVD and physical medium is far from dead. No, the reality is that they found themselves in the hands of a malicious parent company that leached them dry and then threw them away prematurely. If anything, this will ironically have quite a negative impact on physical media, as Redbox themselves were perpetuating the existence of DVDs with their service. I don't think any of their competitors have the resources and infrastructure to fill the void that they're going to leave, giving people just one less reason to keep owning and using their DVD/Bluray players.
$1 a night for a bluray movie that will have double to quadruple the bit rate of a streamed movie is a great deal, especially if the streaming service was like charging $12-$29 for a new movie. The downside is you have to physically go pick it up and drop it off. That was a drag but I always preferred a bluray over streaming anyday, especially with the larger TVs where a high bitrate matters a lot.
Ya, they always seem to force this kind of stuff on people and then claim it was from customer demand. I don't know very many people that had any issues with renting physical copies. Sure it was a pain to return them sometimes but even with late fees it was still cheaper than streaming is now.
Omg! My husband walked in the door with a new DVD player today because we rent Redbox a lot when we go to our winter home, in Quartzsite, AZ. I was trying to open my Redbox app on my phone and it would not open. I went to Google and put in Redbox. This is how I found out Redbox is no more 😢. We own about 600-700 Blu-ray movies but have watched them over and over a few times! Time to head out to the Pawn shops to collect new titles to watch in our small one horse town of Quartzsite! 😂 So long Redbox, you will be missed. ❤
There was one at our local Weis grocery store. It just disappeared a couple of years back. Bought some decent movies from it years ago…and I mean YEARS
My local grocery store had their own separate video rental store inside until they closed it and replaced it with a Redbox outside. As a kid I thought it was crazy they didn't need all of the shelves and space of a traditional store and it could be replaced by a kiosk.
Didn't know about the Redbox/McDonalds combo, but that's kinda genius on their part! Need to pick up a DVD? May as well grab a little snack while you're there. Dropping it back off? May as well get a little snack.
Redbox definitely made a couple hundred bucks off me over the years. Our nearest blockbuster was like 23 mins away in its prime so we were always a Redbox family. I was even using it during COVID to rent some new releases for cheaper than digitally renting them
It sounds like Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment was acting more shady than the private equity firms who are typically the villains in these videos
As a former employee who'd been with the company for over 10 years, while CSSE and Bill Ruhana did everything they could to destroy us, I have to be honest and say that the downward spiral began way before. As Bryone Sharp said, there was kind of this relaxed atmosphere within the company. It was a wonderful company to work for, but unfortunately that relaxed atmosphere extended into inappropriate spending, not thinking far enough ahead in the future and poor marketing decisions early on.
It was a doomed business model. Most laptops these days don't even have built-in DVD players. Streaming is already dominated by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and RUclips.
@@MirzaAhmed89 not doomed but definitely a falling off point or end by date. We definitely could have kept going for at least several more years. Again, a lot of our customers were in rural areas with poor wifi that actually relied on the kiosks for movie rentals. These interactions with these customers who relied on the kiosks were recent. Redbox on its own still had revenue streams coming in even at the end. Again however financial malfeasance rushed that end-by-date for the business.
@@MirzaAhmed89 - there's external USB DVD drives, and you can always use a separate machine to rip them to digital format. Then, copy to flash drive. :)
I bet the reason Redbox is going bankrupt is because they recently got bought out and probably got saddled with a lot of debt in the process. This seems to keep happening over and over again like with Toys-R-Us.
@@colt5189 Yeah, Redbox actually did not go bankrupt. Our parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, went bankrupt. They also owned other companies like Crackle and a few others.
I was born in the 2000s, I feel old remembering the rush to get to Walmart with my dad after realizing we had a movie about to be past due. This and Netflix coming in the mail will always be some of my favorite childhood moments. 🙂
First and last Netflix movie I rented through mail was "Goal!" In 2006. My mom was pissed as me 😅 My first Netflix stream subscription in 2013 was between $7.99 and $10.99. Seems forever ago.
I remember growing up in the suburbs around a small Midwestern metropolitan area from 2006-2010. There wasn't much around my neighborhood except a small shopping center with a very large Super Walmart within walking distance that contained 2 or 3 Redbox machines. The nearest video store that we knew of was almost 15 minutes away, and streaming hadn't really caught on yet, so these Redbox kiosks were our #1 source of movies at home. Almost every movie night we had with friends was fueled by Redbox. It really was the perfect combination of affordability (especially during the 2008 recession) and convenience in a town with not much else going on.
I was a district manager of a small chain video stores. We made it until 2012. Redbox ultimately took out every location. Times change. It was actually a fun kind of place to work and manage.
I bet that Big Lots! is going to be the next episode of Bankrupt. A lot of locations in and around my town are either closed down or are currently having store closing sale signs up on the storefront.
Big Lots!, Conn’s HomePlus, Avon (their face powders and eye shadows use talc, which is linked to cancer) or TelevisaUnivision (low ratings, poor management, wanting to start a monopoly between their US and Mexico divisions)
It's a weird company. As a furniture store, it makes a lot less sense and is generally "trashier" than the average furniture store. Always understaffed, dirty, dilapidated, and not a good selection. Yet, somehow, they survive. There has to be some unseen miracle about their operating costs, because they have to be biblically low in order for BL to be even generating a shred of profit. Their bankruptcy will definitely be unsurprising and unremarkable. Edit: as far as operating costs go, I actually bought my office chair from a big lots a few years back, and I only saw two employees in the entire store. Huge grocery-store-sized building. Two employees. That's probably a big reason. Don't need many employees when you don't have any customers, I guess.
Redbox really helped in my childhood because even though we couldn’t always go to the movies because of the expense, Redbox would have it shortly after. We were always able to rent movies and games to try for an affordable price. With how streaming is only getting more expensive nowadays it will be definitely missed.
Filesharing networks are still a thing for people who remember how things were before streaming services became ubiquitous. A bit of legwork will save you hundreds of dollars a month in subscription fees. Then again, we live an age where desperate, poverty-stricken individuals cannot even be motivated to cook their own food because they're bailed out by charities and government-funded welfare programs.
Redbox... That's a random flashback. I remember seeing these literally everywhere at various Walmarts a few years back. I noticed that a couple of the machines were no longer there as time went on. Then, before I realized it, all machines just kinda vanished. I never even realized until now that this video made me remember it.
I'm in tx and all the machines are still here but they have signs about how they're not operational anymore. I guess the stores are waiting for them to be removed by the company and they can't convince any employess to try and remove them with how hot it is outside all the time. they've not been working for at least like 4 months if not longer (time is hard)
Walmart worker here. The funniest part about this is that the places with redboxes never had them removed and no one knows what to do with them. The service worker who serviced the machine just took all the dvds and games home
My viewing habits has changed from centering around an entire afternoon around a movie I went out of my way to rent to letting RUclips stream for 3-4 hours I. The background and then updating on social media in any free times
Used to be a distributor for video rentals inside Albertsons grocery stores. Home-based, each week received four to six boxes huge boxes (avg 250-300 dvd movies, games) to prepare for rental. Stocked weekly on Tuesdays, inventory, etc. Redbox appeared. Shortly after Albertsons remodeled the rentals area for other purposes. It was a blast watching New Releases 1 week before everybody else! For free!
I’m in the age range where I was too young for blockbuster but old enough for Redbox. By the time I was a kid in the late 2000s, my local blockbuster was gone but Redbox machines were in basically every convenience/grocery store. My brother and I would pick up games from Redbox pretty frequently, usually just to try them for a few days then return them when we’d go with our mom to pick up groceries. Stopped going to them around 2016ish because by that point I knew what games I liked so I’d buy them myself. Never used them for movies though mostly because I never really watched them growing up.
I went to Walmart last night and noticed the Redbox had a sign on it, saying it was no longer in service - cue this video just popping up on my feed. Mystery solved! Thank you Jake!
I mostly rented from RedBox when I had a promo code for a free night. A lot of libraries offer DVDs to borrow. The kiosk outside our grocery store hadn’t been updated in over a year as it still highlights “Megan” in the top left corner.
I remeber my dad and I were living in a town with little to no cable service at the time, We were reliant on Redbox right next to the McDonald's and 25-cent soda machine. Which I remember taking out for the last time, when I heard redbox was closing/ going bankrupt. I shed a tear. The memories that Redbox helped with were strong. RIP 2002-2024
Really cool to be this early. Redbox’s history is super fascinating! Your videos couldn’t fit my checklist any better man. Thanks for making awesome content.
When Redbox finally reached my hometown it was already too late,by then I had high speed internet turning all those redbox kiosks into a big paperweight.
Wild how being acquired by an equity firm or corporate finance is the kiss of death for so many things. Seems the safest business choice is to never sell out.
It's not a kiss of death, it is a mark that the business is already on the downswing and struggling. At the end of the day someone needs to take care of liquidation of assets as the business fails.
I grew up in a very rural area in southern USA, and RedBox was one of our main sources of entertainment until internet was finally accessible to our area, which left the only Redbox machine in our county to collect cobwebs. It’s sad to see, but was a big part of my childhood.
OMG, I remember these when I was a kid. My family and I got a few movies from this service, one I can remember of the top of my head was Bad Grandpa. Now, I view them as the epidome of the 2000s refusing to die
Always love these videos for knowledge about companies I'd never know otherwise. Don't believe I ever noticed a Redbox here in Canada but still knew of it.
I started years ago buying used Blu-ray disks from various places like Goodwill, flea markets, and yard sales. Most disks were $1-2 a piece. I've collected over 3,000 movies and television shows that are on physical media. At least I own them now, you're at the mercy of streaming services otherwise.
Yep, if you have a collection on some online service you won't have it in 10 years when they fold, or shut down those servers. Just look at game login or ownership verification services that have shut down if anyone doesn't believe it.
I'll go to streaming for my video entertainment but I have kept with physical media when it comes to books. I have no problem watching a movie on my iPad or phone but I hate reading books on those devices. Paper all the way!
I could see a home video revival occurring sooner or later. It already happened/is happening in the music sphere, with vinyl records making a now well-established comeback as collector items for fans and now CDs experiencing a post-covid revival. There’s already a passionate core of DVD/Blu-ray/4K disc collectors keeping things afloat for now, and doing so in what’s probably a better state of things than what vinyl was in prior to its mid 2000s-now revival.
Redbox actually began at Blockbuster, not McDonalds, and was blue and just labeled Blockbuster 24-hour rental. The inventor worked in the marketing department at Blockbuster and created the automated kiosk to mainly rent films when the stores were closed late at night or early in the morning, noticing that many customers dropped off films in the overnight box. Testing showed that while some used it, most preferred the experience of browsing videos inside the store. The same gentlemen left Blockbuster to work for McDonalds and the company asked for ideas to sell non food items. He told them about his video rental invention that Blockbuster no longer wanted. McDonalds liked the idea but kept their name off it because it also rented R-rated films. They branded it as Redbox to coincide with their Red and Yellow color scheme. It wasn't a good fit for their brand so the same guy decided to freelance their locations, mostly at convenience stores.
The best moments i have in my childhood from a small Alabama town are the weekends when my mother would make a meal and my dad would take me to RedBox to pick out a movie. I was maybe 9 and he would have me translate the summary of the movie before renting it. Monday evenings we would go back and wait for the weekend. That is what started my love for cinema and movies. I hope to become a director one day.
Some of my best high school/college summer memories was my family's "Mystery Movie Monday" where one person would pick out the worst looking movie in the Redbox and we would watch it MST3K style cracking jokes throughout the movie
I get the feeling DVDs will make a comeback. With the streaming wars going on, I say it’s the best time to advertise DVDs again, because people are getting back into owning physical copies rather than paying more money for less content and said content being removed at a moments notice because of licensing through streaming.
Blurays (1080 p or 4k) is the key as the bitrate will always be significantly higher with a bluray than streaming. Anybody who understands this and loves movies for their visuals and also their stories will appreciated the bluray disc.
Funny enough, I am staying on vacation here in LA and went to a near Goodwill on Glendale. What I found were many boxes with the company "redbox", a company that I didn't know up until now. Thanks Jake!
The fact redbox has been around for 22 years makes me feel old LOL I remember rushing back to Walmart to return my movie at night to avoid an extra night fee. With internet getting so fast and streaming being a thing most people do it's not a surprise it eventually shut down. I know all my local Walmart's have signs that say "no longer open at this location". I didn't know they all shut down. There are a few near me at walgrens still on.
It's a reference to how people often eat chicken soup when they're sick, and it helps them recover. The idea was that the books would help you with mental health issues, or just general melancholy feelings.
I remember from the late 2000s, all the way to at least 2021, me and my family would rent many movies from a Redbox unit at a Kroger we'd go to. Usually it'd be the movies we've always been wanting to see since we'd never really be able to go to the theaters much. There was at least one point where we rented a video game (back in 2014 or so; it was South Park: The Stick of Truth for X360). In a way, it is sad to see that they aren't around, considering renting the films from the unit was def a part of my childhood. And even during the streaming era we'd still alternate between that and Redbox rentals a lot. That said, the first movie we rented from one was Wall-E back in 2008, and the last two were Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon, both 2021. The copy of Guardians of the Galaxy we have was also an ex-Redbox copy.
When my local Blockbuster closed when I was like 7, I was devastated that I couldn’t rent anymore Wii Games. Then suddenly, a Redbox popped up and I was able to play some more Wii Releases again! Then when I stopped playing Video Games for a while my family rented from Redbox all the time! To the point where when all our locations closed we still had rentals so now I have like 7 Redbox cases chilling in my collection of BlueRays/ DVD’s lol. Rip Redbox
When I was a young girl, one of the best parts of select Friday nights was going to the video store, walking along the rows of hundreds of thousands of movies, and choosing one to come home and watch. There was often TV's on the walls showing trailers and previews, registers full of candy and popcorn. Even just going to get the movie itself was an experience. Sometimes I'd even be allowed to rent an SNES game too, and that would be my weekend. When video stores pretty much vanished, Redbox was for all intents and purposes the last remaining holdout for movie rentals. It was far less an "experience" to essentially get a movie from a vending machine, but it still had some of the feel of the old movie rentals from childhood. We'd pop the popcorn ourselves, and watch the movie. It really feels like the end of an era with the death of Redbox. I'm sure there's still a handful of mom and pop stores here and there, and God bless them for keeping the format alive to some degree. But now that Redbox is gone, video rentals is pretty much gone forever. Yeah yeah, I know, [Insert your prefered streaming service here] has a huge number of videos you can watch instantly the moment you want to. I don't deny that. There's just a kind of nostalgia and a kind of family togetherness we got from going to the stores and making a weekend out of it that we just don't have now, and I miss those experiences. Redbox was basically the last holdout of those outings.
McDonald’s always amazes me. This was a trial run for the no one at the register stores we have now. My wife says the grocery store near us still has one?
2:21 This looks like the McDonald's on Columbia Pike in Arlington, VA, near the Pentagon. I used to work just down the street from here, and it was the first Redbox I ever saw.
Leaving a comment before I even watch the video: betting that the words "Private Equity" or "Capital Venture" will be mentioned. Now... on to the video... EDIT: Ah HA! 7:12 Just heard the words "Private Equity Firm"!
You forgot to mention all those individuals who bought movies from their digital brand on their app, and now they have lost all access to those movies!
End of an Era! I started going to redbox more than blockbuster when I saw it was only $1 USD to rent a dvd. Best part about it is that I can return the dvd to any other redbox. Late fees were only another $1 dollar. It was so much better than paying $4 dollars at blockbuster. As redbox and netflix got super popular in the mid 2000s, Blockbuster started to copycat both of these guys from having their own dvd rental machines and doing dvd delivering. The previous owner definitely knew that eventually redbox will declined due to streaming services and sold it when it still had a ton of value. Goodbye redbox, thanks for the memories.
I was grocery shopping in steamboat springs yesterday and while existing the store i got stuck at the front doors because they were removing the redbox vending machine. I was surprised there even was one of those in steamboat considering the town is one the the most expensive to live in the U.S. a studio condo costs several million. Those who can afford to pay those prices aren't redbox type customers. Their management obviously made one bad decision after another. It's no surprise those overpaid ceo's helped drive the company into the ground. There are so many rural communities where redbox could operate profitably but they never even tried. Instead putting their machines in places like steamboat e.g. colorado's equivalent to beverly hills.
A lot of rural areas didn’t have access to internet for a while and this was the only way to really watch anything. Now most those places have internet access so people went the streaming route
I feel Redbox was destroyed not by it’s business model of renting DVDs and Blu Rays, it’s the horrible leverage buyouts that saddled the company with debt, especially Chicken Soup Entertainment who has no business in movie distribution! I actually rented Blu Rays few weeks before their bankruptcy like Encanto, Oppenheimer, Deadpool, because I like the physical video playback quality better than streaming!
16:55 The Redbox in my local Walmart was shutdown the night Redbox announced their bankruptcy closure. I assumed that the kiosk couldn't make any transactions as the services were shut down, but there's also the chance that the kiosk was just raided for the movies for $1 each and emptied out.
The one across the street from my gas station, in front of dollar general, still does well. Hell even the one in Wal-Mart here does, there's almost always someone at the kiosk. Then again i live in a let's say less fast paced city than i used to lol.
I think the reason they still have a place is its becoming much more popular to have your own copy of movies. There is tons of examples in the last few years of pretty popular movies not being on any streaming service so people want to have a physical copy. I think they get sold to someone else as a whole and find a niche in movies people love but don't have a streaming deal then they will be able to keep going. Also I am already tired of having to have 46 subscriptions to only want to see one or two movies a year from a particular streamer. Its like we are back at cable again. So now I can just rent those one or two and not pay 16.99 a month to watch one movie. I would be happy to have that again.
The biggest grocery store chain near me stopped carrying them. The only one I can find now is at 7-11 down the street from me. It hasn’t updated its movie selection in near a year, still promoting Super Mario as its newest movie. I could tell the end was coming soon….
Use code BSF50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus 20% off your next month of orders at bit.ly/46a5QWn!
"Ive been using factor long before...."
Really. You think we dont know you just got greedy, agreed to let them sponsor you, opened an email with jpgs and a script to read and told when and where to put their ad. Sponsors are destroying youtube channels. I suggest you part ways and just make content. We already have enough ads. Thankfully RUclips added the "skip sponsor ad button" which I just used and will now unsubscribe.
"And then it was sold to a private equity firm..."
Every blessed episode.
To be fair, he said Apollo management was hands off. It was CSSE (a publicly traded company) that finally killed Redbox.
@@briangasser973 you can't shorten it you need to say Chicken Soup For The Soul Entertainment just to show how baffling the stock market is, like who came up with that name
It was another trashy SPAC that is among this decade's scourges (ranking appropriately alongside reverse mergers last decade) that was the beginning of the end. Guess calling them blank check companies fell out of style. Just like LBO firms were rebranded as private equity
@@briangasser973 They picked the wrong god; Apollo should have been named Charon. Ferryman to the underworld...
That's not the *cause* of the failure. That is the *result* of the failure.
There was a Redbox at the CVS that I rented from occasionally. Around the beginning of July I went to get some prescriptions filled and saw a RedBox employee emptying out the machine. I asked him if they were getting rid of the machines, and he said probably. I then asked what they were going to do with the DVDs, and he said he wasn't sure, but that everything was a mess right now and he was probably going to be laid off within the month. He then asked if I wanted a few DVDs, and now I am now the proud owner of about a dozen of them. Unfortunately he couldn't let me keep the RedBox DVD containers, but still pretty cool. A week later the machine was gone.
Good for you, but ultimately, it's quite sad.
I read your comment and 'liked' it.
There are videos on RUclips from former employees detailing how they were shafted by CSSE. Not to mention service techs left with cases of DVDs and nothing to do with them.
They would have made great coasters like AOL CDs@@AlGoYoSu
"I then asked what they were going to do with the DVD"
Landfill comes to mind.
The red kiosks will always be a part of my childhood. Whenever a new film came out & my family could barely afford tickets to the theater, we were always told "wait for it to be on redbox." And we would wait for it to be available on redbox, late nights at the 24/7 walmarts, we'd rent a film & watch the movie during a late dinner when my father came back from work.
Distant times.
I always preferred video stores and kind of resented Redbox for taking jobs away from store clerks so I have no nostalgia for them whatsoever, never saw the appeal of renting DVDs from a box when I could rent them from my library for free.
@@Ari.Atland bro… are we the same person???
Back in my day We had BLOCKBUSTER!@!!! :D
this describes my child hood but years prior. I think growing up I was at a movie theater 5 times. However we stopped at the rental store almost every Saturday night. We would get a family movie and my parents would rent something they wanted to see. If was doing good in school and doing my chores they would let me rent a Nintendo game!
The good old days of VHS. I still remember my mom making me check to see that the movies were rewound so they wouldn't get an extra charge from the rental store.
@@jadedheartsz in a lot of areas it can take years for new movies to get to the libraries and even if they get a new movie early you have to get lucky and be the first person there if you want to rent it. I get where you are coming from when it comes to taking away jobs, but a lot of people couldn't afford the $5 a night cost from a store and so those people wouldn't have been active customers anyway.
redbox had a great market and targeted the lower and lower middle class and they did a great job of making their rentals easily affordable for those people. It is honestly a shame that it is gone and I can only hope those people learn how to download the movies they would have rented. ("legally" ofc ;) )
There was no better feeling than going to the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner with my dad and him telling me and my siblings that we could grab a redbox while he shopped. Then wed go home, eat, and watch a movie.
Glory days.
I can feel you brother.
@@STAM24 🤝
Damn I must be ancient this was never my childhood I went to blockbuster
Redbox was like blockbuster for the late 2000s kids
@STAM24 early* man I was born in 03
Redbox was a game-changer on road trips. The family car I grew up with was a minivan with a DVD player, so being able to rent a movie, return it 150 miles away, and immediately get another one for the next 150 miles was pretty nice.
Never thought of that. Dang near as good as a Block Buster memory
"road trips" this was one of the main reason i did use redbox. wasnt bad while it lasted
I had no idea it was birthed by McDonalds.
Neither did I. Looking back it makes sense as to why so many McDonald’s locations had Redboxes in them 😂
Me neither, but now I am compelled to call them "McBlockbuster"
You spoiled this six days before it went public.
How is this comment 6 days old but the video just got released?
@Montoya2005 they have a paid subscription which gives them early access
Red Box didn't live long in the grand scheme of things. But they did one hell of a job streamlining and extending the rental industry's life, for a couple decades.
Yeah, Blickbuster closed around what 2009 or so? That was like an extra 15 years to be able to rent physical media that otherwise you wouldn't have been able to do so.
Last year, my modem router went out at my house. For several days, while we waited for the new one to arrive, my family would rent 2-3 DVDs a day to watch from Redbox. It was a lot of fun and almost nostalgic for me as I grew up going to rental stores with my mom.
RIP Redbox.
nto realy nostaligic without that wired smell the stores had.
Your local library probably has a great selection of blue rays, and it's free!
@@bigqwertycat Yes, that's definitely an underrated source! I visited our local library with my family a few weeks ago, and was seriously impressed with the selection.
*RIPbox.
How the hell are you that captured that you had to rent DVD's to continuously be fed media just because your internet was out for 3 days? Insane.
I was raised by a single mom and we didn’t have enough money for cable or internet, but my mom would always rent out a couple of $1 movies every weekend from these Redbox machines that we would watch. Those memories of sitting in front of our TV in our small apartment in the projects are very dear to me and this video and the story feels somewhat cathartic.
Same. Especially when mom could get a box of popcorn to go with it. You can finally take a break from all those movies of people recording their TVs with a camera.
I was born in early 07, and after the 08 recession my family had lost most of our money. So we couldn’t go do whatever we wanted all that often, but my grandma still wanted me to be happy. So every Saturday night we would go to McDonald’s, and then CVS to buy candy and rent a movie. We did this for several years as my siblings came along and I loved it. Thanks for the memories🙏🏻
This made me smile.
One time, my grandma was staying at my place with me and needed to return a Redbox DVD. I told her we could return it at the local grocery store. When we got there, we found out it was actually a red "cineflix" box. We had to go all the way to the next town to return it. In my defense, it was a "red box" 😂
Idot
@@JaKingScomez no.
@@RealHomeRecordinghe literally is
@@JaKingScomez I bet you hate yourself pretty bad to put out a comment like this over a honest mistake lmao.
@@JaKingScomez is that some sort of a new apple product? iDot?
I used to refill Redbox machines and you forgot one aspect that they don’t want to mention but definitely played a role into its downfall: when they rented games, some people would put a photo copy of the disc cover in the Redbox case and steal the games. That also led to them not renting them in 2019
To be fair, I'd just rent the DVDs and BluRays to rip them and store them on my Hard Drive. I kept my physical Netflix sub active well into the 2020s just for that reason too.
$1 or so to keep a movie forever was a steal.... pun intended.
Well considering you need to use a card, you get charged the full price if you don't return it.
@@RedTail1-1 sometimes! You could contact customer service and get your funds back. A lot of the people at my old college town did it all the time
I wondered why they stopped renting games, too much theft makes sense.
like with every businness theft is a NEGIBLIABLE loss for these companies and anyone who says otherwise is silly or lying lmfao
To be honest I'm surprised it lasted this long.
they could have lasted longer if they focused more on games esp in markets where DVD sales were dwindling - their parent company was literally a ponzi scheme. You rarely see this, a company that was chugging along doing its thing just be shut down for no reason versus all the other stories on this channel of gross mismanagement. Hope the employees win their lawsuit
Same, i heard from a friend that it could be easily exploited by buying a stack of blank cds, printing out the covers to games, put them on the disc, rent the game on redbox and return the fake
Now obviously i have never tried this out myself before!
@@revoltx1 sounds illegal.
Tbh me too. Especially after watching blockbuster and family video go out of business. (Family videos we’re connected to little ceasers pizza)
I'm not- to the very end I saw people using the machine at our store regularly. It was the perfect cheap alternative to streaming services for people who only occasionally watched movies.
7:10 “Private Equity Firm” is like a whistle that starts every downfall
I will genuinely miss Redbox. I think I'm the only person I knew who still used them up until they stopped stocking new content. But as a physical media collector, I was able to buy so many movies to own from Redbox, typically for $4-6 a piece. The Redbox cases don't look the cleanest next to regular Blu Ray/4K packaging, but I was getting releases 1-2 months after they dropped for way cheaper than they'd even be on Prime Day/Black Friday/etc so I wasn't complaining. I'm not sure many even knew there was a "Buy" option from Redbox. They offered it when they carried video games too and I got Dark Souls 3, Minecraft, Mega Man 11, and more for like $5 a pop. Good times. It's a shame hearing about Redbox's decline, but I'm glad they existed when they did.
i remember getting redbox movies to own when i was a kid as well!! i still have many of the cases and movies. my dad telling me we could keep the movie i enjoyed instead of giving it back was such a good feeling for me when i was younger. good memories
Better watch your media. Dvds and Blu-ray disc's degrade and stop working.
I didn't know there was as a buy option but I think after 7 days, its yours cause they charge you again for each day until its $7 or $14
@@thystaff742 Yea, people act like physical media is the end all be all, but in reality the only true way to archive something forever is to rip it to a hard drive and make sure it gets backed up regularly to multiple hard drives in case any one drive fails. No one piece of physical anything survives forever. Copying is the only way to keep a thing around forever, but you have to make sure to copy it over in the first place.
I had thought about redbox at one point cuz I surley thought they died. I can't believe they triumphed for this long; I really took them for granted in these later years. Sad to see a company who operates so strong independently be part of a wreckless, sinking parent company who never cared
I mean it's not really surprising. The space they take up is small, they just need a few technicians per region to keep things working and to lease vending machine space. Other than that the business basically runs itself. The fall of Redbox is all on parent companies not recognising how valuable it was.
That's what private equity is; "We kill companies for profit..." They swoop in, cut every penny they can, borrow as much as they can against "Red Box", line their pockets with "management/investor fees", then 86 the joint, to prey on their next victims...
Of all the bankruptcies I've seen on this series, this one seemed to be the least necessary. Redbox may still have ultimately gone out of business as the world shifted away from DVDs, but from what I saw here, it did not have to happen this quickly.
Growing up during the recession redbox was how my family went to the movies essentially it was a family movie night thing, I loved redbox sad to see them go like this
I can tell you the Grim Reaper is really going around a lot these days. Especially with businesses that today really are more trying to keep afloat than really living in it.
I've been with Redbox over 14 years and I'm going to thank you for telling that story
Start looking...Chapter 7, means they take everything...Take whatever you can get, and jump the ship; This ones going to the bottom!!!
I knew I'd find somebody here that's former RB. I agree, great summation of redbox story.
To the employees~ I hope you guys find jobs easily if it comes to that!!! Sending vibes yalls way. ❤😊
I actually have fond memories of redbox from my middle school and highscool years (mid 2000's-early 2010's). It became the Friday night Blockbuster run for my family. We had them at our grocery store and and CVS. Can't believe it's took me watching this realize how much of a little tradition it was for me.
Living in a rural area, I am fortunate to have gigabit internet service. The next neighborhood to ours has 5mb/s service. Redbox in town was the only way many in our area could rent movies for the last decade. Their departure means the Walmart DVD dollar bin will no longer be overflowing.
You can stream all of these movies and tv shows for free via 3rd party websites. I've never paid for HBO, but watched Game of Thrones for free. Funny how I'd watch HBO back in the day for free too through cable, but I had to watch it through the white snow. I'd watch a lot of tales from the Crypt!
@@colt5189 true or sideload apps on a streaming device.
So basically the parent company misused funds, screwed over their employees, and in an attempt to not get sued for billions, they filled chapter 7 which in turn instantly killed every subsidiary they had, and screwed over more people, nice. More like "Chicken Soup for the Corrupt CEO" hope the guy enjoys his island retirement.
"Sort of"... Appollo snuck in a bunch of unsecured debt onto CSSE's books, while over estimating earning potential (Somehow???), directly after tanking the IPO. Chicken man had no idea what to do after being informed of his major mistake, and just let it do whatever; Which, is never a responsible move...He thought he could save CASE, but was promptly informed by his forensic acct, everything had to go. Drone at the office quit, leaving poor guy without the new heart he was promised...
Oh, no; This ones actually broke, broke...No CEO bonus check for him! He %100 leveraged his house/savings/shares (every penny he had), to secure the deal...He tried with the chapter 11 filing, but was soon informed of his 300 million $ accounting error...Red Box had no assets to borrow against, and Apollo had already loaded it all the way up to their necks in unsecured debt...
Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi had to be involved somehow with that level of corruption ...
@breantfavors192 that makes me so happy to hear
it wasn't really the company. They hired a brainless CEO who did not know how the business is run.
I feel like this is the most timely Bankrupt episode
Yeah it really is a whole lot of things we used to deal with as kids and before our times of advanced Internet and smartphones are now gone and this is the most recent casualty of our times.
@@kellychuang8373 I remember renting BioShock Infinite for Xbox 360 from Redbox when it came out and then beating it in 12hrs and returning it the next day.
@@kellychuang8373 I remember renting Bioshock Infinite on Xbox 360 from Redbox when it came out, beating it in like 12hrs and then returning it the next day.
Where I live, there used to be a McDonalds + Blockbuster location. Once Blockbuster died off, a spa took the place of the video rental store. Funnily enough, a Redbox was placed outside the spa when it opened. We went from blue to red, and now red is on its way to join blue.
Technically Blockbuster outlived Redbox, thanks to that one location still open in Bend, Oregon.
@@MirzaAhmed89 Yeah, but I was referring to the franchise as a whole.
As they fade into the purple 🌄
SAME! McD's and one block away was BB. In Vancouver. The plan when I was a kid after getting a VHS/DVD, just go to McD's before heading home to watch. I miss hearing those tapes/DVD's being returned 5 PM at the return bin.
Ah yes, the old blue ones were called MovieCube
Back in 2012, Redbox was huge! We went to them 4 to 8 times a week! Sad to see them go! We haven’t rented anything from since 2018
RIP Redbox. The streamers finally got you. I’ll still keep supporting physical media.
The kiosk at the Walgreens by my house is still there. Sad to see her sitting there alone.
Sad. We have Redbox around here as well all over. I’m sure it’ll be gone soon 😢
$1 rental for a 1080p or 4K bluray with significantly higher bitrate than streaming is always the better deal and you could own it in your hands.
What a great week. We get a Disney cruise review AND a bankrupt episode. Keep up the great work Jake!
What channel has the ship review?
@@Dangic23 Bright Sun Travels
@@SYH653
Thanks!
I was hoping it was the Disney Wish.
It's unfortunate that another business that actually cared for their workers & cared about making them comfortable at work is closing. You really don't find that often anymore.
While great, that alone does not make a business sustainable.
I work at a large technology company and the people that we have hired that came from other companies after they close down, will sometimes say how their previous company had some great perk or benefit that our company doesn’t have. I will say that is probably very true, but that company no longer exists and this company still does. Working for a generous employer is the dream, but it’s rarely the reality, especially in the long run.
Didn't care enough to decline the sale of themselves to the chicken soup company.
End of an Era. Blockbuster destroyed small video stores. Redbox ended Blockbuster. Streaming ended Redbox. We still end up paying over and over and over for the same content that we bought years ago.
No more late fees. Don’t have to leave the house. Hell RUclips has better free movies than Redbox ever did. We pay for it yes but the service and convenience is much better. The movie I want to rent is always available is the best part
@@Rambletambleforever ''Convenience'' is just an excuse for being lazy, change my mind.
Redbox didn't kill blockbuster. 😂
@@revksemi1962 Redbox/netflix
yar har fiddly dee ;)
redbox brought new releases to my house, it was an amazing opportunity for my family to be able to enjoy them while we couldn't afford subscriptions, movie prices and the occasional bad internet we had sometimes........being able to enjoy even a little bit of modern entertainment for a poor family is an escape and redbox brought that around for many
The irony of a company calling themselves "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and being such an s-show behind the scenes that its employees lost their healthcare.
Thank you for the good times, Redbox.
We shouldn’t be relying on employers for healthcare.
@@AtomicBuffalo Well we can't all be Canada.
@@shatteredshards8549 What about Britain? Germany? Ireland? Sweden? Japan? Anywhere else in the economically developed world?
@@warmachine5835 There are large enough holes with the NHS in Britain that people pay for private healthcare instead of using the NHS. Other countries, I'm not familiar enough with the systems they have in place to comment on them.
Wow! I had no idea Redbox changed hands so many times!
Often (usually?) the beginning of the end for any successful business: Being acquired.
corporate greed kills good companies
Nothing lastsforever,
Like our lives. We need to follow Jesus all the way to the kingdom of heaven before it is too late. All of this depressing news from the world can be overcome by the power of Jesus and his Kingdom, which is here on the earth and is spreading. We can repent from all sin, get baptized, recieve the holy spirit, and become born again into a new person, having victory over sins, mental disorders, emotional pain, and if we endure to the end, in holiness and righteousness, can avoid hell and make it into the kingdom of heaven.
Or that they started out of a McDonald’s experiment!
Redbox + takeout for a cozy night in was such a formative part of past relationships…RIP
Red Box and chill...yes indeed!
I live in a small town about 30 minutes north of Green Bay, WI. As of August 16, 2024 two of the RedBox Kiosks in town are still active and working. I didn't get any, but I did watch people getting DVDs from each of them.
were they over 70
@@an0therdimensi0n99 Nope. They appeared to be in the 30's. One of them had a couple of children with her.
Yep that's my millennial community.
Most be gen z, Millennials are in there early 40's try again
@@sleepyJem1982 That's correct. I'm among the very oldest of millennials and am still over forty.
Redbox got me through YEARS at work.
I worked alone in a lab from 10pm - 8am SIX DAYS A WEEK for years straight. We had a DVD PLAYER & 20 INCH TV that I’d always try and rent a movie from Redbox and I also had a SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO too.
To be honest, what really makes me upset is that while physical media is on the decline, Redbox itself could've easily survived for years to come through consolidating and reinventing itself. DVD and physical medium is far from dead. No, the reality is that they found themselves in the hands of a malicious parent company that leached them dry and then threw them away prematurely.
If anything, this will ironically have quite a negative impact on physical media, as Redbox themselves were perpetuating the existence of DVDs with their service. I don't think any of their competitors have the resources and infrastructure to fill the void that they're going to leave, giving people just one less reason to keep owning and using their DVD/Bluray players.
But the capitalist mindset is growth growth growth. There's no room for shrinking or just maintaining.
$1 a night for a bluray movie that will have double to quadruple the bit rate of a streamed movie is a great deal, especially if the streaming service was like charging $12-$29 for a new movie. The downside is you have to physically go pick it up and drop it off. That was a drag but I always preferred a bluray over streaming anyday, especially with the larger TVs where a high bitrate matters a lot.
Ya, they always seem to force this kind of stuff on people and then claim it was from customer demand. I don't know very many people that had any issues with renting physical copies. Sure it was a pain to return them sometimes but even with late fees it was still cheaper than streaming is now.
Omg! My husband walked in the door with a new DVD player today because we rent Redbox a lot when we go to our winter home, in Quartzsite, AZ. I was trying to open my Redbox app on my phone and it would not open. I went to Google and put in Redbox. This is how I found out Redbox is no more 😢. We own about 600-700 Blu-ray movies but have watched them over and over a few times! Time to head out to the Pawn shops to collect new titles to watch in our small one horse town of Quartzsite! 😂 So long Redbox, you will be missed. ❤
They have been taking the rental boxes out from grocery stores. They took one from my Kroger that I work at. Rip Redbox. Thank you for the memories
There was one at our local Weis grocery store. It just disappeared a couple of years back. Bought some decent movies from it years ago…and I mean YEARS
I loved being able to still get physical disk rentals, but for me it got to the point where there just weren't any good movies to rent anymore.
hollywood got infected by big ghey
Your library likely has all the good movies btw
@@ScottHeckel I was going to say this! Libraries still lend DVDs. Your library also likely has some streaming content.
Yeah I think my family noticed this too. Redbox became filled with knockoffs of popular movies.....
My local grocery store had their own separate video rental store inside until they closed it and replaced it with a Redbox outside. As a kid I thought it was crazy they didn't need all of the shelves and space of a traditional store and it could be replaced by a kiosk.
Wegmans?
Didn't know about the Redbox/McDonalds combo, but that's kinda genius on their part! Need to pick up a DVD? May as well grab a little snack while you're there. Dropping it back off? May as well get a little snack.
Redbox definitely made a couple hundred bucks off me over the years. Our nearest blockbuster was like 23 mins away in its prime so we were always a Redbox family. I was even using it during COVID to rent some new releases for cheaper than digitally renting them
It sounds like Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment was acting more shady than the private equity firms who are typically the villains in these videos
Wait, who? Not the folks who write those little devotionals....
@@DrawciaGleam02 yes, those people
@@patrickracer43
Aw, man! I liked reading those little books.......
😭😭
As a former employee who'd been with the company for over 10 years, while CSSE and Bill Ruhana did everything they could to destroy us, I have to be honest and say that the downward spiral began way before. As Bryone Sharp said, there was kind of this relaxed atmosphere within the company. It was a wonderful company to work for, but unfortunately that relaxed atmosphere extended into inappropriate spending, not thinking far enough ahead in the future and poor marketing decisions early on.
It was a doomed business model. Most laptops these days don't even have built-in DVD players. Streaming is already dominated by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and RUclips.
@@MirzaAhmed89 not doomed but definitely a falling off point or end by date. We definitely could have kept going for at least several more years. Again, a lot of our customers were in rural areas with poor wifi that actually relied on the kiosks for movie rentals. These interactions with these customers who relied on the kiosks were recent. Redbox on its own still had revenue streams coming in even at the end. Again however financial malfeasance rushed that end-by-date for the business.
@@MirzaAhmed89 - there's external USB DVD drives, and you can always use a separate machine to rip them to digital format. Then, copy to flash drive. :)
I bet the reason Redbox is going bankrupt is because they recently got bought out and probably got saddled with a lot of debt in the process. This seems to keep happening over and over again like with Toys-R-Us.
@@colt5189 Yeah, Redbox actually did not go bankrupt. Our parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, went bankrupt. They also owned other companies like Crackle and a few others.
I was born in the 2000s, I feel old remembering the rush to get to Walmart with my dad after realizing we had a movie about to be past due. This and Netflix coming in the mail will always be some of my favorite childhood moments. 🙂
I was born in the 70s. Trust me . Way better back then. :D We had all the cool stuff through the 80s 90s and 2000s things went downhill
Oh my god you brought back some memories of Netflix Mail-in. Blast from the past.
First and last Netflix movie I rented through mail was "Goal!" In 2006. My mom was pissed as me 😅
My first Netflix stream subscription in 2013 was between $7.99 and $10.99. Seems forever ago.
You're a kid. Born in the 2000's 😄. I was born in 1981.
@@williamthompson5504 1977 here :D
I remember growing up in the suburbs around a small Midwestern metropolitan area from 2006-2010. There wasn't much around my neighborhood except a small shopping center with a very large Super Walmart within walking distance that contained 2 or 3 Redbox machines. The nearest video store that we knew of was almost 15 minutes away, and streaming hadn't really caught on yet, so these Redbox kiosks were our #1 source of movies at home. Almost every movie night we had with friends was fueled by Redbox. It really was the perfect combination of affordability (especially during the 2008 recession) and convenience in a town with not much else going on.
I was a district manager of a small chain video stores. We made it until 2012. Redbox ultimately took out every location. Times change. It was actually a fun kind of place to work and manage.
I bet that Big Lots! is going to be the next episode of Bankrupt. A lot of locations in and around my town are either closed down or are currently having store closing sale signs up on the storefront.
Big Lots!, Conn’s HomePlus, Avon (their face powders and eye shadows use talc, which is linked to cancer) or TelevisaUnivision (low ratings, poor management, wanting to start a monopoly between their US and Mexico divisions)
Shocked they didn't shut down sooner the one in my town legit had 3 customers in it
I have one store near me and last time I went in, it was basically deserted.
It's a weird company. As a furniture store, it makes a lot less sense and is generally "trashier" than the average furniture store. Always understaffed, dirty, dilapidated, and not a good selection. Yet, somehow, they survive. There has to be some unseen miracle about their operating costs, because they have to be biblically low in order for BL to be even generating a shred of profit.
Their bankruptcy will definitely be unsurprising and unremarkable.
Edit: as far as operating costs go, I actually bought my office chair from a big lots a few years back, and I only saw two employees in the entire store. Huge grocery-store-sized building. Two employees. That's probably a big reason. Don't need many employees when you don't have any customers, I guess.
@@cherrypepsi2815they are just frozen in time in terms of stock and management ways. So bizarre
Redbox really helped in my childhood because even though we couldn’t always go to the movies because of the expense, Redbox would have it shortly after. We were always able to rent movies and games to try for an affordable price. With how streaming is only getting more expensive nowadays it will be definitely missed.
Filesharing networks are still a thing for people who remember how things were before streaming services became ubiquitous. A bit of legwork will save you hundreds of dollars a month in subscription fees. Then again, we live an age where desperate, poverty-stricken individuals cannot even be motivated to cook their own food because they're bailed out by charities and government-funded welfare programs.
Redbox... That's a random flashback. I remember seeing these literally everywhere at various Walmarts a few years back. I noticed that a couple of the machines were no longer there as time went on. Then, before I realized it, all machines just kinda vanished. I never even realized until now that this video made me remember it.
I'm in tx and all the machines are still here but they have signs about how they're not operational anymore. I guess the stores are waiting for them to be removed by the company and they can't convince any employess to try and remove them with how hot it is outside all the time.
they've not been working for at least like 4 months if not longer (time is hard)
I remember all the red boxes in Walmart were blue lol
Redbox did not die. It was murdered in a dark alley by continuously being sold off to companies which kept pivoting the long-term goal.
Walmart worker here. The funniest part about this is that the places with redboxes never had them removed and no one knows what to do with them. The service worker who serviced the machine just took all the dvds and games home
As a former retail worker, I usually say not my problem.
My viewing habits has changed from centering around an entire afternoon around a movie I went out of my way to rent to letting RUclips stream for 3-4 hours I. The background and then updating on social media in any free times
It's inevitable and actually admireable to survive that long after Netlix.
It wasn't just Netflix, but AmazonPrime Video, Disney+, HBO Max,... streaming is a cheaper and more efficient way to deliver content.
Used to be a distributor for video rentals inside Albertsons grocery stores. Home-based, each week received four to six boxes huge boxes (avg 250-300 dvd movies, games) to prepare for rental. Stocked weekly on Tuesdays, inventory, etc. Redbox appeared. Shortly after Albertsons remodeled the rentals area for other purposes. It was a blast watching New Releases 1 week before everybody else! For free!
I’m in the age range where I was too young for blockbuster but old enough for Redbox. By the time I was a kid in the late 2000s, my local blockbuster was gone but Redbox machines were in basically every convenience/grocery store. My brother and I would pick up games from Redbox pretty frequently, usually just to try them for a few days then return them when we’d go with our mom to pick up groceries. Stopped going to them around 2016ish because by that point I knew what games I liked so I’d buy them myself. Never used them for movies though mostly because I never really watched them growing up.
I went to Walmart last night and noticed the Redbox had a sign on it, saying it was no longer in service - cue this video just popping up on my feed. Mystery solved! Thank you Jake!
I mostly rented from RedBox when I had a promo code for a free night.
A lot of libraries offer DVDs to borrow.
The kiosk outside our grocery store hadn’t been updated in over a year as it still highlights “Megan” in the top left corner.
You can stream everything for free in HD on 3rd party websites. I watch everything for free, my streaming stick paid for itself in a few months!
congrats Bright Sun on your 27th episode of Bankrupt
it's my favorite series you do
Thanks!
I remeber my dad and I were living in a town with little to no cable service at the time, We were reliant on Redbox right next to the McDonald's and 25-cent soda machine. Which I remember taking out for the last time, when I heard redbox was closing/ going bankrupt. I shed a tear. The memories that Redbox helped with were strong. RIP 2002-2024
Good job getting an insider on this episode. Gives the video an extra dimension.
Really cool to be this early. Redbox’s history is super fascinating! Your videos couldn’t fit my checklist any better man. Thanks for making awesome content.
6 days ago early?
@@zacwoods Out for patrons first, my guess.
When Redbox finally reached my hometown it was already too late,by then I had high speed internet turning all those redbox kiosks into a big paperweight.
Wild how being acquired by an equity firm or corporate finance is the kiss of death for so many things.
Seems the safest business choice is to never sell out.
It's not a kiss of death, it is a mark that the business is already on the downswing and struggling. At the end of the day someone needs to take care of liquidation of assets as the business fails.
Agreed. Crack down on that shit.
I grew up in a very rural area in southern USA, and RedBox was one of our main sources of entertainment until internet was finally accessible to our area, which left the only Redbox machine in our county to collect cobwebs. It’s sad to see, but was a big part of my childhood.
Woah a start in 2002 and having grown to what it was at peak is insane
OMG, I remember these when I was a kid. My family and I got a few movies from this service, one I can remember of the top of my head was Bad Grandpa. Now, I view them as the epidome of the 2000s refusing to die
Epitome?
Always love these videos for knowledge about companies I'd never know otherwise. Don't believe I ever noticed a Redbox here in Canada but still knew of it.
It's a shame physical media is dying. We are heading in to a world where we will not own anything. Big corporations will flourish even more
I started years ago buying used Blu-ray disks from various places like Goodwill, flea markets, and yard sales. Most disks were $1-2 a piece. I've collected over 3,000 movies and television shows that are on physical media. At least I own them now, you're at the mercy of streaming services otherwise.
They weren’t kidding about achieving the mission statement “You will own nothing and you will be happy” Hold on to your physical media for dear life
Yep, if you have a collection on some online service you won't have it in 10 years when they fold, or shut down those servers.
Just look at game login or ownership verification services that have shut down if anyone doesn't believe it.
I'll go to streaming for my video entertainment but I have kept with physical media when it comes to books. I have no problem watching a movie on my iPad or phone but I hate reading books on those devices. Paper all the way!
I could see a home video revival occurring sooner or later. It already happened/is happening in the music sphere, with vinyl records making a now well-established comeback as collector items for fans and now CDs experiencing a post-covid revival. There’s already a passionate core of DVD/Blu-ray/4K disc collectors keeping things afloat for now, and doing so in what’s probably a better state of things than what vinyl was in prior to its mid 2000s-now revival.
Redbox actually began at Blockbuster, not McDonalds, and was blue and just labeled Blockbuster 24-hour rental. The inventor worked in the marketing department at Blockbuster and created the automated kiosk to mainly rent films when the stores were closed late at night or early in the morning, noticing that many customers dropped off films in the overnight box. Testing showed that while some used it, most preferred the experience of browsing videos inside the store. The same gentlemen left Blockbuster to work for McDonalds and the company asked for ideas to sell non food items. He told them about his video rental invention that Blockbuster no longer wanted. McDonalds liked the idea but kept their name off it because it also rented R-rated films. They branded it as Redbox to coincide with their Red and Yellow color scheme. It wasn't a good fit for their brand so the same guy decided to freelance their locations, mostly at convenience stores.
The best moments i have in my childhood from a small Alabama town are the weekends when my mother would make a meal and my dad would take me to RedBox to pick out a movie. I was maybe 9 and he would have me translate the summary of the movie before renting it. Monday evenings we would go back and wait for the weekend. That is what started my love for cinema and movies. I hope to become a director one day.
Some of my best high school/college summer memories was my family's "Mystery Movie Monday" where one person would pick out the worst looking movie in the Redbox and we would watch it MST3K style cracking jokes throughout the movie
Btw the best one/winner of worst movie was Beverly Hills Chihuahua
I get the feeling DVDs will make a comeback.
With the streaming wars going on, I say it’s the best time to advertise DVDs again, because people are getting back into owning physical copies rather than paying more money for less content and said content being removed at a moments notice because of licensing through streaming.
that is a niche market and not the majority
@@dollarstorevodka they said the same thing about the automobile when horseback was the primary transportation mode.
Personally the lesson here is to pirate that or illegally download it.
Blurays (1080 p or 4k) is the key as the bitrate will always be significantly higher with a bluray than streaming. Anybody who understands this and loves movies for their visuals and also their stories will appreciated the bluray disc.
Funny enough, I am staying on vacation here in LA and went to a near Goodwill on Glendale. What I found were many boxes with the company "redbox", a company that I didn't know up until now. Thanks Jake!
Where do you live? I can't imagine any American who hasn't heard of Redbox. They were everywhere.
@@MirzaAhmed89 Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Born and still live there
(returning to Mexico tomorrow)
Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, Mexico.
The fact redbox has been around for 22 years makes me feel old LOL I remember rushing back to Walmart to return my movie at night to avoid an extra night fee. With internet getting so fast and streaming being a thing most people do it's not a surprise it eventually shut down. I know all my local Walmart's have signs that say "no longer open at this location". I didn't know they all shut down. There are a few near me at walgrens still on.
I loved getting online and reserving movies at specific locations in town.
The good o’l days.
Chicken Soup for the Soul is such a strange name for that company
I was thinking the same it is one of the worst names I've ever heard, it sounds like something Micheal Scott from the office would come up with
@@Alex-cw3rz I wonder if they owned the book franchise?
@@RealHomeRecording yes, they did. It literally says so in the video. Did you even watch it?
It's a reference to how people often eat chicken soup when they're sick, and it helps them recover. The idea was that the books would help you with mental health issues, or just general melancholy feelings.
My grandmother reads those books, I didn’t realize they were an evil corporation lmao
I remember from the late 2000s, all the way to at least 2021, me and my family would rent many movies from a Redbox unit at a Kroger we'd go to. Usually it'd be the movies we've always been wanting to see since we'd never really be able to go to the theaters much. There was at least one point where we rented a video game (back in 2014 or so; it was South Park: The Stick of Truth for X360). In a way, it is sad to see that they aren't around, considering renting the films from the unit was def a part of my childhood. And even during the streaming era we'd still alternate between that and Redbox rentals a lot.
That said, the first movie we rented from one was Wall-E back in 2008, and the last two were Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon, both 2021. The copy of Guardians of the Galaxy we have was also an ex-Redbox copy.
When my local Blockbuster closed when I was like 7, I was devastated that I couldn’t rent anymore Wii Games. Then suddenly, a Redbox popped up and I was able to play some more Wii Releases again! Then when I stopped playing Video Games for a while my family rented from Redbox all the time! To the point where when all our locations closed we still had rentals so now I have like 7 Redbox cases chilling in my collection of BlueRays/ DVD’s lol. Rip Redbox
I appreciate you can tell the age of most of the clips by the movie posters
When I was a young girl, one of the best parts of select Friday nights was going to the video store, walking along the rows of hundreds of thousands of movies, and choosing one to come home and watch. There was often TV's on the walls showing trailers and previews, registers full of candy and popcorn. Even just going to get the movie itself was an experience. Sometimes I'd even be allowed to rent an SNES game too, and that would be my weekend.
When video stores pretty much vanished, Redbox was for all intents and purposes the last remaining holdout for movie rentals. It was far less an "experience" to essentially get a movie from a vending machine, but it still had some of the feel of the old movie rentals from childhood. We'd pop the popcorn ourselves, and watch the movie.
It really feels like the end of an era with the death of Redbox. I'm sure there's still a handful of mom and pop stores here and there, and God bless them for keeping the format alive to some degree. But now that Redbox is gone, video rentals is pretty much gone forever.
Yeah yeah, I know, [Insert your prefered streaming service here] has a huge number of videos you can watch instantly the moment you want to. I don't deny that. There's just a kind of nostalgia and a kind of family togetherness we got from going to the stores and making a weekend out of it that we just don't have now, and I miss those experiences. Redbox was basically the last holdout of those outings.
McDonald’s always amazes me. This was a trial run for the no one at the register stores we have now. My wife says the grocery store near us still has one?
I like how you need the wife's assistance to remember if there is or is not a Redbox in your area, I think it says something about the business lol
@@thecactussword4304 I don’t go to that store. If I have to grocery shop I go to Walmart.
2:21 This looks like the McDonald's on Columbia Pike in Arlington, VA, near the Pentagon. I used to work just down the street from here, and it was the first Redbox I ever saw.
Leaving a comment before I even watch the video: betting that the words "Private Equity" or "Capital Venture" will be mentioned. Now... on to the video...
EDIT: Ah HA! 7:12 Just heard the words "Private Equity Firm"!
You mean venture capital, not capital venture.
In any case, venture capital invests in early stage startups, not 20 year old companies.
This series should begin with "in this chapter of 'how private equity destroyed another company..."
Tbh they lasted way longer than i think they realistically should have so they made it this far was a miracle.
I agree
You forgot to mention all those individuals who bought movies from their digital brand on their app, and now they have lost all access to those movies!
There's a redbox next to our red lobster. I'm curious to see which outlasts the other.
Edit: Red Lobster is closed, Redbox won.
I just want my unlimited deep fried shrimp.
End of an Era! I started going to redbox more than blockbuster when I saw it was only $1 USD to rent a dvd. Best part about it is that I can return the dvd to any other redbox. Late fees were only another $1 dollar. It was so much better than paying $4 dollars at blockbuster. As redbox and netflix got super popular in the mid 2000s, Blockbuster started to copycat both of these guys from having their own dvd rental machines and doing dvd delivering.
The previous owner definitely knew that eventually redbox will declined due to streaming services and sold it when it still had a ton of value. Goodbye redbox, thanks for the memories.
I was grocery shopping in steamboat springs yesterday and while existing the store i got stuck at the front doors because they were removing the redbox vending machine. I was surprised there even was one of those in steamboat considering the town is one the the most expensive to live in the U.S. a studio condo costs several million. Those who can afford to pay those prices aren't redbox type customers. Their management obviously made one bad decision after another. It's no surprise those overpaid ceo's helped drive the company into the ground. There are so many rural communities where redbox could operate profitably but they never even tried. Instead putting their machines in places like steamboat e.g. colorado's equivalent to beverly hills.
A lot of rural areas didn’t have access to internet for a while and this was the only way to really watch anything. Now most those places have internet access so people went the streaming route
I feel Redbox was destroyed not by it’s business model of renting DVDs and Blu Rays, it’s the horrible leverage buyouts that saddled the company with debt, especially Chicken Soup Entertainment who has no business in movie distribution! I actually rented Blu Rays few weeks before their bankruptcy like Encanto, Oppenheimer, Deadpool, because I like the physical video playback quality better than streaming!
16:55 The Redbox in my local Walmart was shutdown the night Redbox announced their bankruptcy closure. I assumed that the kiosk couldn't make any transactions as the services were shut down, but there's also the chance that the kiosk was just raided for the movies for $1 each and emptied out.
At least we have footage of what it was like to go to a store and rent a VHS or DVD
dude, i saw a redbox randomly somewhere in alabama a few weeks ago and was blown away it was still there
The one across the street from my gas station, in front of dollar general, still does well. Hell even the one in Wal-Mart here does, there's almost always someone at the kiosk. Then again i live in a let's say less fast paced city than i used to lol.
I think the reason they still have a place is its becoming much more popular to have your own copy of movies. There is tons of examples in the last few years of pretty popular movies not being on any streaming service so people want to have a physical copy. I think they get sold to someone else as a whole and find a niche in movies people love but don't have a streaming deal then they will be able to keep going. Also I am already tired of having to have 46 subscriptions to only want to see one or two movies a year from a particular streamer. Its like we are back at cable again. So now I can just rent those one or two and not pay 16.99 a month to watch one movie. I would be happy to have that again.
The biggest grocery store chain near me stopped carrying them. The only one I can find now is at 7-11 down the street from me. It hasn’t updated its movie selection in near a year, still promoting Super Mario as its newest movie. I could tell the end was coming soon….
Bro… the nostalgia is kicking in!
I remember seeing a redboxe near wallgreens but not a lot everywhere else, its sad seeing many things go bankrupt
I used to get redbox a few times a month from 2010 to about 2014. It was how I watched a bunch of the new movies back then before netflix