Back in the 90's we had a one of these rewinders and used it religiously then suddenly our VCR started rewinding tapes all the way to the end anytime you wanted to rewind any at all. Apparently it felt the need to rewind and we were depriving it of its primal urges. We stopped using the rewinder and the VCR stopped rewinding all the way to the beginning of the tape when we didn't want to. I'm convinced these were best left for video stores to use.

Don't forget, porn adopted the VHS format also.  Much like porn also adopted the Blu-Ray format over the HD-DVD.

I know my parents had to take our VCR to get repaired at least twice. Both times, the secret army man fort with the folding blast door was compromised.

Yes. As many have said, the rewinders were much faster.

I don't miss those days.

Had two, one for rewind, other for unwind

FPNI

One office I was in had a VCR rewinder going around in the Christmas white elephant gift exchange for years (we're talking well over a decade), if you left the team early you passed it on to someone else for discrete repackaging and gifting. Usually the giver was mindful enough to stuff a few small gift cards inside, but a few years it was regifted without the giver digging out the old gift cards, but they had added their own to the packaging.

Kharn

Fucking rich people.

Blockbuster got fee happy. I'd have late and rewind charges show up on my account when I knew without a doubt I'd returned the movies rewound and on time.

It was enough of a problem that I started physically handing my movie returns to the counter staff instead of just dropping them in the return boxes, but that meant waiting in line sometimes. I think. It's been a while.

But yeah, shit like that tends to make people cranky. Or take their money elsewhere.

it was something cheap that you could gift people you don't give a shit about (wedding gifts, holiday parties, etc.)

My location never tagged anyone with a rewind fee, not even sure it was possible to. Take movie out of drop box, open case, check title to case, if not rewound stick in rewinder, then we scanned them in. By then, just to volume of returns, we wouldn't know which one was not rewound.

As for the late fees, the little secret was you had until two extra hours to actually turn in the movie -- late fees weren't added until 2:00PM local time. This allowed some time for us to catch up. A properly run location would have someone clearing out that drop box as fast as possible to when it came close to time. But if for some reason you were scanning in a stack of 20 movies and 3/4 of the way through you ran out of time, you just deleted it.

If it was after 2:00PM and it was late, we'd add a comment to your account that pops up on transaction, that the EVF (extended viewing fees) were valid and you'd add your initials -- each comment was time stamped. You'd would have been amazed at how many 3:00PM+ check ins there were and people would argue they had it in before noon. There were only two times I worked there that we ran that far behind, after Tropical Storm Allison and 9/11. Both times the shelves were damn near empty and the returns were waist high. We waived all those fees.

Thing is, the person arguing about the late fees was rarely the one that turned them in. You'd trust your kids, spouse, or whomever to do it for you. So as you're standing there berating me about getting it in on time, and I personally tagged your account with the fees being valid, Little Suzy or Little Timmy is right next to you with this guilty look on there face.

Now did mistakes happen? Yep. Were some locations hard asses about them? You bet. But if you were nice and cordial, I would waive the fees just keep the line moving and you coming back.

Those of us without snapface accounts don't care.

I used mine to rewind vhs tapes

Had one like that too.

Rewind a tape 4x faster while watching another movie... yup. Totally pointless.