Blockbuster holds the same kind of memories in USA like Free Record Shop had in The Netherlands. I loved to go to their stores and go through the variety of discs, and while they never had a lot of CD-i discs, it was always there. Blockbuster also sold CD-i discs, and they also rented CD-i titles, like we showed you here.
CD-i member Blazers shared some details about the rental CD-i packages Blockbuster used with us: "I've
come across a few interesting CDi oddities, but one that stands out are
the following slipcases that were used by Blockbuster Video back in the
day. They did indeed sell and rent CDi titles! They took the cardboard
outer sleeves, removed the inner cases, put a piece of foam on the
bottom, shrinkwrapped them, and slapped a $19.98 price tag."
Back in The Netherlands, the Dutch equivalence of Blockbuster in a way
was Free Record Shop. They went a step further as they in fact released
their own Annual Reports on CD-i in selected years (1993-1994). The Annual report discs we showed you a while back
actually have an interesting advertising video on it about Blockbuster.
The video is a USA advertisement, focused about 'The Imagination
Machine', which was the first name of CD-i, at least in USA, around
1991, at launch.
fAt the time, Free Record Shop believed the CD-i was going to become the ultimate software medium and the most important CD pillar.
The full video of the Free Record Shop Annual Report you can find below:
[Thanks, Seventy7 of the CD-i preservation team]