The World's Last Blockbuster Releases A New Super Bowl Commercial — But Seeing It Might Be Tricky
© Yelp / Scott K. The latest blockbuster in Bend, Oregon in December 2016. Yelp / Scott K. - The world's new blockbuster in Bend, Oregon posted a Super Bowl ad on Instagram.
- The flyers featured an advertisement titled "Blockbuster: To The Bitter End" and had a post-apocalyptic theme.
- The ad will debut on Instagram Live during intermission and will also be available to rent as an in-store VHS.
The newest blockbuster on the planet released a spot during the Super Bowl, but you might need a VCR to watch it.
If it's not a VCR, an Instagram or YouTube account will probably do the trick. The latest Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon teased an upcoming announcement on Instagram in recent weeks. During Rihanna's headline show, the store aired the first Blockbuster ad in more than a decade on Instagram Live.
But if you've been intrigued by Rihanna's performance and speculation that the star was pregnant, the shop has you covered. Shortly after the live broadcast ended, the announcement became available on YouTube.
The announcement follows a post-apocalyptic landscape of Blockbusters, as the vote holds that Blockbuster will stick around after the world ends and streaming ends forever. A cockroach enters a video rental shop through automatic doors and is greeted by a "Hi Steve!" by a friendly member of staff.
The bug buzzes and flies away as rousing techno music plays and a message that the world's last movie will keep you renting your favorite movies "until the end."
On Jan. 31, the store released the first teaser image of a post-apocalyptic scene featuring a giant cockroach sitting atop a blockbuster on an old-fashioned TV.
But instead of paying millions to run an ad during the Super Bowl broadcast like many companies, some more successful than others, the latest Blockbuster had a different plan. In another blurb posted Thursday, the store announced that the ad will be available for in-store rental and on the store's Instagram starting Sunday.
A new promotional T-shirt has been added to existing merchandise.
The store's general manager, Sandy Harding, told CNN Business that the store has been getting rave calls since the teasers first aired.
"I wanted to do two things with the ad," Harding told CNN. "The first is to show that small businesses can do fun and creative things at the Super Bowl and that it's not just an opportunity for big companies and their big ads. . "We also want people to remember us, who are here and that our shop is what Blockbuster used to be in the 90s.
By the 1990s, Blockbuster was a household name, renting movies and video games on VHS tape, then DVD, through more than 9,000 stores across the United States. But with the rise of live programming on cable TV, rental services like Netflix, and streaming, the video giant was forced into bankruptcy in 2010.
The Bend, Oregon store was the last Blockbuster store since 2019, after a second store in Australia closed permanently. Even with just one store, nostalgia for the '90s icon lives on in other ways, like the Blockbuster pop-up bar in Los Angeles that Danielle Powter visited for Insider in December.
