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Friday, April 16, 2021

Blockbuster Video Express in Billingham

A visit to the old Blockbuster Video Express store in Billingham town centre, Teesside.


This is one of the very last remaining Blockbuster store shopfronts that is almost fully intact in the UK.

Blockbuster Video Express store in Billingham town centre, Teesside. April 2021
What a sight!

Many thanks to LaserDisc Turtle on Twitter for letting me know about the store's existence and Visual Sound on Instagram for recently letting me know it was still there.

We live near an abandoned Blockbuster Video store here in Manchester. It's always an eerie, interesting and nostalgic thing to drive past the old shop at Fallowfield Retail Park.

Blockbuster ceased operations in the UK in December 2013. At the start of that year there were 528 Blockbuster locations in the UK. The number dwindled until October when only 264 shops remained. The remaining stores closed on the 16th December.

At its peak in 2004 there were more than 9,000 Blockbuster stores around the world. There is now just one remaining store open. It's in Bend, Oregon, USA.

We've visited a number of former Blockbuster locations, including the site in Colne, Lancashire last summer.

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