# Lifecycles, business and other.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lifecycles-business-and-other/610579>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [January 25, 2012, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lifecycles-business-and-other/610579 "2012-01-25T05:30:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lifecycles-business-and-other/610579/1 "2012-01-25T05:30:06Z")

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The video rental place closest to my house closed last month, and a casual survey shows that they are pretty much all gone here.

I remember back in about 1981 when the only place in town to rent videos was a hardware store that had one 4 foot shelf of them, half VHS and half Beta.

What types of business have arisen, become ubiquitous, and died off in your lifetimes?

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**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lifecycles-business-and-other/610579/2 "2012-01-25T20:49:33Z")

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Teddy Ruxpin. He was a teddy bear that talks and plays cassette tapes, and was invented in 1985 (when I was 1 year old). I’m pretty sure they’re long-since obsolete by now.

WebTV! It was my first exposure to the internet 🙂

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**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lifecycles-business-and-other/610579/3 "2012-01-26T01:30:30Z")

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Photomat.

When I was very young I would shoot a role of film, and my grandfather would take it with him to drop it off at a camera store he passed in his commute. It would take 7 - 10 days to get it back.

By the time I was in high school there were half a dozen drive-up one-hour photo processing booths in the corners of parking lots near our home.

When’s the last time you saw one of those?