Toronto man sparks nostalgia by starting Blockbuster video swap

It's synonymous with millennial nostalgia – the longing to roam the aisles of Blockbuster on a Saturday night.

Blockbuster stores were stripped from streets across North America by 2014, apart from one location that still remains in Bend, Ore.

A Free Blockbuster box located in Toronto, the first in Ontario (CTV News Toronto/ Hannah Alberga). But now, on a street near Christie and Dupont, a resident has taken it upon himself to breathe life back into Blockbuster in Toronto.

“There’s tons of libraries, so I thought this is something a bit different,” Travis MacLachlan, a local Seaton Village resident, told CTV News Toronto on Friday, referencing the neighbourhood libraries on front lawns created as community book swaps.

As a movie lover with a DVD collection, MacLachlan was inspired when he came across Free Blockbuster, a grassroots mission to “combat the myth of scarcity by providing free entertainment to as many people as possible,” according to its website.

A former Blockbuster employee launched the movement in 2018, creating a movie swap system in an abandoned LA Times newspaper dispenser.

The concept spread across the United States, and made its way to Canada in 2021, with locations in Vancouver and Edmonton.

The inside of a Blockbuster box in Toronto (CTV News Toronto/ Hannah Alberga). When MacLachlan put up a royal blue box on his front lawn this week, he officially launched the first Ontario Free Blockbuster location.

“I contacted a free magazine company and asked them if they had any old bins cause I saw them around and then they said they had ones that were rusted out so I got one of those from them, fixed it up and put it out there,” MacLachlan said.

He stocked the box with about 10 DVDs to start, which in just days, have dwindled down to four drama and horror films.

“I just hope people watch it and either bring it back or put some of their own out there,” MacLachlan said.

“It’s something for the neighbourhood.”