Suncoast Motion Picture Company
The dim little mall store where you bought the movie you'd already rented five times. Suncoast sold films to own in the age of renting — VHS, Laserdisc, then DVD — under a neon marquee that made movie collecting feel like a legitimate way of life.
Suncoast was born in 1986 in Roseville, Minnesota, under an unlikely name: the first store opened as "Paramount Pictures," a joint venture between the studio and Musicland, the mall-music giant that also ran Sam Goody. In 1988 it was renamed Suncoast Motion Picture Company, and the mission was set — sell movies to own, in whatever format existed: VHS, Betamax, Laserdisc, later DVD and Blu-ray, plus the collectibles orbit around them.
Through the 1990s Suncoast was the mall's shrine to movie love. Renting was what everyone did; buying was a statement, and Suncoast's dim, cinema-styled storefront was where you made it. Then the parent company became the story. Best Buy bought Musicland for $685 million in 2001 and closed 20 Suncoast stores along with 90 Sam Goodys by January 2003. Musicland filed Chapter 11 in January 2006, taking 80 more Suncoast locations down; Trans World Entertainment bought the assets that March and kept around 170 stores running.
The end came quietly. In December 2009 the closure of 150 Suncoast stores was announced, and today only a couple of locations remain — relics of an era when owning a movie meant a trip to the mall, not a click.
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