Michelle Trachtenberg, Harriet, and Why Those VHS Tapes Still Matter

Michelle Trachtenberg passed away this week, and the shop felt it.

For anyone who was a kid in the 90s, Harriet the Spy was the first real movie about a kid who wrote things down and paid attention. Nickelodeon put it out in 1996. Michelle was eleven. She carried the whole film.

We have the VHS on the shelf. We probably always will. Same with The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Same with the Buffy tapes that keep circling back through trade-ins.

Why VHS still matters

When someone great goes, the physical copy on a shelf is a little bit of proof they were here. Streaming can pull something down overnight. A tape doesn't care. The label fades, the sleeve wrinkles, the tape itself gets loved into softness. That is the point.

If you want to hold onto a piece of that era, come through. We stock Harriet when we find it. We stock Pete and Pete when we find it. We do not jack the price when someone passes. That is not how we want to do this.

Rest easy, Michelle. Thanks for the memories and for making kid nostalgia feel worth keeping.