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Redbox Owner Chicken Soup for the Soul Files for Chapter 11
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoI had no idea this book had a company and that the company owned Redbox. Wasn’t their original products Christian themed inspirational novels about people coming back from the dead, with a different version for every demographic?
- exsomet 2y agoI had a bunch of these books as a kid. I don’t remember any overtly Christian themes, just what was essentially a modernized version of Aesop’s fables. But I was also pretty young so maybe I just missed that part.
- gumby 2y agoI had the same thing about Narmia — only learned as an adult that it was a Christian set of books. By then I’d learned a bit about Christianity so in re read them but still have no idea. Perhaps they aren’t christian and I was just being pranked.
- JohnFen 2y agoThey absolutely come from a Christian worldview and tell some classic Christian tales in a different way. They're "Christian" in that sense, but they aren't proselytizing or anything. They demonstrate that good literature is just good literature. It doesn't matter what the worldview is.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoThe books are heavily allegorical and knowledge of who Aslan represents is usually enough to clue people in that it’s clearly a Christian metaphor, but I could easily see someone that didn’t have that background missing it. Even as a kid that grew up with a high level of Christian indoctrination a lot of the metaphorical concepts went over my head at the time. For example, in The Silver Chair there are rich metaphors about sin and salvation surrounding the characters that were totally unknown/unnoticed to me as a child, even though I knew all of the themes from my upbringing.
- exsomet 2y agoInterestingly (for me) the Narnia series is one that I picked up on being allegorical pretty fast. Not exactly the first book, but I think by the middle of the second I had figured it out. Definitely by the time Aslan was resurrected.
- terrut 2y agoAs an insufferable teenage atheist, the Christian themes went right over my head. They were just enjoyable as great stories.
- nemosaltat 2y agoThat’s what I remember. Someone got me “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul” (I was 8 or 9). It had a section called “Tough Stuff” and it had stories of abusive parents and family. I think my parents blindly let me read it because of the “Cristian Themed” association.
- 650REDHAIR 2y agoThe guy was also a big part of the movie “The Secret”. Quacks.
- bitwize 2y agoThe original book was a virtual money press for Jack Canfield. No surprise he'd form a business around it. Near as I can tell, the Chicken Soup stuff was generic motivational stories intended to lift your spirits. Canfield was a motivational speaker as well, and like many motivational speakers, eventually found that the only takers for his services were multilevel pyramid schemes.
- benzible 2y agoNot quite what happened, per Wikipedia [0]: > In 2008, the founders, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, sold the company to a new ownership group led by William J. Rouhana and Robert D. Jacobs.[20] I don't know anything beyond that but to me this reads like: finance guys looking to pull off sort of a "media rollup [1]" start by buying a well-known brand, name the company after it, then buy a fairly random assortment of ill-fitting (and in the case of Redbox, just plain doomed) media properties. And, here we are at the predictable end. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Soup_for_the_Soul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Soup_for_the_Soul [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollup
- datavirtue 2y agoYou could definitely keep RedBox running and profitable. No doubt with a lot of changes and innovation.
- jrflowers 2y agoI was surprised to find out that Chicken Soup for the Soul is a publicly traded company. You can buy Chicken Soup for the Soul stock
- paradox460 2y agoWonder if I can buy beef soup for the soul stock
- jrflowers 2y agoThe real question is if you’re bullish or bearish on the chicken stock
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoTheir covid peak is crazy. Probably not a good investment now though.
- asveikau 2y agoI'm kind of surprised Redbox is still a thing. It feels like a very late 2000s idea.
- brookst 2y agoBoomers still love it. It’s a high tech optimization of the Blockbuster Videos they loved.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoI’m a millennial and I still enjoy it for the nostalgia trip from time to time. I have a $20 DVD player I got from Walmart a few years ago whose sole purpose is Redbox nostalgia playback. I will say it’s pretty rare I get that itch these days, since basically any movie is instantly available. Hits harder when you’re in the middle of nowhere with terrible internet though. Even then though half the time someone has offline stuff on some device
- joezydeco 2y agoThe key feature IMO was the ability to return at any terminal. When every Walmart had one it became a great resource on cross country road trips with younger kids.
- smelendez 2y agoCracker Barrel used to rent audio books on tape and CD for exactly this reason.
- hash872 2y agoIt's popular in rural areas where people don't have fast enough Internet to stream movies. And/or, they can't afford Internet speeds that fast. Not a demographic you're going to see represented on HN much, but a lot of the US (by geography, not population) doesn't have fast-enough Internet for Netflix without it being choppy. Tried to show my Dad a funny Youtube video when I visited him on his farm and it was so choppy it was basically unwatchable
- ars 2y agoThey have a specifically Christian version of the book available, but in general, no, it was not Christian themed. They were self-help and inspirational stories.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThe whole ownership of the chicken soup brand and the long term strategy of the husband wife team is suspect. https://funnybusiness.substack.com/p/how-americas-most-inspirational-brand https://funnybusiness.substack.com/p/how-americas-most-inspi...
- swatcoder 2y agoThey were inspirational literature compiled from oral history, inviting everyday people to share inspiring real life stories that they would compile and publish in themed collections. The market for inspirational literature includes many religious people in general, and they had no reason to exclude stories infused with religious or Christian content, but most of the many books were not Christian themed per se (although some explicitly were). That they admitted Christian stories at all, or sometimes used striaghtforward Christian references in some titles or prefaces was enough to make them unpalatable to some, of course.
- fsckboy 2y agothe Jewish version could be: Chicken Soup for the Soul! (and for vat else?)
- aaronbrethorst 2y agoMatzoh ball soup was right there.
- kylebenzle 2y ago[flagged]
- LadyCailin 2y agoThey apparently also own a line of pet food. Bizarre combos.
- bdcravens 2y ago"...the company’s initial public offering in 2017 as a spinoff from the popular Chicken Soup line of self-help books" No idea how connected the two companies still are.
- genewitch 2y agoTIL the company that own(s|ed) coinstar sold redbox to CSSE in 2016. it's hard to believe i've had an incorrect assumption for 8 years, already!
- CSMastermind 2y agoPeople talk about zero interest rate phenomenons and this seems to be like another case. Lots of companies making bad decisions right before the interest rates went up. Wonder how many more bankruptcies we'll see in the next year and a half.
- jeffbee 2y agoI'd never heard of this deal but wow, what a blunder. They merged with Redbox in 2022, assuming $350m in debts and taking over their 27000 vending machines. Since then they managed to dig that hole to a cool billion dollars. Insane that anyone thought DVD vending machines was a great idea in 2022.
- kennethrc 2y agoI still see people using them
- riffic 2y agothe book list is fun (I have to remind myself some of you weren't around in the early 90s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicken_Soup_for_the_Soul_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicken_Soup_for_the_S...
- bsimpson 2y agoAs someone just-barely-around for the 90s, I would have expected the franchise to be older than that. As someone who's never read one of their books, they seemed old when they were apparently still new.
- Suppafly 2y agoIt was the covers they all had, looked like they were designed in the 70s or something.
- bufferoverflow 2y agoMan, that looks like something a GPT would output.
- LarsDu88 2y agoWhen I was in elementary school, I remember the school librarian highly recommending these books (they were trending in the 90s, apparently). Had no idea the book series bought Redbox, lol
- sizzle 2y agoI thought Redbox competed with Netflix back in the day? Instead of getting a DVD mailed to me, Redbox would spit one out in person. Anyone remember this?
- genewitch 2y agoit was a different segment. Redbox was more like holloywood video or blockbuster - new releases are more prominent. for the past 3 years though you couldn't tell by looking, but there haven't been many new releases so the selection has more old releases. Netflix (dvd.com) had tv shows, and a rather large back catalogue of dvd releases that weren't available on any streaming services, nor brick&mortar, nor redbox. In that both services were relatively easy to use to get DVDs, they're similar.