Conventional Wisdom

I mean, it probably wouldn’t hold up if I ever tried to actually say this to the IRS or whatever, but it does my own mental health a lot of good to be able to explain away this sort pf thing as being “for the comic” and not just because I’ve developed destructive spending habits and poor impulse control.

But seriously, that actually is what the VHS case for that tape looks like.  There’s an opening cut in the top and the tape itself can’t fit all the way down.  Nearly all of the VHS that this one vendor had for sale looked like this, so it wasn’t just a random one-off.  And yet, the last Digimon tape I bought (at the exact same vendor, no less) wasn’t like this at all.  And before you ask, it’s not that the case it too small, like it was made for a Betamax tape or something. There’s plastic bits at the bottom of the case that keep the tape from going all the way down, otherwise it’d easily cover the whole thing.  Like, aside from the hole cut in the top, I mean.  Does anybody know what’s going on here? Is it, like, something one specific rental store would do or something like that? If so… WHY? What’s the benefit of having the tape constantly be at risk of falling out?  I just don’t get it.