That $15 tape rewinder from the flea market almost ate my copy of The Thing

I grabbed this little plastic rewinder at a flea market in Akron for $15, thought I was being smart saving my VCR heads. Plugged it in, ran my copy of The Thing through it, and halfway through the tape started making this grinding noise before it snapped clean inside. I opened it up and the gear that spins the reel was just straight up cracked, no way to fix it. Has anyone else had luck with those cheap standalone rewinders or should I just go back to using my VCR to rewind?

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1 Comment

park.troy19d ago

I read somewhere that those cheap plastic rewinder units were basically a scam. Some guy on a VHS collector forum said they were just old DVD rewinder parts slapped into a different case. I saw a picture of the inside of one, and the gear looked like it was made of the same plastic those 99 cent store toys are made of. The Thing is a classic, sorry about that. I bet you could get it spooled back manually with a pencil better than that toy would.