Father builds mini Blockbuster store at home for autistic son after local one closes

A father in Texas helped stop his 20-year-old son with autism having a "bad day" after realising his local Blockbuster was closing down by building his own video rental store at home.

Hector Andres Zuniga, who is non-verbal as a result of his autism, was said to have visited his local Blockbusters in Mission at least twice a week to rent some of his favourite titles, such as Rugrats and Elmo.

However, as is the way with virtually all of the Blockbusters stores across the world, the branch closed for good on 23 April.

"[Hector Andres] is a happy-go-lucky kid," his father Hector Sr told the Huffington Post. "He's all heart, he's very tender, but like anyone else, he has bad days. And we knew one of those bad days were around the corner when we found out that the Blockbuster was about to close."

The family then had a novel idea – to bring Blockbusters straight to their home, complete with signs and a rack full of DVDs by purchasing everything needed from the shop and constructing it themselves.

The big reveal from the family went viral after the younger brother, Jaavii Zuniga, tweeted a series of pictures of the mini Blockbusters. The tweet has been retweeted more than 31,000 times and liked nearly 125,000 times in two days.

After showing his son the rack stocked full of some of his favourite DVDs, Hector Sr said his son even went up to touch them as if he was "checking to see if they were real."

"His way of saying 'I love you,' is by going up to you and grabbing your earlobe," Hector Sr added. "So he came up to me and grabbed my ear ... it was one of those moments that us parents live for."

There are just 12 Blockbuster Video stores left in the US, down from its peak of around 9000 nationwide around 13 years ago.