VCRs and VHS tapes bring back memories

The last known manufacturer of VCRs will make their last VHS player this month.

Shocking news out this week that Japan's Funai Electric (who are apparently the last manufacturers of VCRs) will make their last VHS player this month.

I can't believe that up until now they were still making them!

The company announced they will cease to manufacture them because demand has significantly decreased and they only sold 750,000 last year. That means three-quarters of a million people bought a VCR last year! VHS tapes were a massive part of my childhood.

One of my favourite places to visit when I was younger was my aunty's house because she had a whole cupboard full of the clunky black things.

I also remember the struggles we faced back then when you wanted to keep a video so you took the tag off the front (meaning it couldn't be recorded over) only to find your sneaky sister had put cellotape over the hole and recorded her favourite programme over the top, or the heads of your machine got dirty and the picture would roll its way right off the screen.

When you rented a video back then, you had really earned the movie by the time you got to it after having to actually fast forward through the half hour of trailers. But just like cassette tapes were replaced by CDs, VHS tapes had their moment of glory before DVDs became the norm.

That was about 20 years ago but it seems there are still people out there who refuse to move on from their trusty VCR. We talked to a couple of people on the show this week whose mothers still have and frequently use their VCR. One of them has a hard drive she can record onto but prefers to use her VCR.

The other one actually managed to find someone in Hastings to fix hers when it broke recently.

The family tried to convince her that it might be time to upgrade but she wasn't having a bar of it.

At least her grandchildren will grow up knowing what a VCR is, I suspect many others out there would have no idea and probably assume it is a new Pokemon.

- Don't miss Martin Good and Sarah Van Der Kley on The Hits Hawke's Bay from 6am to 9am Monday to Friday.