It was announced late last week that a Japanese company, Funai Electric, had made its last VHS recorder.

Funai Electric was believed to be the last company in the world that still made VHS recorders.

“Ever since DVDs came in, the VHS has been dying,” Mr McLean said.

“We used to rent VHS movies out and sell blank VHS tapes but that stopped happening in any real numbers about 15 years ago.”

Mr McLean has spent much of his working life in the family business in Koroit’s main street.

McLean’s Electrical and Computer Solutions has operated for 61 years, in recent times diversifying to computer repairs with a reduction in retail.

But Mr McLean remembers fondly when retail was booming and VHS was the star of the show.

“It was the late 1970s when the VHS recorders and tapes arrived and really took off,” Mr McLean said.

“The VHS recorders created so much excitement – they were the newest things on the block. I suppose it was like when television first came out – not many people had them.

“The VHS recorders were really expensive at the time. From memory they cost about $1000, so they were a real luxury item.

“The first ones had the remote control with the cord attached to the machine. They were pretty awkward.”

The arrival of the VHS recorder opened up two new frontiers for home entertainment.

It allowed families to rent the biggest Hollywood movies and watch them in the comfort of their own home.

What they missed by not watching the action on the big screen, they made up for by being able to watch the movie then they wanted.

They also had the power to push the pause button while they made a cup of tea or fast forward and rewind to their favourite bits.

The other great thing with VHS was the ability for television viewers to tape their favourite shows.

No longer did the television guide dictate people’s social diary – now viewers could record their favourite shows and watch them at their convenience.

“We sold a lot of blank tapes in those early years,” Mr McLean said.

“There was everything from half-hour tapes to ones that were four hours long. It gave people a lot of options to record different types of shows.”

But it wasn’t just selling VHS recorders, blank tapes and renting the latest blockbusters that kept places such as McLean’s Electrical busy during the peak of the VHS revolution.

It was an age where society had still not become disposable, a time when things were built to last and if they didn’t, they were fixed.

“People used to bring their VHS recorders in to get repaired,” Mr McLean said.

“Because they were such expensive pieces of equipment, people just couldn't go out and get a new one.

“It would cost $30 to 40 for us to service a machine so I suppose it was worth it given the VHS recorders cost $1000.”

Mr McLean said the early days of VHS were heady times.

He said the demand for the product was hard to keep up with.

“We used to get our videos from Richard Hawker’s in Warrnambool,” Mr McLean said.

“I would go in about once a month and get a new lot of videos to have in our shop.

“There were a number of customers we had who lived out on farms outside of Koroit who would come in once a week to do their shopping.

“They would go to the supermarket and get their groceries and then they’d come to us and get videos.

“They would get four, five, six videos.

“That would last them the week until they got into town again.

“Sometimes we struggled to keep new ones up to them. It got to the stage where they had seen the lot.”

While VHS is not coming back, Mr McLean is expecting a flourish of activity connected to the once mighty format.

Since the inception of DVD, Mr McLean has picked up the skill of converting old VHS tapes into DVDs.

With a generation capturing their most precious memories on VHS, the demand for conversation services is constant.

“Over the years I have converted a lot of videos to DVD,” Mr McLean said.

“Things like weddings, home videos and people’s holiday videos are pretty common stuff people want converted.

“These things are pretty important and people want to be able to watch them on the most convenient format and that is now DVD.”

While the demise of VHS is another example of how quickly the world advances, making glory days a fleeting experience for most people and things, there is still a part of society that can not totally let go of what has gone.

Nostalgia is a strong emotion, ensuring a blast from the past is always a welcome bright spot in the daily grid.

Mr McLean is expecting plenty of people to get misty-eyed about all things VHS.

“You see what is happening with the old vinyl records – they have become popular again,”  he said.

“The VHS tapes and recorders will probably become very collectable items.

“I’m sure there are a lot of the old VHS recorders and tapes hanging around in cupboards at people’s houses.”