With modern eyes we now see them as ugly, primitive-looking things affiliated with old plastic cassette tapes and perhaps somewhat related to those equally-redundant computer floppy discs. How quickly technology has progressed from the days when having variable fast-forward and rewind speeds (fast, double fast, Triple Fast!) on VCRs warranted praise and worship, and how stubborn I was when DVDs first came out, adamantly insisting that I would never (ever) convert, clinging desperately onto my collection of VHS movies with their inconsistently-sized and ripped cardboard covers and maintaining passionately that being able to record from TV was basic a human right. And indeed, by not making recording a standard feature on DVD players haven’t we all turned into JB Hi-Fi bargain pile-raiding uber-consumers, needing to own entire series of shows and collector’s editions of movies when we could have easily taped them for free?

Well anyway, before I allow the nostalgia to forever be replaced by the progress of DVD and Blu-Ray user-friendliness, here are several of my fondest childhood and adolescent memories of VHS.

- Frequently getting the tape – the actual black/brown physical tape – caught inside the VCR and needing to manually wind it back in with a kitchen utensil that would fit (usually the handle end of an egg beater) after pressing that little square button to open up the latch to straighten out the crumples.

- Memorising the times of certain favourite scenes of movies, e.g. 1:10:05, and playing a game where I’d rewind or fast-forward to as close as possible to that exact timepoint, taking into account the slow-down speed of my fast-running VCR and trying to estimate how long before or after that point I would have to press Stop.

- Pressing Pause and seeing the image stretch and struggle on old CRT TVs, hoping the tape wouldn’t burn or melt on the hot metal VCR heads after leaving it for too long.

- Getting fined at the video store for not rewinding movies upon their return and watching the staff at Video Ezy and Civic Video utilise those sports car VHS rewinder machines, objects made specifically for rewinding purposes. Oh, how those rewinder manufacturing companies would have shaken their fists in anger during the DVD takeover.

- VCR head cleaner solution and the awful smell of alcohol, needing to wait an hour for it to dry in order for your video to be watchable. Hiring ‘The Specialist’, starring Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas and Sharon Stone (which constituted an all-star-cast back in the 90s) and having the tape snap inside the player when I was too eager to watch it after cleaning, and then making up a story at the Video Ezy saying that the tape itself had screwed up my player and getting a Free Hire voucher in return. I still feel guilty about that (but hey, free movie), and apologise for the bad taste in films.

- Those useless, generic stickers that came on a strip with every blank tape, with the little letters of the alphabet, the ones displaying the length of the tape, 90, 180, 240, 300 minutes, whether the mode was LP or SP, and various label stickers of different sizes and shapes for placement all over every edge of the tape. These stickers were all so very pointless, but I enjoyed making patterns out of them before realising that some of them peeled off inside the VCR upon pressing Eject, no doubt further contributing to the potential fire hazard of the device.

- SP vs LP recording. Taping football matches, including the football World Cups of 1998 and 2002 in their entirety on LP 300-minute videos (which meant a massive 10+ hours of terrible quality), with a gigantic stack of videos. All labeled and covered garishly with those aforementioned useless stickers.

- Taping over previous recordings and seeing their long-forgotten remnants lingering around either behind the image of the  most current recording – etched into the tape like an image burnt into one’s retinas, my favourite being old Disney cartoons hanging about as the background to a Schwarzenegger movie – or watching them reappear after a short period of static at the very end of the tape, usually consisting of old TV shows and ads with antiquated channel logos and bad hairstyles and fashion.

- Having tapes get stuck in an old, malfunctioning VCR, and needing to ‘trick it’ into allowing the ejection to take place by unplugging the power cable, plugging it back in, turning the VCR on and quickly pushing against the stuck tape to force the annoying thing out. Luckily no electrocutions ever occurred during this process.

- Eventually upgrading to a good quality VCR with a dial that allowed you to watch scenes frame-by-frame, especially useful for bone-crunching football tackle analysis in slow-mo and reviewing in awe the shattering of the T-1000 in Terminator 2. There really was something special about watching those paused, overworked images covered in tape static on the TV screen and hearing the groans of the VCR motors with each and every frame advancement and reversal.

- Before the advent of subtitles in DVDs, incorrectly guessing movie quotes due to bad accents/acting commonly found in Jean Claude Van-Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone movies. Having never had the desire to repurchase Universal Soldier on DVD, I still to this day do not know what JCVD was saying at the end after the fight with Dolph Lundgren – “Ironed?” “I wronged?” “I ronned [sic]?” “Eire rammed?” None of my guesses ever made any sense in the context of that scene, but then again, what was I thinking watching that rubbish in the first place anyway?

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Got any other stories? I’d love to hear about your own personal favourite VHS memories =)

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Note: This is not to say that there aren’t any good stickers out there, because there are. But just like the rotten apple that spoils the bunch, it’s always the worst stickers that we remember eh? And no I am not a bad sticker peeler, I can peel it with the best of them but I need something decent to work with dammit. None of that permanent superglue-sticker garbage.

Apples

Speaking of rotten apples, these cursed stickers even come to get us when we are merely trying to survive: Apple stickers, do we even need them? Why the HELL are they there? For me an apple is just an apple, disregarding the green and red varieties and level of crunch: do we really need to know whether the J&J Bros grew them? Do we tell ourselves “No! I sincerely refuse to purchase an apple from those scallywags the J&J’s and would much rather a fine apple from those chaps at O’Connor Fields…now THOSE are fine apples if ever there were any” while twirling our proverbial moustaches and enjoying a vintage cigar? I just want to eat it, not spend an absurd amount of time trying to peel the sticker off and getting rid of all the remnants in order to maintain a basic level of friggin’ hygiene.

Angry Rating:7/10

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Cars

Ah registration stickers…disgusting. You’d think that on a nice, smooth material such as a glass windscreen that the stickers would peel right off. But no. Not car rego stickers: you need to forcefully KEY the bastard off and then scrape away all that solidified crap so as to prevent yourself from obstructing your vision and being able to see those zebra crossings on a schoolday afternoon. At 3pm. Chances are not only will you never EVER get it all off and end up with a whole collection of dried sticker leftover residue for the entire lifetime of your vehicle, you will also have to remove Mr Lollipop-man splatter from the outside, depending on the severity of my exaggeration here. All in all, car rego adhesives are the worst of a bad bad bunch.

Angry Rating:10/10

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Games

Why are game stickers so bad? Nearly all of my games have sticker reminders on them, and it’s even worse on 360 cases because of the grooves on the corners and middle; hence the evil sticker’s ability to sabotage them by digging right in and starting a civilisation. As for the occasional stickers on the manuals…well.

On this note I must also expose another aspect of this sordid sticker trade: it may be best to stay as far away as possible from used/second-hand games: it seems as if these titles carry with them the worst stickers on the face of the planet: metallic, plastic barcoded, forged on and absolutely irremovable. It’s almost as if these stickers are trying to humiliate and stigmatise the “bargain (and, let’s face it, occasionally povvo)-shopper” with the permanence of the words “3 Day Hire” as in those Scarlet Letter days of old(e), granted without any Demi Moore in the mix never mind the adultery.

Angry Rating:9/10

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DVDs

Game and DVD cases are practically one and the same now, but here is another lovely specimen of a crappy sticker’s destructive properties. Thank YOU DVD store for placing your sticker on the INSIDE of the plastic sleeve DIRECTLY on the cover paper. No, seriously, thanks a lot. How else would I end up with the most wrecked cover out of anything I’ve EVER owned? At least the movie was surprisingly good but, man! Every time I decide to whack it on it’s a constant reminder to boycott that store/Tom Cruise movies, whichever comes first.

Angry Rating:10/10

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Books

There are certainties in life; 100% guarantees. For instance sunrise and sunset, oil doesn’t mix with water, Uwe Boll movies are always bad, so on and soforth. Another one of these certainties is that whenever you buy a book, there will always be a sticker on the back cover, maybe over the barcode, covering the book’s original recommended retail price. And chances are, this sticker will totally SUCK. Now depending on the quality of both the cover of the book and the sticker, you could very well make it a nice and clean peel. However if you are particularly unlucky and have, say, a book with a cover made of that brown recycled paper with bits of stick in them AND the sticker is one of those blood-sucking ones, then it’s going to be painful. And what are you reading on recycled brown paper anyway? Feminist poetry? Shame on you!

Angry Rating:6/10

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Beverages

Ok I admit this is petty and one must be quite bored to peel stickers off a beer bottle in the first place (isn’t there a song that mentions this? Sheryl Crow?) but come one, we’ve all done it. Right? Well I just did it to illustrate my point and, golly what a surprise, beer bottle stickers are utterly terrible as well. The bottle is going to end up in the bin afterwards anyway (unless you collect them, freak, although if you line them all up as makeshift wind instruments to play a song I must concede that that is kinda awesome) so maybe this blog was just an excuse for me to drink. Highly likely. Besides, after a rant like this I think I’ve earned one.

Angry Rating:N/A