I wasn’t trying to create a mascot. I was building a website.
Yesterday Memories was still just an idea at that point — a digitisation service born out of my own family’s story. My dad, Giuseppe, emigrated from Apricena in Puglia to Perth, and he filmed everything. Super 8 reels from the late 1950s, VHS tapes from the ’80s and ’90s — decades of birthday parties, backyard cricket, Sunday lunches, cousins visiting from Italy. All of it sitting in boxes, slowly degrading.
I wanted to save those tapes. And then I thought — other families must have the same boxes in their garages. So I started building the business.
One afternoon, I was working on icons for the website. I needed a simple graphic of a VHS cassette — just a clean outline to represent the service. Nothing fancy. A rectangle, two circles for the tape reels, a strip across the middle for the label. Basic stuff.
And then I looked at it.
Two round windows staring back at me. A little strip of a mouth. A square head with a face that looked — honestly? — a bit worried. Like he was thinking, “Please don’t leave those tapes in the garage any longer.”
That was it. He wasn’t designed. He just appeared.
The name came just as quickly. The reel windows were his eyes. He was really here to help. And he sounded like a mate’s nickname — the kind of bloke you’d trust with something precious without a second thought.
Reely.
From that first sketch, he grew. The reel windows became expressive eyes with little spindle pupils that look around. The label strip became a mouth that changes — a gentle smile when he’s greeting you, a wide grin when he’s excited about a new batch of tapes, a worried look when he thinks about all the footage still sitting in boxes getting chewed up by time and humidity.
He got a body — small and sturdy, wearing an orange shirt because warmth is the whole point. He got a workshop — a cosy room full of VHS decks, reel-to-reel players, and stacked discs, lit in that golden amber glow of a late afternoon. He got a job: looking after your family’s memories like they’re his own.
Because that’s what Reely is, really. He’s the feeling you get when someone hands you back a tape you thought was lost forever, and says “Don’t worry, I’ve got it. It’s safe.”
My business partner Joe has this way of introducing him. If you drop off tapes at Yesterday Memories, Joe will tell you, casual as anything: “Reely’ll look after your tapes.”
And you’ll say: “Who’s Reely?”
And Joe will just smirk.
That’s the thing about Reely — he makes you curious. He makes you smile. And then he makes you think about the tapes in your own garage, the ones with your kids’ first steps, your parents’ anniversary, that Christmas where Uncle Tony fell in the pool.
Those tapes won’t last forever. The magnetic coating is slowly breaking down right now. Every year you wait, a little more of that footage gets lost to time.
But Reely’s not in a rush. He’s patient. He’ll be here in his workshop, amber light glowing, waiting for whenever you’re ready.
He’s got all the time in the world.
Your tapes don’t.
