Supermarionation shows

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Stingray was my favourite. Captain Scarlet was pretty awesome, too.

I also liked Space Patrol, which wasn't a Gerry Anderson show but was similar to supermarionation in many respects.

It's a shame that Thunderbirds is the only supermarionation show which regularly shows up in reruns.
 
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Watched some Captain Scarlet the other day. Fun stuff.

Saw a bit of Stingray too. Does his sidekick ever actually do stuff other go "duh gosh Troy"?
 
I've liked the mechanical designs I've seen. Fireflash here, especially:

dB27zj6.jpg


It may not be practical due to the situation of the nuclear turbojets, but it certainly is a realistic-looking design.
 
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They showed a bunch of these when I was a kid, and they were unquestionably the greatest thing I had ever seen. Gerry Anderson just seemed to have this gift for coming up with awesome concepts that appealed to kids, regardless of focus groups, moral messages or the toy companies. There was no talking down to the kids, either, which was very refreshing to 8-year-old me - Captain Scarlet would have to deal with gambling debt or Alan Tracy would be held at gunpoint. And the special effects were brilliant - a lot of the artists went on to work on the Bond movies, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Worth a look if you can find them are the old 60s comics that tied in to the various series. While the artwork is awesome, there are two things I like about them. The first is that they tried to tie Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 into a larger fictional universe, which was kind of fun but also weird - you'd have this massive tonal mismatch between the campy Fireball and Stingray and the hard-edged Captain Scarlet, and there were these continuity problems, so they'd have to explain how Fireball could be zipping around space while in Thunderbirds they're landing the first men on Mars. But you'd get fun crossovers between the shows and even some original stories set in the same universe.

The other great thing about the comics, though, was that the writers often didn't seem to get the memo that they were writing for kids, so you'd get these stories that were basically spy thrillers or body horror alien invasion stories that the Thunderbirds crew were awkwardly shoehorned into.
 
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British readers of a certain age might remember when Thunderbirds made a pop-culture comeback in the early nineties. They might also have remembered wanting the highly sought-after Tracey Island playset for Christmas. Their parents might not have been able to get one, but why should stock shortages matter when you’ve got toilet rolls, sticky-backed plastic and a bit of British ingenuity?
 
Bringing this thread back now that the mini-pilot of Firestorm is out.
i'm kinda hyped tbh, this is looking really good
 
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Terrahawks is a lot of fun. Very cool ship and mascot robot designs, lots of great LOL HE'S ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE ACCENTS like the French robot, the Japanese guy, the gay robot, lots more.
 
Could someone help me here. I remember watching a
supermarionation show in the mid-late 80ies that had the vehicles that combine into a mech. The human puppet cast had sphere shape robots helping them in and out combat. Fighting and blowing up their cube shape bad guy counterparts.
 
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