You mean there were people who watched that show who weren’t high or hung over? My favorite was watching it in Spanish, though I don’t speak Spanish. It just added to its inherent psychedelia.
Shoot, I have Thunderbird 1 sitting on my desk even as we type.
Thunderbirds was cool.
Supercar was cooler.
Fireball XL-5 was coolest.
Regards,
Shodan
Interesting you should mention Space Patrol: in 1959, Anderson declined to produce a second series of Torchy the Battery Boy for Roberta Leigh, so she and Anderson’s business partner Arthur Provis went into business with each other. After a moderate degree of success with a second series of Torchy and the utterly Leighesque* Sara & Hoppity, the company went head-on against the Andersons – Space Patrol debuted in April 1963 versus Fireball XL5 in October 1962. (Provis & Leigh’s Wonderama folded shortly thereafter, but then, out-Andersoning the Andersons was a fool’s errand from inception.)
As for Thunderbirds, it was indeed less popular in the United States than elsewhere, though television executives would push their mothers in front of a bus for equivalent ratings today. As the 60s progressed new Supermarionation series were being released while older ones were still in syndication, saturating the market and leading to progressively lower returns for the genre even as the technology continued to refine itself.
Nevertheless, even in the US, Thunderbirds has the largest mindshare of any of Anderson’s television series which is why the film rights have been bought and resold as an independent property for the last decade. I just hope that Jonathan Frakes has the good sense to not feel obliged to fix what’s not broken – I mean, a hot pink Aston-Martin? Thunderbird 2 with aerospike engines? Dangerously close to blasphemy, if you ask me.
- Leigh had a fetish for mutilated and abused toys who conspired to avenge their mistreatment by humans. Space Patrol is the sole exception to this theme I’m aware of.
The link says that the car is “now a Ford Thunderbird, not a Rolls-Royce”, which is even worse. No offence to Ford, but Penelope Creighton-Ward would never be seen in anything so second rate.