Author: Parker

FAB Express 101 is go – worldwide!

Posted on by Parker

The first issue of our new club magazine – FAB Express – has been mailed to all Fanderson members around the world!

As part of our updated membership package FAB Express will be published each spring, summer and winter, with a new hardback FAB Annual in the winter mailing too.

We’re aligning memberships so that everyone expires with the summer mailing each year. This will streamline our operation, helping to control costs by having fewer individual items, and fewer permutations of each mailing. FAB Express 101 is being sent to you as a free extra mailing, so you know what you’re signing up for when you renew your membership.

With every issue is a letter explaining how we’re ensuring that anyone who was owed issues of FAB under their old membership won’t be out of pocket. Please wait until you receive FAB Express before renewing your membership, but be sure to renew by 1st October 2022 to be included in the winter mailing and get your next FAB Express and FAB Annual 2023!

The publication of FAB Express also means that FAB 100 is now available as a back issue, for anyone who missed out.

41 FAB Years

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On Thursday, 20th August 1981, Gerry Anderson invited fans of his work to meet him at his office at Pinewood Studios, and together they formed Fanderson.

On Saturday, 20th August 2022, Fanderson members celebrated Gerry and Sylvia’s work, and the club itself at the 40th birthday bash (albeit one year late, due to Covid-19!).

Deliberately designed to be a social event rather than a convention, club members enjoyed music, models, puppets and lots of chat as it had been three years since they’d been able to get together (at our Supercelebration convention back in 2019). We were delighted that puppeteers Mary Turner and Judy Preece were available to celebrate with us too. It was a perfect day, weather-wise, and so we were able to enjoy the garden of the Pinewood Hotel much of the time, especially for the barbecue and cake (lots of cake!).

The event package included a birthday card, poster, badge and the first issue of our new club magazine, FAB Express.

Club secretary John Wilkinson also set a couple of quizzes for anyone with time on their hands:

  • a headlines quiz asked members to state the year for 40 Daily Mirror headlines
  • the particularly fiendish episode synopses quiz asked members to identify Anderson episodes from their TV Times listings

You can have a go now (just for fun) and the answers are below the photos.

Well done to our winners Lily Ride (31 out of 40 headlines correct) and Mark Castell (32 out of 40 episodes correct) who each win a lifetime Fanderson membership and Zavvi’s reissued Topps trading cards or vinyl EP boxset (respectively).

Well done to all who took part in the quizzes, and a big thank you to everyone who was able to attend and/or contribute to our 40 FAB Years!

Headlines quiz answers:

  1. 1987
  2. 2010
  3. 2006
  4. 1992
  5. 2011
  6. 2008
  7. 1988
  8. 1995
  9. 1998
  10. 2001
  11. 1984
  12. 2003
  13. 2007
  14. 1999
  15. 1982
  16. 1985
  17. 1994
  18. 1983
  19. 2020
  20. 1996
  21. 2009
  22. 2004
  23. 1989
  24. 1990
  25. 2017
  26. 2018
  27. 2002
  28. 1981
  29. 1991
  30. 2012
  31. 2016
  32. 2000
  33. 2005
  34. 2013
  35. 2014
  36. 2019
  37. 2015
  38. 1993
  39. 1986
  40. 1997

Episode synopses quiz answers:

  1. Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons Flight 104
  2. Thunderbirds Pit Of Peril
  3. Space:1999 The Full Circle
  4. UFO The Dalotek Affair
  5. Joe 90 Business Holiday
  6. Thunderbirds 30 Minutes After Noon
  7. Stingray The Master Plan
  8. The Protectors Petard
  9. Thunderbirds The Man From MI.5
  10. Joe 90 Hi-Jacked
  11. The Protectors Goodbye George
  12. Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons Fire At Rig 15
  13. Fireball XL5 Robert To The Rescue
  14. The Secret Service More Haste – Less Speed
  15. Supercar Keep It Cool
  16. Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons Codename Europa
  17. UFO Timelash
  18. Space:1999 A Matter Of Balance
  19. The Protectors Burning Bush
  20. Thunderbirds Martian Invasion
  21. Stingray The Big Gun
  22. Joe 90 The Fortress
  23. Space:1999 Earthbound
  24. UFO Destruction
  25. The Secret Service Recall To Service
  26. Stingray Sea Of Oil
  27. Thunderbirds End Of The Road
  28. Fireball XL5 Convict In Space
  29. UFO Flight Path
  30. Space:1999 Missing Link
  31. Thunderbirds The Cham-Cham
  32. Space:1999 Dragon’s Domain
  33. UFO Survival
  34. The Protectors A Case For The Right
  35. Thunderbirds Path Of Destruction
  36. Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons The Trap
  37. Space:1999 The Immunity Syndrome
  38. Joe 90 Relative Danger
  39. UFO The Long Sleep
  40. Thunderbirds Martian Invasion

FAB Express is go!

Posted on by Parker

The first issue of our new club magazine – FAB Express – is go!

Fanderson members who are today at the club’s 40th anniversary event 40 FAB Years are the first to be given copies, as part of their event package. Next week, copies will be winging their way around the world to all current club members, and we’ll confirm this on the website just as soon as we’re sure they’re all in the post.

As we explained in FAB 100, as part of our updated membership package FAB Express will be published each spring, summer and winter and include the all the news, reviews, competitions, club news, merchandise, letters and any other time-sensitive content. You’ll see that FAB’s popular Timelash feature lives on here too, under the new title of Flashback and with a new resident team of ‘flashbackers’.

Meanwhile, club designer and former FAB editor Mike Jones is hard at work on getting the FAB Annual 2023 ready for the winter mailing. He promises it’s all looking good already, and will be packed with all the interviews, cutaways, research and in-depth articles you’ve come to know and love in FAB, with lots of new ideas thrown in for good measure.

Also as we explained in FAB 100, we’re aligning memberships so that everyone expires with the summer mailing each year. This will streamline our operation, helping to control costs by having fewer individual items, and fewer permutations of each mailing.

Every member will receive a letter with this FAB Express that explains how to renew your membership to be included in the winter mailing (and get your first FAB Annual) and how we’re ensuring that anyone who was owed issues of FAB under their old membership won’t be out of pocket.

Please wait until you receive FAB Express before renewing your membership, but be sure to renew by 1st October 2022 to be included in the winter mailing and get your next FAB Express and FAB Annual 2023!

Just one week until our 40th birthday party!

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It’s just one week until club members will be joining special guests and committee members to celebrate 40 years of the world’s only official appreciation society for Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson and their wonderfully talented teams that made some of our favourite television programmes and films.

We’d planned to do it in 2021, but Covid-19 and travel restrictions put paid to that!

We’ll be at the Pinewood Hotel (Wexham Park Lane, George Green, Slough, Buckinghamshire SL3 6AP) from 14:00, where we’ll have a barbecue and, like all good birthday parties, music, drink and (of course) cake! There will also be a cash bar for drinks.

We’ll even have some surprises to keep you entertained between conversations…

Just bring along your order confirmation to show us when you arrive, and we’ll check you against our guest list. Sorry, there will be no on-the-door admissions.

It’s a relaxed event, so dress code is casual.

See you on Saturday!

Share the love – with a product review!

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Review exclusive Fanderson merchandise on our website in August and we’ll give you credit to use against future purchases!

Club members regularly say how surprised they are by the quality of Fanderson merchandise – they find it hard to believe it’s all from a fan club. So, why not share how much you love your recent purchases and help others decide what to buy?

You can trust that reviews on our website are genuine as (unlike some less reputable outlets) only Fanderson members can leave reviews of merchandise they’ve bought*. Our reviews aren’t bought from ‘review farms’ or created by robots, but are written by fellow fans who know their stuff.

Until the end of August, for helping your fellow fans, we’ll give £1 credit for each member’s product review that is published on the website.

So, having bought all that lovely Gerry and Sylvia Anderson merchandise, why not help other club members decide what to put in their basket with an honest review?

Our standard terms and conditions apply, plus:

  • *Only purchases made via the current club website (ie, since 15th May 2019) can be reviewed.
  • Obviously, we won’t publish reviews that are rude, defamatory or otherwise unsuitable, but we’re so confident in our products that we’ll publish critical reviews if we get any.
  • The maximum amount of credit that can be collected by an individual club member during Review Month is £5 (ie, five published reviews).
  • Credit will be awarded in September in the form of a coupon code that can be used on the Fanderson website only.
  • Members must apply the appropriate coupon code at checkout – the discount cannot be applied retroactively.
  • Credit offered has no cash value.
  • We reserve the right to amend or withdraw this offer at any time.

Thunderbirds are going!

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Launched in 2016 to mark 50 years since the end of the classic TV show, there’s only a limited amount of time left to snap up stylish pop art prints from Art & Hue’s Thunderbirds collection before it ends on the 30th of July.

No fewer than 22 art prints are available in a choice of 19 colours and 3 sizes, printed on museum-quality archival card of 310gsm, made from 100% cotton, using pigment inks for longevity.

From a modernist secret island base of mid-century architecture, that looks as if it was designed by Richard Neutra or Frank Lloyd Wright, Jeff Tracy and his sons listen out for distress calls to swoop in and save the day using their iconic craft, cleverly launched from within the island itself.

Ubergeek engineer Brains and the Tracy brothers may be all-American but Britishness is elegantly represented from Creighton-Ward Manor and FAB 1, the pink Rolls-Royce, thanks to London Agent Lady Penelope, along with her loyal and ‘umorous butler Aloysius Parker.

Jet over to Art & Hue before the 30th of July!

 

UK: Farewell, Forces TV

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On 30th June 2022 we’ll say goodbye to Forces TV, which in recent years has become the home to much classic British television, including UFO and Space:1999.

Forces TV was originally a military-themed factual channel but in time its primetime schedule has become the home of such comedy classics as Bless This House, Sorry! and Oh No It’s Selwyn Froggitt, and dramas including CHiPs, Doctor Who and Return Of The Saint.

Together with the bizarrely-named Horror channel, Forces TV has also broadcast Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO and Space:1999 numerous times in recent years.

Forces TV is closing as the frequency spectrum used to broadcast it and other channels is being handed over to the expanding 5G mobile network. You can read more about this here.

A statement from BFBS (the charity that runs Forces TV) says:

“We are very sad to go but, as a military charity and media organisation, we’re focusing our resources on our core mission: to entertain, inform, connect and champion our UK armed forces, families and veterans.”

Farewell, Forces TV, it’s been great knowing you.

Win a Zavvi exclusive vinyl singles boxset!

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Silva Screen Records and Zavvi have announced a newly remastered limited edition Anderson 7” singles box set,  featuring music from the extensive Barry Gray soundtrack catalogue. Gray’s partnership with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson was one of the most successful of its kind in TV history, forever linking the iconic Supermarionation imagery with the composer’s distinctive orchestral themes.

Due for release on 31st August, this exclusive box set contains the soundtracks to some of the Andersons’ most popular Supermarionation shows, including Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons, and also includes the soundtrack to live action series Space:1999. This limited edition 7” singles box set is the perfect addition to your vinyl collection.

One lucky club member will win one of the new boxsets – see the first issue of FAB-lite (working title) soon!

Previously a staggered release by Silva Screen from 2012 in time for 2013’s Record Store Day, the new boxset includes The Cass Carnaby disc on shocking pink vinyl (the 2013 was a clear flexidisc), five exclusive art cards and is limited to just 500 units worldwide.

Track Listing:

Thunderbirds 7” on blue vinyl

Side 1

    • Thunderbirds – Main Theme (1:36)
    • Dangerous Game (1:40) (Vocals: Jack Clegg)

Side 2

    • Thunderbirds Are Go! (4:28)

Captain Scarlet 7” on red vinyl

Side 1

    • Captain Scarlet – Main Theme (1:33)
    • The S.H.E.F. March (2:35)

Side 2

    • White As Snow (3:12)
    • Captain Scarlet – End Titles (1:28) – Performed by The Spectrum

Joe 90 7” on yellow vinyl

Side 1

    • Century 21 Sting (0:08)
    • Joe 90 – Main Theme (1:58)
    • The Most Special Agent (3:19)

Side 2

    • Splashdown (4:44)
    • Joe 90 – End Titles (1:20)

Space:1999 7” on white vinyl

Side 1

    • Space: 1999 Year One – Main Titles (1:10)
    • Breakaway Suite (4:39)

Side 2

    • Black Sun Suite And End Titles (5:52)

The Cass Carnaby Five 7” on pink vinyl

Side 1

    • This Is The Twist (1:40)
    • Formula 5 (1:23)
    • Let’s Play Ad Lib (2:56)

Side 2

    • Spoke City Jazz (1:39)
    • Until Midnight (2:22)
    • Double Agent Entertainment (2:02)

USA: New postage rates

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Club members in the USA will notice that we are introducing a new price band for our products and services especially for them.

For many years the postage cost differences between the USA and other destinations outside Europe has been negligible, so we have had a ‘rest of the world’ price band that includes them alongside Canada, Japan, Oceania and other territories. Unfortunately, postage to the USA has risen sharply recently, to the extent that in many cases it is now more expensive to mail from the UK to the USA than it is to mail to Australia!

The Fanderson Sales leaflet mailed with FAB 100 details all the new prices.

It will take a short while to add the new option to all of our products in the Shop. If you’re in the USA and we haven’t yet added the US price to an item you want to buy, please select the RW (rest of the world) option for that item.

We’ve popped FAB 100 in the post (and no renewals needed!)

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It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve reached a momentous milestone as the 100th issue of our club magazine, FAB, has been mailed to all members worldwide.

As members will read in the magazine, we’ve got big plans to make some important changes so no memberships expire with this special celebratory issue – despite what it might say on your envelope, there’s no need to renew your membership right now.

With FAB 100 we’ve now mailed our Music From The 21st Century By Barry Gray CD to everyone eligible for a copy (it’s been mailed to members renewing their memberships in time for FAB 98, 99 and 100 mailings). The music license for this disc means we can only give the disc away, so we will never be able to sell copies.

Unfortunately, in the UK we’ve got a four-day weekend coming up to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee so, with no post deliveries for UK members this Thursday or Friday, the timing could have been better!

Do let us know (on social media, by email, or even a letter!) when the postie pops FAB 100 through your slot, as it helps us understand just how good the postal services are around the world right now.

For anyone who missed the FAB 99 mailing, this also means that FAB 99 is now available in the Shop to buy as a back issue.