In 1963/'64, ARIEL PRODUCTIONS issued a set of Snap cards based on GERRY ANDERSON's TV show, FIREBALL XL5. Here are eight of them for fans of SPACE CITY's finest to cop a gander at. And just look at that VENUS - the tease!
The first and final card look as if they've been sourced from the very first Fireball Annual published by COLLINS in '63.
I've never seen Fireball XL5 and so I don't know who any of the characters are but....third row down on the right - is that creature house-trained as he seems to be doing something rather unfortunate.
ReplyDeleteOh, you are naughty, CJ. That's Zoony's tail, not a ploppy.
ReplyDeleteMy impression had been that the Gerry Anderson shows were all popular in Great Britain, although they were not as widely known among American audiences. (Most of them were syndicated when they were aired in the US, so their distribution was spotty. Fireball XL5 was actually broadcast on a nation-wide network sometime around 1964, but, even so, it doesn't seem to be any more familiar to Americans than Thunderbirds or Supercar.)
ReplyDeleteBut maybe the issue is generational. That is, maybe those shows were simply before Colin's time. Similarly, a lot of younger Americans have never seen Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Dragnet, or Batman (1966), although those shows were practically institutions in their time.
I suppose Zoony was intended as comic relief, but, even when I was six, I usually found him more annoying than funny.
The shows were certainly first shown before CJ's time, TC, but they were repeated down through the years quite regularly, so I'm surprised that he managed to miss them. The interesting thing about Zoony is that he never appeared in the Mike Noble Fireball XL5 strips in TV21 - unless it was in the background of a panel or two, but I don't recall them.
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