gerry anderson's thunderbirds

Okay, well, I might as well bring it up. Gerry Anderson's puppet TV series THUNDERBIRDS is something that really fascinates and pleases me. It's got nothing to do with tikis, but International Rescue makes its home on a remote island paradise, and they've got some tribal carvings in their art collection. The music occasionally wandered over to the exotica side of the tracks. Definitely a flight of fancy, and one of the more optimistic TV dreams to come out of the 60's. Thunderbirds and tiki, for some reason, go together like peas in a pod for me.

Thunderbirds was one of my favorite shows as a kid! There was another similar show called Captain Scarlet or something like that.

TTT

Captain Scarlet was exactly what it was called. He was Indestuctable! Brilliant stuff!

"This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know you can hear us, Earthmen."

Scared the crap out of me as a young kiddie. I still have an old Captain Scarlet Badge I had when I was young.

These are from the closing title sequence where they used illustrations rather than photos of the 'real' puppets.

Don't forget Stingray, Fireball XL5, Supercar, Joe 90, and his live action U.F.O. Amazing hardware designs in all those 'kids shows'.

"Joe 90" has one of the coolest plots in TV history; a scientist dad invents a machine that can implant the talents of the world's greatest experts in any subject (including air fighter pilots and special services agents, not to mention nuclear experts and poets) into his son's brain.

The series also reached a level of Supermarionation that was totally believable and realistic, it was pretty dang frightening.

You folks catch "Team America - World Police"?

Anyway, here's my Cappy Scarlet action set, this was made a few years ago by 'Vivid Imaginations Co.'

The set with a Tiki mug for scale -

Open it up! -

And inside -

I think the theme to "Stingray" is EXTREMELY tiki with the war drum rythm section, etc. I've only ever found the original, but I'll bet there are some killer surf band covers out there.

I noticed that often, in "Thunderbirds," whenever Gordon was doing his submarine rescue stuff, they would go very exotica with the music, because I guess it is very glamorous rescuing people under the sea and stuff. And establishing shots of the island paradise were generally treated the same way, musically.

During action scenes, bongos were often prominent.

Am I the only one who noticed that the Tracy boys are all named after the Mercury astronauts?

I never noticed it on my own; but in reading up on the show and watching documentaries, I found out about it. The family was also modeled (somewhat) after the Cartrights on "Bonanza" and Jeff Tracy is supposed to look and sound like Lorne Greene!

I've had this in my YouTube Favorites for a while.
Pretty cool stuff....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dPD_CO8rvQ&feature=PlayList&p=64D37042660DD712&index=11