MJ Simpson bravely investigates that time when scenes from Thunderbirds were edited together with new live action sequences to make one of the most ill-judged TV shows ever...

Right: Travis Wester as Tripp and Johna Stewart as Roxette

Thunderbirds. F.A.B.! What a classic series, with all those iconic characters: the five Tracy brothers, Brains, Tin-Tin, Lady Penelope and Parker, Roxette and Tripp. Hmm, run those last two past me again.

Here’s the curious thing about Thunderbirds. It was very obviously made for the American market, but it never took off there. The Yanks dug Space: 1999, they even dug Fireball XL5. But repeated attempts to introduce them to the exciting adventures of the Tracy family in Gerry Anderson’s most famous series have consistently laid an egg.

You want evidence of how unknown the show is in the States? Screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run, Hitchhiker’s Guide) told me he was once hired to write a live action Thunderbirds movie (not the one that eventually got made) and when he went into his first meeting with the producers, he assumed it was about the US Air Force aerobatic display team! (That was also the project where one of the producers asked Karey: “You know these Tracy brothers. Could one of them be black?”)

In the early 1990s, Thunderbirds was huge. The BBC showed it on Sunday afternoons, creating a whole new generation of fans, and leading to the legendary Tracy Island ‘make’ on Blue Peter. This surge of domestic popularity prompted international interest. But without the inherent nostalgia factor, the series was a tough sell in the USA. In the summer of 1994, 13 episodes were re-edited, dubbed with new music and voices, and broadcast on Fox Kids among the Saturday morning cartoons, to general indifference. Later that year, a new approach was tried. It was radical, it was hip, it was colourful, it was down wiv da kidz, it was … Turbo Charged Thunderbirds. It was bloody awful, is what it was.