#130 :: Thunderbird 3

approved generic ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Lines of dialogue come unbidden when this is before your poised lips: “Ms. Dix, letter, date June 18, 19XX, to Oswald Crane, at Crane, Crane and Reynaldo …” “We’re now thpeaking to you from Mr. Hayrick’th garage, where we have just seen the filthy girlth exit the building …” “I’m ain’t sayin’ nothing until I talk to my lawyer and … hey, what’s the big idea, HEY — ! …” The gold-thread cloth screen behind the two-piece cast-potmetal shell speaks of Chanel, cheap cigars, hand-rolleds, Old Grand-Dad. The cord leads (at the other end) to a heavy middle-sized object – a Weber-Carlson reel-to-reel tape recorder with a multi-tube chassis and enameled cast-metal face, and a green “Magic Eye” tube hooked up as a VU meter. It’s part of my very small collection of old-world multimedia tools.
and ‘popup’, what is ed ‘width=500, prescription height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>There was no reason to expect this formula to work: science fiction adventure played wooden marionettes and foot-and-a-half-long balsa-wood rocketships. Yet pound for pound, lovers of high-action melodrama and futuristic equipment could get more thrill out of watching Thunderbirds every week than a year’s worth of Star Trek. In the era of once-every-nine-months solo space shots, International Rescue had a personal rockets, six-wheeled cars, a mean, green cargo-carrier the size of a football pitch, a jet-powered submarine a tunnel-boring machine and – god – a SECRET UNDERGROUND HEADQUARTERS,This little trinket wakens my inner fanboy to remember one episode in which the Powers that Be were trying to move the Empire State Building on massive caterpillar platforms during an earthquake. It’s all a blur – I can’t even remember how Thunderbird 3 helped save the day. But now I cannot bear to remove this die-cast treasure from its blister pack, and risk spoiling the package, so juvenile and deeply rooted is my reverence for this mythology.