Bill Chappell, NPR:

Gerry Anderson, the man who along with his wife Sylvia created the cult-favorite TV series Thunderbirds in the 1960s, has died, the BBC reports. Anderson’s work was honored by a special set of moving-image stamps in Britain last year; he had suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, which he spoke out against this past summer.

Thunderbirds, the sci-fi TV show featuring “Supermarionation” puppets, was hugely popular in its day and remains a beloved favorite to generations of fans, along with other Anderson creations like Stingray and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. The shows were aimed at kids, but adults enjoyed them too, and those who grew up with them love them to this day.

I fully admit that the Thunderbirds craze really passed me by. But I was a huge fan of Anderson’s later work: My first exposure to Anderson was Space: 1999, his final collaboration with ITC.

Space: 1999 was a live-action SF show featuring Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, set on base on the surface of the Moon, which had improbably left Earth’s orbit and gone wandering through the stars. I watched the show religiously as a young grade schooler when it was in first-run syndication on American TV. (It helped that my mom loved the show too.) Begged for the toys, too. Many an afternoon was spent flying my Eagle transporter around the back yard.