In 1966, at the height of the popularity of his “Supermarionation” TV shows, Gerry Anderson developed a concept for a new television series.
He had already designed the puppets, and with the recent success of Thunderbirds behind him, he was confident it would be given the green light. But the proposed new series received a unanimous thumbs down from television executives.
Undeterred, Anderson turned his idea into a franchise, spawning 154 issues of a comic (photographed by Doug Luke) and several books and merchandising tie-ins.
The result was more disturbing than charming.
The very unusual and mostly forgotten Anderson project never explained why two (very sinister) human dolls were living with pandas (why pandas?) and it was unclear whether Mr and Mrs Bearanda were Candy and Andy’s adopted parents, guardians, or captors.
Candy, Andy and the Bearandas drove around in a colourful Mini called Stripey, the magic Mini. Dinky even released a model of it (pictured below).
When the comic run ended, the characters disappeared forever and were conveniently airbrushed out of Gerry Anderson’s career history.
Related Posts
VS. Series Arcade Games Stuck in the mire of the 1984 video game market crash, Nintendo knew it needed a hook to draw gamers…
Sprint series Atari’s Indy 800 brought multi-player racing to the masses, but the company’s Sprint series took the genre to the next…
Q*bert One of the most famous faces of the golden age of arcade games was also one of the most bizarre.…
Frogger The object of Frogger was almost Zen-like: to get to the other side. But considerably less Zen were the many…
Planet of the Apes figures Few science-fiction concepts were as durable as the one that fueled Planet of the Apes. The success of the first…
Donkey Kong The video game Donkey Kong was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and is owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of…
Star Wars Figures Director George Lucas passed up an extra $500,000 in director fees when he made Star Wars (1977) in exchange for retaining…
Lone Ranger action figures Gabriel Toys introduced the Lone Ranger toyline in 1973, creating a vast array of action figures, horses, and playsets based…
Undeterred, Anderson turned his idea into a franchise, spawning 154 issues of a comic (photographed by Doug Luke) and several books and merchandising tie-ins.
