The Merchandise GuideFanderson
Compiled by Martin Willey
The Merchandise GuideFanderson is the fan club for Gerry Anderson. It has organised many conventions. Set up in the UK in 1981, it was authorized by ITC to produce merchandise for its members. While the merchandise does not have to pay the normal licensing fees to ITC, ITC's license restricts sales to fan club members only, not the general public. The quality of merchandise has become increasingly professional, notably in the club magazine FAB (first published in 1991), the music CDs (several repackaged and sold by Silva Screen), and videos, including the Space: 1999 documentaries (later shown on UK satellite TV, and then repackaged as extras on the Network DVDs)
The quality and range of the merchandise has benefited enormously from professional art designers and authors such as Chris Bentley, who served as Fanderson chairman for many years, professional artists such as Graham Bleathman, Steve Kyte and Jonathan Baxter, and the media expertise of Tim Mallett and Glenn Pearce, through their company Kindred.
The range of merchandise is wide, covering all Gerry Anderson series including Space: 1999. The list below only highlights those items primarily focussed on Space: 1999.
The first convention, Fanderson 81, was before the club was founded. Even then, they produced attractive booklets for attendees. The convention package for Fanderson 82 (October 1982) included ITC's posters for the film Destination Moonbase Alpha.
The Alphacon convention booklet from 1990.
The original fan club magazine started in 1981, originally "Supermarionation Is Go", and was independent of the club. It was published by Dave Nightingale's Engale Marketing. The focus was on the puppet series, and Space: 1999 was relatively neglected, apart from a good interview with Tony Anholt in 1983. Between issues of S.I.G., Fanderson issued an A4 newsletter called Fanderson News. SIG's schedule was erratic, and the club eventually replaced SIG as the fan club magazine with Fanderson News, which became a black and white A5 magazine. In the 1990s Engale produced another magazine, Century 21, with similar content to SIG but more professional quality.
Starting in 1991, FAB was the in-house magazine of the club. It is A5 format, with glossy paper and over the first years achieved more colour and a slicker layout. Alongside other Anderson shows, there has been generous Space: 1999 coverage, from interviews to episode guides.
The magazine formally ended with FAB 100, published in June 2022, to be replaced by a shorter news-based magazine, FAB Express, continuing the same numbering. In addition there was a yearly hardback "Annual" with longer features, the first dated 2023.
A comprehensive index is in the catacombs.
Gerry Anderson Design File Volume 2 was a membership item in 1994, and focussed on preproduction art by Keith Wilson and Martin Bower for Space: 1999
The Danger Zone Script Book is a 32 page A4 booklet was produced for the Fanderson Danger Zone convention in 1995, and contained the original script "The Void Ahead", an early version of Breakaway, as well as the script for UFO episode "Timelash".
The Century 21 Diary follows the design of the original 1970s Letts "TV21 diary", with the addition of UFO, The Protectors and Space: 1999. It was published in 2008; like the original, there are no dates, so the diary can be used in any year. Each page is a week, with a photo and a comic cover.
In 2010, Fanderson began a series of books based on Gerry Anderson merchandise. These were in an unusual landscape A5 format. The first was a 2010 membership item, the 64 page The FAB Book of Gerry Anderson Dinky Toys. The Dinky Eagle Transporter is covered on page 36-37 (making the grave mistake of showing an all-white Eagle and incorrectly implying it was one of "many colour variations"). The Dinky Eagle Freighter is covered on page 38-39. The Dinky catalogues are covered in appendix 1 (p48-51 covering the Eagles), and advertising in appendix 2 (p55 for the Eagle print adverts)
The second book in the series was a 2011 membership item, the 60 page The FAB Book of Gerry Anderson View-Master Sets. The Space 1999 Viewmaster sets were covered on pages 36 -45.
FAB Book of Gerry Anderson Sweet Cigarette Cards, Vol 2 was published in June 2014, covering the Barratt cards with high resolution scans and descriptions (as well as the Barratt cards for the Gerry Anderson series The Secret Service and UFO).
The FAB Book of Gerry Anderson Bubble Gum Cards Volume 2 was published December 2020. It covers Anglo's UFO set, the Monty Gum set (p14-23), the Donruss set (p24-35) and (slightly anomalously) the Sunicrust Bread set (p36-43).
Gerry Anderson's Super Space Theater by Chris Drake was published in September 2019. The book covers the ITC compilation movies of the late 1970s-early 1980s. The 100-page A4 book was illustrated in colour throughout, and accompanied by 13 A4 prints of the art posters.
Fanderson's chairman, Chris Bentley, wrote and designed some commercial calendars with Slowdazzle, including Space: 1999 ones in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
For the Special Assignment convention (30 September 2017), an exclusive club calendar was produced for 2018. It is a smaller format than regular calendars (20cm x 20cm, so opening up to 40cm tall). Days are marked with the first broadcast dates for Anderson series in ITV regions. Space: 1999 is featured for September 2018. It cost £10.95 and was designed by Mike Jones.
Fanderson has had very little interest in fan fiction, an area that fan clubs traditionally focus on. There have been some fan fiction publications, but only one devoted to Space: 1999, Dark Domain volume 1, published in 1995 (there was no volume 2).
Earthfall is a full reprint of the rare novel by E C Tubb, and was published in 2002.
A 2003 follow-up to the Earthfall book is Earthbound, a new full length novel by E C Tubb, which adapts three year 1 scripts not previously published.
The 2015 membership package contained a replica photo card, number 51 to add to the George Bassett sweet cigarette card set. At the 2015 Future Is Fantastic convention, a replica of the rare card 42 was produced. Fanderson also produced a new 50-card set covering all Gerry Anderson series, the last 5 cards covering Space: 1999.
In the 1990s, Fanderson sold audio cassette recordings of interviews at past conventions. Cover art was by Jonathan Baxter.
Fanderson has produced a set of definitive soundtracks, remastered from the original tapes of Barry Gray and Derek Wadsworth. Due to licensing restrictions, these were only available to Fanderson members, and the total run limited to 1000 copies each. Many of the CDs were reissued by Silva Screen in abridged form (the Fanderson year 1 set was 2 hours, 24 minutes; the Silva Screen year 1 set was 1 hour 20 minutes).
Space: 1999 - Original Television Soundtrack - Year 1 
|
14 December 1998 |
2 CDs, 2hrs 23mins 55secs |
Space: 1999 - Original Television Soundtrack - Year 2 
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17 January 2000 |
2 CDs, 2hrs 33mins 4secs |
Space: 1999 - Original Television Soundtrack - 40th Anniversary Edition - Year 1 
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13 September 2014 |
3 CDs, 3hrs 32mins |
Space: 1999 - Original Television Soundtrack - 40th Anniversary Edition - Year 2 
|
1 June 2016 |
4 CDs, 5hrs 18mins |
Alien Attack - Original Movie Soundtrack 
|
January 2024 |
1 CD, 70mins |
Individual tracks were also produced on compilation CDs (and vinyl).
|
1993 | 1 CD |
Sleeping Astronauts And Other Space Themes 
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June 2004 | 1 CD "sampler", only in membership package |
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Dec 2005 | 1 CD "sampler", only in membership package |
Fab Grooves - the easy listening soundtrack of tomorrow 
|
30 September 2017 |
2 vinyl records, 1 CD. |
Interviews filmed at the 1990 Alphacon convention were used to create the first video documentary, Alphacon The Video in 1991.
The success of the Alphacon video led to the more ambitious UFO documentary in 1993, which extensively covered Space: 1999. Fanderson revisited Space: 1999 with the definitive Space: 1999 documentary in 1996. Image thanks to James Poll
Both documentaries were released on DVD in 2004 as UFO Space: 1999 the Documentaries). More details
Fanderson conventions were traditionally opened with a short film of clips and exciting music, which became so popular a VHS video compilation of them was produced in 1994 (Space City Special).
This painted 6 inch/15cm tall astronaut figure was produced in 2002.
Small 2.75 inches/ 7cm long "mini-models" were sold in 2000-2001. The subjects were the Dorcon spaceship, Arra's ship and the Psychon ship.
Fanderson have produced a large number of patches and badges, which are very accurate versions of the original studio designs.
Copyright Martin Willey