While the superpowers were busy spending billions on a Space Race that would ultimately lead to a series of blurry television pictures, there was another, far more real, Space Age unfolding. In my head.

As B Smith said, in the 1960s there were snap-together rockets in Kellogg’s breakfast cereal boxes, including reasonably detailed models of the actual Apollo spacecraft, some of the more speculative NASA designs — even, as this close-up photo shows, vehicles from Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

The real imagined future of US and Soviet space exploration blurred with the imaginary imagined future of Gerry Anderson to create, in my mind at least, a gloriously unfolding set of possibilities.

My favourite breakfast cereal toy of all was the Kellogg’s Molab, pictured above — although I’m pretty sure mine was blue. Apparently it’s loosely based on NASA concepts for a manned MObile LABoratory for cruising the Lunar surface, much like this book cover illustration. General Motors even built a mock-up. However once the Moon Landings had happened, the follow-up programmes to Apollo were killed off.

I kept losing my Molab’s wheels. Probably because I didn’t glue in the axle pins. But that didn’t matter. I re-imagined it as a spacecraft. The wheel mounts became fold-down exit ramps for rapid troop deployment.

But my favourite space-related TV series from that era was Fireball XL5. May I recommend the opening and closing titles? Or perhaps this version by Bob Downe.

[Photo: Kellogg's Molab cereal packet premium image thanks to Wotan of the Moonbase Central blog. If you grew up during the Space Age, you'll lose yourself there for hours.]

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No, this isn’t something from Thunderbirds, but a new radio studio complex in Krakow, Poland. Thanks Richard.

Following on from our discussion of Gerry Anderson TV series the other day, Anthony Taylor of FAB Gear USA emailed me to point out the official Mike Trim art website, and to plug the new book The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim, which he co-wrote with Mr Trim himself.

“Featuring hundreds of full colour and black & white drawings, paintings, marker comps, and photos from his entire career,” the book includes work from Trim’s work on Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, The Secret Service and UFO, as well as the feature films Thunderbirds are Go, Thunderbird 6, and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (a.k.a. Doppleganger).

Anthony’s obviously trawling the blogosphere looking for Thunderbirds postings to connect to — good on him! — so it’ll be interesting to see how successful that book is.

Meanwhile, perhaps I should mention that it’s only three weeks until my birthday… I’m sure I can find somewhere to put a 3m model of the Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Then again maybe not. I’m not that much of a nerd.

Last weekend I mentioned Fireball XL-5 and a conversation about Gerry Anderson Supermarionation TV shows ensued. So tonight I was very pleased to stumble upon Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s wickedly accurate parody, Superthunderstingcar.

Joy.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer.

When a journalist asked what his favourite TV show was as a kid, Steve Irwin couldn’t decide. He said that he liked Thunderbirds, but he’ll always have a place in his heart for Stingray.

Thanks, Richard. What took you so long?

[Update 23 January 2008: Since Steve Irwin jokes are very popular on this website, you might also want to start posting Heath Ledger death jokes. Just as mindlessly tacky.]