Approaching the year of UFO, set 1980-84. The Andersons had moved well past UFO with The Protectors, a possible return to SUPERMARIONATION with The Investigator, Space: 1999 and the special The Day After Tomorrow: Into Infinity. With Anderson's career on a massive spiral decline, interests in the show declining with fewer showings of the Anderson shows, the merchandise now running out of print, this doesn't mean to say that the shows completely disappeared from the face of the Earth. A trading card set was released in 1979 with the Panini stickers and the album was released in Germany and Canada with German and French text.
In 1979, another UFO article was released from issue#5 of the American magazine STARLOG by Howard Zimmerman. A growing fanbase? ISOSHADO? Fanderson? They were all beginning to grow. SHADO USECC (the United States East Coast Control) however was the first UFO fan club that existed from 1979 to 2002, with operatives all around the world, including honorary members Ed Bishop and Mike Billington, it was created and run by Jim Main from 1979 - 1988, and then Helen Weber ran the club from 1988 to 2002 when it finished in August that year.
Most often, the club produced 4 newsletters and 1 fanzine per year. The newsletters generally contained fan discussions, convention reports, cast updates, articles about the series, merchandise announcements/sources/reviews, photos from peoples collections and classified ads for trading/selling collectables. The fanzines generally contained fan fiction and artwork. All issues were reproduced using a xerox machine (black & white, although a few were in colour in the final issues). SHADO USECC also had a videotape lending library, so that North American members could borrow videotapes of UFO episodes - useful before the DVD release in 2003. Interest was beginning to grow in the series, as we see by 1980...
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UFO: The Vault
Non-FictionGerry Anderson's UFO was the first big budget British live-action television series of a secret government organisation named SHADO (Supreme Headqauters Alien Defence Organisation) combat a dying alien race who have come to Earth in order to survive...
