Magazines in the movies: Design in UFO

. Design magazine in the first episode of Gerry Anderson’s UFO ‘Identified’, the opening episode of Gerry Anderson’s sci-fi TV series UFO in 1970 shows one of the inhabitants of Moonbase reading Design magazine while chatting to an interceptor pilot. This was a real magazine published by the Council of Industrial Design (later called the Design Council) from the 1940s until the 1990s. The actual issue used was dated November 1967, about three years before the episode was shown. The main cover line was ‘Toys and toymakers‘. This issue may have been chosen for this feature because it makes mention of Thunderbirds, the Gerry Anderson adventures that made his company’s name as a global film-maker: Character merchandising – the use of well known film, television and sporting personalities – has been an important feature of this trend … scores of characters, from BBC science fiction Daleks to Batman, and from ATV’s puppet series Thunderbirds to James Bond, have made their impact on the toy…