ZEE and YOT THUNDERBIRDS

Just been to our works do in Sheffield. The City looked great lit up with Christmas lights. There's a huge ferris wheel covered in lights too just as you come out of the Town Hall. Really beautiful. And there's water everywhere - fountains, walls of water, pools and rivulets. Amazing. I must go again. Yep, as my Brother Steve has been telling me all week, its starting to look a lot like Christmas!

Here's something that would look good in a Christmas stocking, a set of ZEE TOYS FIREBIRDS, Thunderbirds knockoffs par excellence on Ebay US, kindly flagged up by Paul Vreede.

I first came caross these 1978 TB clones in Dennis Nicholson's Andersonalia bible back in the early 1990's. I've never seen any in the flesh. There appear to be different colour variations of the TB1, TB3 and the Mole lookalikes. Odd how they didn't knockoff TB2, the most popular Thunderbirds vehicle. And it looks like a sort of Hot Wheels booster unit pictured on the card back? Anyone got any of these?

There's a great site devoted to ZEE TOYS with this great 1979 catalogue page of Firebirds, which actually shows a Thunderbird 2 on the Shop Display but there's no TB2 toy. Looks like a Colonial Viper or two thrown in the range as well!

ZEE has got me thinking about those other Thunderclone makers Dennis's book flagged up, YOT of Taiwan. Again I've never actually seen any of these but there's a nice loose TB4 on Ebay Australia now and a carded TB3, which appears to have spinning parts, went for a fair few bob recently - both pictured below. Are ZEE and YOT related?