A product of fan passion and the realisation of dreams, it is perhaps rather ironic that this site came into being almost by chance. In the summer of 2005, Warner Brothers released ThunderCats: Season 1 Part 1 on DVD, reawakening interest in the series across the globe. Inspired by this, on the forums of www.he-man.org (a website devoted to that other 1980s property, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, but which serves as a central online meeting place for fans and collectors of many other cartoons and toylines), people began enquiring as to the best ThunderCats websites to visit. Needless to say, over the years there have been many fine sites devoted to everyone’s favourite felines, some of which are now deceased but many of which are still active, full of great content, and enormously popular.

Buoyed by the popularity and success of these sites, and fuelled with passion for the series, several individuals who posted in that (now famous) www.he-man.org thread spoke publicly of their desire to pool their resources and skills to create a site large in scope, designed to house extensive information and materials from all of the many incarnations of the ThunderCats, from the toys to the cartoons to the comics, and beyond! For several of the team, the opportunity to work on such a site was the realisation of a lifelong dream.

Kick-starting the project was Manny, who first provided the team with the empty webspace on which to build their dreams. Over the course of the next several months, Manny would also envision, design and build the core look of the site, and work tirelessly on webpages to ensure that everyone’s vision was made reality. The rest of the team consisted of Neil, a.k.a. Blackiecats, well known on the forums of www.he-man.org for his love of ThunderCats and who had previously put together a website providing a comprehensive look at the LJN ThunderCats toyline, Manny Rodriguez a.k.a. MannysCollectibles, who had impressed everyone with his extensive collection of ThunderCats toys and passion for the show, Chris a.k.a. He-Fan, a devoted ThunderCats fan for almost 20 years, and Tim a.k.a. Voice Guy, whose passion for the property (and in particular the cartoons) was evident to anyone he spoke to. The team was further enhanced when fan favourite artist Celesta Johnston graciously accepted requests for her to join the team, Celesta being well-known to thousands of ThunderCats fans for her awe-inspiring depictions of the ‘Cats on her website, www.thundercatsillustrated.net, and also through appearing as part of the special fan feature on the Season 1 Part 1 DVD set.

After discussion amongst the team, www.thundercatslair.org was chosen as the name for the new site. The site’s forums opened almost immediately, on August 20th 2005, and then the site was launched properly on December 10th of that same year. Two new additions to the team by this time were Mark, a.k.a. Grizzlor, another passionate ThunderFan with an extensive collection of ThunderCats animation art, and Martin, a.k.a. Wacky Martin, who joined the team to add his extensive writing and research skills to the site, and particularly the planned Encyclopedia section. Unfortunately, due to constraints on his time, it became necessary for Tim (Voice Guy) to leave the site, but not without making a sizeable contribution to the direction of the Cartoon Section.

The most recent addition of personnel came in May 2006 when artist Kyle, a.k.a. kzlambert, was invited to join the team working on the site. Kyle had been planning to create a ThunderCats Encyclopedia website, but upon discovering www.thundercatslair.org decided that the site would be the perfect place to build the Encyclopedia he envisioned.

And so this site continues to grow, and continues to provide an outlet for the passion of a dedicated group of ThunderCats fans for a property that has made a huge difference to their lives. Most importantly, this site exists for the many thousands of ThunderCats fans out there, without whom this site would not be – to all of you, www.thundercatslair.org says a resounding “Thank You!”

ThunderCats – Hoooooooooooooooo!!