THIS year's York Maze has launched with an 1,100 ft long tribute to an iconic children's TV programme.

Lifelong Thunderbirds fan Tom Pearcy - the York "Maze master" - has used the attraction to pay tribute to the programme's 50th anniversary by creating the 2015 maze as an image of Thunderbird 2.

He launched the maze for the summer today with guest of honour Jamie Anderson, whose late father Gerry was the mastermind behind the much loved "Supermarionation" series.

Jamie said the maize tribute was one of the more outlandish tributes he had seen to his father's work.

"It's extremely unusual - certainly the largest and the most agricultural."

The 15 acre, 1,100 ft long maze has been growing for months at the Elvington site, after Tom and his team used GPS to plot out the design in the field, and spent a week cutting six km of paths out of the crop of more than a million maize plants.

Tom said: "As a kid I remember watching Gerry Anderson’s great TV shows like Stingray and Captain Scarlet, but Thunderbirds was my favourite. I wanted to do something big to mark the 50th anniversary. As a child Thunderbird 2 captured my imagination, I think it’s the most iconic of all the Thunderbirds and being green it works perfectly carved into the field of maize plants.”

Yesterday was Tom first chance to see the full effect of his creation from the air.

He said: "It's quite nerve wracking prior to the flight. We know how it should look, but in about ten minutes' time we are going to fly over and see if it actually looks as it should."

Jamie, whose work sees him to try carry on his father's creations and bring some of his many unfinished works to light, added: "I’m sure my father would have been thrilled to see this and he would have been particularly interested in the design process and how it has been carved into the field in such impressive detail.

"I never get sick of talking about Thunderbirds because it touched so many people. I always meet people who say they had terrible childhoods but Thunderbirds was a light at end of the tunnel, something they looked forward to every week, or the reason they've gone into technology or engineering in their life."

The York Maze is believed to be the largest maze in Europe and one of the largest in the world.

Here's a reminder of some of the previous designs.

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