From Andy Pandy to Zebedee - all handmade in Shropshire

This impressive collection of hand-crafted children's and comic-book characters through the ages has been created by the Shropshire-based Robert Harrop Designs sculpture studio.

The studio, based at Jackfield, near Ironbridge, has exclusive licensing agreements to produce figurines of some of Britain's best-loved characters.

Bagpuss, Camberwick Green, and The Magic Roundabout have all been reproduced by the company in a workshop which once made decorative tiles.

• The Trumptonshire Trilogy: Camberwick Green was launched in January 1966. Featuring the voice of Camberwick Green, each episode began with one of the characters appearing from a music box. Popular characters included Peter the Postman, Windy Miller, Pc McGarry and Farmer Jonathan Bell. It was followed in 1967 by Trumpton and thetrilogy drew to a close in 1969 with Chigley.

• Supermarionation: Gerry Anderson’s “Supermarionated” TV shows began with Four Feather Falls in 1960. It was followed by Supercar and Fireball XL5. However, it was Stingray, which made its debut in 1964, which truly established Supermarionation in the public consciousness.

• Thunderbirds, which ran from 1964 to 1966, and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, which followed in 1967, took the genre to new heights as special-effects technology moved on. Joe 90 was another hit.

• The Magic Roundabout: The Magic Roundabout, launched in 1965. Running for 441 five-minute-long episodes from October 1965 to January, 1977 it was a great success and attained cult status.

• Bagpuss: A total of 13 episodes were broadcast from February to May in 1974, but it quickly built up a cult following and was shown for 13 years. In 1999 it topped a BBC poll for the UK’s all-time favourite children’s programme.

Cartoon animations, such as Ivor The Engine, Willo The Wisp and Mr Benn have also been recreated in figure form, along with comic-strip favourites such as Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan. And the popular marionettes from series such as UFO, Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds created by Gerry Anderson in the 1960s.

Founder Robert Harrop, who studied three-dimensional design at Wolverhampton College of Art (now Wolverhampton University) before setting up his studio in 1986, said there was a big market among people in their 40s and 50s with fond memories of the television programmes they grew up with as a child.

"It's British nostalgia, it is a social history," he said. "We don't make stuff for children, it's adults wanting to recapture favourite characters from their childhood."

Each one of the figures is sculpted in clay before being hand-painted, and even the smallest figures take a week to create.

The company, based at the Jackfield Tile Museum, is run by Mr Harrop, his wife Margaret, and Margaret's sons Dan Buckley, who is operations director, and Matt Buckley, who is creative director.

Given the huge impact these characters have had on generations of youngsters, it is little wonder there is such a ready market in people wanting to relive their childhood.

For example, only 13 15-minute episodes of Camberwick Green were screened during the first three months of 1966. However, it was still a staple of children's television some 20 years later, and almost any adult up to the age of 60 will be familiar with it. Characters such as Pc McGarry (No. 452), Windy Miller and Mr Crockett, the Garage Man, have left an indelible impression on millions of lives, and are remembered with affection by many adults.

And how many of today's parents secretly hanker for the life of Mr Benn, the seemingly unremarkable suburban businessman who went on amazing adventures every time he visited the magical fancy dress shop?

The beauty of many of these programmes lay in their simplicity and improvisation. For all the wonders of computer-generated imagery, few of today's children's programmes can match the sheer lovability of Bagpuss, the saggy old cloth cat. It speaks volumes that the must-see movie at the moment is Paddington, the tale about the duffel-coat wearing bear who enchanted generations of children from Michael Bond's books of the 1950s, and the subsequent television series which began in 1975.

Similarly, the jerky marionettes of the Gerry Anderson series of the 1960s have a charm all of their own, which has led to them becoming Harrop's biggest sellers. The company has the licence to produce all the characters from the Supermarionation series, which included Supercar, Thunderbirds, UFO and Captain Scarlet, and these, along with Doctor Who, Wallace and Gromit and the Beano comic figures, are the main focus of production.

The Doctor Who range was launched with a special exhibition last weekend, and while the Thunderbirds is still the most popular product range, the company has high hopes that the time traveller could be even more in demand. The company signed the Doctor Who deal with the BBC in the spring and are about to get going with production.

Dan said: "When we take on a licence like Doctor Who, the owner doesn't give us a lot of information so it's a case of using DVDs and videos of the show to help us."

However, he said it was still easier copying a television character than a two-dimensional comic book figure such as Dennis The Menace. "You don't get a full 360-degree view of the characters on paper so a lot of hard work goes into creating them. And there's no machine that can replicate what the painters do either so they are all painted by hand."

Production of the Doctor Who figurines will be limited to 500 of each character, so they are expected to become highly prized among collectors.

Dan said there had been huge interest in the Doctor Who range. "It is the 50th anniversary of Thunderbirds next year, so I think that is going to be very big," he added.

The company can only make a limited number of ranges at any one time, but Matt said the company still held the licences to their past ranges, and many of these would be revived in the near future.

He said: "We're definitely going to do Mr Benn again, I would be surprised if there weren't more in the next year or two."

Matt added: "We all really love what we do, and I think that's the key. I haven't even had a holiday for four years."

Matt, who has worked as a sculptor for 22 years, said working on the children's related merchandise had also brought him into contact with many of the show's creators. "It was amazing talking to Gerry Anderson, and he hardly saw any of the money that was made from Thunderbirds, because he sold all the rights to ITV," he said.

"Gordon Murray, who created Camberwick Green, said this was the first time anybody had shown any interest in the series."