The Sons of the Desert two years since 1978. Most have been located in the United States but some have been held in the United Kingdom and other countries. Actors and technicians who worked with Laurel and Hardy are frequent guests, and rare films and memorabilia are exhibited. The Sons organization has been profiled periodically in media outlets, usually in a newsworthy context (as when long-lost films have been discovered). In 1974 the British Broadcasting Corporation featured the Sons in its documentary film "Cuckoo." NBC's whimsical reality show "Real People" brought the Sons to a national audience in 1980. The CBN cable-television network scheduled a
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the official "Hitchhiker's" Appreciation society. Other items that first appeared in the mid-1980s were T-shirts, including those made for Infocom (such as one bearing the legend "I got the Babel Fish" for successfully completing one of that game's most difficult puzzles), and a Disaster Area tour T-shirt. Other official items have included "Beeblebears" (teddy bears with an extra head and arm, named after "Hitchhiker's" character Zaphod Beeblebrox, sold by the official Appreciation Society), an assortment of pin-on buttons and a number of novelty singles. Many of the above items are displayed throughout the 2004 "25th