Sunday, May 07, 2006

Roy DeSoto and John Gage are...The Firemen

In the 70s, Emergency was one of my favorite shows. My brother and I watched it every week. If I had known there was a board game, I would have wanted it. The cool thing about this game it was made in Canda and has French translations. I don't know why that fascinates me, but what could be better than a tv show board game from a different country?

Every aspect of this game promotes the belief that bright colors will attract a young childs eye, thus keeping him semi-hypnotized. Either that or they went with a red-orange-yellow motif because it would remind children of fire, which would encourage them to bug their parents to buy more product based on Emergency.

The board is... well, I just have to be honest here. The board is ugly. When I first saw it I was very disappointed as this is where they could go crazy with photos from the tv show. Instead we get a pretty lame layout with a few pictures and some badly drawn scenery. The translations almost make up for it though. Did you know G.Q. Rouge was French for Red H.Q? If a fireman showed up wearing rouge, he'd be soundly walloped upside the head, stuffed into a locker, and forced to clean the firepole with his tongue. So stay away from the headquarters with the rouge.

Between the spinner and the cards, this game is a wealth of excitement. You never know what you're going to get with the cards of ...Emergency. Will it be a woman locked in a bank vault with only one hour of oxygen? Or a large explosion at the mannequin factory located in the seedy part of town? Who knows? But there's adventure in every card.

The trucks are bright plastic joy. Watch them move along the boring board in their primary colors like an bad LSD trip. You just know yellow is the most unpopular truck and it's the slow kid in the group who will get stuck with it. There's always one kid that never remembers to call a color. He's the same kid that gets stuck being the thimble in Monopoly.

I have to ask what sort of kids board game includes a picture of a guys bloody head of a guy after he's crushed in a car accident? Somehow it seems more disturbing to see it here then on the show. Why not pick a photo that's a little less bloody? What about a kid who fell off a minibike while he was trying to jump over a pit of fire? Now that's something I'd want to see.

Thanks go out to my super cool sister-in-law for getting this game for me.

5 comments:

Jimmy said...

I suppose kids were a little sturdier back then and could handle the sight of a bloody head, ha.

This was a great, great show. What young person didn't want to be a firefighter after seeing that? Not sure if I would have gone for a ride on the yellow firetruck, though.

Chris Jart said...

I had no interest in being a fireman, but I thought the firemen were cool and a couple of them were cute. The suspense of what disaster or accident they would be handling was always fun, in a strange innocent sort of way.

Anonymous said...

There is also a limited edition Hot Wheels version of Squad 51...from a few years ago when the original was restored and sent to the Smithsonian for keeping...keep yur eyes open!

Anonymous said...

You are right when you call Johnny and Roy, Firemen, BUT REALLY....they were PARAMEDICS!! If you go watch the beginning of the series, Dr. Brackett testifies before the State of California Legislation....and thus the EMS Act of 1973 was passed in California created Emergency Medical Technicians.....which were Paramedics! This led to the ACT passing across the USA! We are now overseen by the DOT (Department of Transportation) and the training is killer! But VERY satisfying to see the differences you can be used to make in people's lives. (One little tidbit underpublished about 9/11...the first fatality at the Twin Towers was an EMS worker!) Much of our training sadly has come from wars and conflicts the world over. Things tried in the fields of these events and brought back to the classrooms to us...is used to fine tune our skills, so that more lives can be enriched. Johnny and Roy are the heroes of EMS (Emergency Medical Services) and Paramedics the world over.....Trust me....I am one of them...PROUDLY so!

Tennessee FEMALE Paramedic!!

I know I should have been Dixie, the nurse! Well, guess what....I am a Paramedic and a nurse!

Anonymous said...

I loved Emergency! as a kid and have each season on DVD. However, it was Father Mychal Judge, a FDNY chaplin, that was the first official fatality of 9-11's twin tower attack.

Most likely one of the airline pilots was murdered well before any impact, but if not, the pilots/terrorists in the cockpits were probably the true first fatalities, followed quickly by passengers and people on the impact floors.