I have to apologize for taking a hiatus from posting these Retro Saturday Morning features. I honestly didn't even realize that I hadn't posted anything about classic Saturday morning programs since July. Again, I am sorry about that. I know how many of you are big fans of the posts.
Well I'm going to dive back in with gusto and take us all way back to one of my favorite cartoons growing up called Emergency +4. As most of you know the show was based on an actual prime time television series called Emergency. The show centered around two Los Angeles paramedics/fire fighters named John Gage (played by Randolph Mantooth) and Roy Desoto (played by Kevin Tighe). The makers of this show decided to add four teens who drove around in a ambulance following Gage and Desoto on their daily exploits.
It was common theme for animators in the early seventies to copy a popular live-action television show and tweak it a bit to appeal to kids sitting around in their pj's eating bowl after bowl of Cap'n Crunch (The peanut butter ones not the berries). I have highlighted several of these shows here at Retro Saturday Morning before. There was shows like Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Addams Family, The New Adventures of Gilligan, and Partridge Family: 2200 A.D. just to name a few.
Like all of the other shows I mentioned Emergency +4 actually featured voice over work by the actors from the actual live-action show. In this case Mantooth and Tighe reprising their roles as Gage and Desoto. The four teens were voiced by Donald Fullilove (as Jason Phillips), Sarah Kennedy (as Carol Harper), David Jolliffe (as Matthew Harper) and Peter Haas (as Randy Aldrich). Legendary radio host and voice over icon Casey Kasem also voiced some of the supporting characters.
Here is the first episode of Emergency +4 entitled Desert Storm:
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