While Mego was busy swooping up all the comic book and science fiction properties it could for their 8" action figure lines, rival toy maker LJN was going after a different sort of hero. In the seventies, LJN pursued the men in uniform namely the TV shows Emergency and The Rookies, both TV dramas about real life heroes, namely firefighters and policemen. The gambit paid off as LJN sold these figures for a number of years.

LJN TV Super Stars Catalog

Many collectors wonder why LJN chose to license fledgling series "The Rookies" instead of the long running cop drama "Adam 12" which was produced by the company that made Emergency. It's not known although the Rookies had a decent 4 year run. LJN would eventually pick up another Aaron Speling series, S.W.A.T in 1975.

An LJN Rookies store display box, I'm not sure if any of these are available in the secondary market but it is pretty darned neat.

Of the two series produced this year (I'm assuming this catalog is from 1974) the bigger hit was clearly Emergency, the adventures of Gage and DeSoto lasted seven seasons (according to fans it was cancelled while ratings were soaring too) and made a generation of kids want to be fire fighters. Without a doubt, Emergency was LJN's biggest hit in the TV Superstars lineup.

The LJN Emergency store display.