Do You Remember?

Do you remember the 'Emergency+4' cartoon?

Jack Webb's popular rescue show 'Emergency!' spawned a cartoon. Despite the monkey, it was fairly true to its source.

September 17, 2015, 12:12PM By MeTV Staff

With it's painstaking attention to realism, Emergency!was a pioneering television show. A spin-off of Adam-12 and Dragnet, the Jack Webb co-production ushered in the sort of "municipal services TV universe" that NBC would continually rely on with its Law & Order and Chicago Fire worlds. Emergency! strived to mirror its cases on the logbook of fire departments. For many, the show bordered on educational. According to the book Emergency! Behind the Scenes, there were merely a dozen paramedic units on the continent when the series premiered in 1972. A decade later, they were ubiquitous.

Emergency!

1/22 5:00PMThe Stewardess
"John falls for a stewardess and shows his stuff when a passenger has a heart attack; later, he tries to date her. The firefighters respond to a motorcycle accident and a chemical fire."
1/23 5:00PMThe Old Engine Room
"A fireman is injured in a practice drill. Roy and John think they have a buyer for the old fire engine. A man suffers a back injury while riding a motorcycle. A mother pressures Dr. Morton to give her son a prescription. A man having a heart attack comes to the station. DeSoto and Gage rescue a man who has fallen off a cliff on Catalina Island."
1/24 5:00PMElection
"Roy and John become candidates for a welfare committee. A man gets his arm stuck in an appliance drain while his brother aspirates on a can tab. A delirious child causes problems at the hospital. A sculptress’ model is stuck inside a plaster cast. A construction worker is trapped on a crane."

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Considering the realism of the show, it might surprise you to learn that it was adapted into that most unreal of mediums — Saturday morning cartoons. The attention to detail slipped a bit with this children's fare. In the opening sequence, Roy DeSoto is shown sliding down a fireman's pole… in a one story firehouse. Oh, and naturally, there was a monkey. The "+4" referred to an ambulance piloted by a group of children and their pets that assisted with series regulars DeSoto and Gage. Series regulars Kevin Tighe and Randolph Mantooth would voice their animated characters as well.

Despite those lightly fantastical elements, the toon remained fairly true to its source. It's not as if they were traveling through time like the Fonz on his cartoon. The plots revolved around rescues and ended in educational addresses (not unlike G.I. Joe's "The More You Know"). It also used a lot of red. Check it out below.

So, do you remember watching Emergency+4?