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!

4/22 5:00PMNurses Wild
"A store owner shoots an armed robber and is filled with remorse. Sparks fly between Johnny and a nurse. Dr. Early treats an alcoholic. A dog delays the rescue of an unconscious woman. Dr. Morton assumes an unconscious hippie is on drugs. The firemen rescue a man trapped at a chemical plant."
4/23 5:00PMPublicity Hound
"John is envious of the publicity given to another paramedic. After Roy and John rescue a man trapped in ship's rigging, John gets seasick. Dr. Brackett clashes with a tycoon over a diagnosis. The paramedics rescue a horse from a ditch and a child stuck in a well."
4/24 5:00PMWeird Wednesday
"John is convinced that weird things will happen on their shift: a parachutist lands in a tree, an obese man collapses while jogging, an 80-year old woman breaks her ankle while dancing, a man can't stop the hiccups, a boy tries to cryogenically freeze himself, an golfer is bitten by a snake, a prostitute brings in a customer suffering from chest pains, and John is injured during the rescue of a drunk driver."

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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?