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February 3, 2025 posted by Thad Komorowski

The THAD Review: “Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection”

The majority of cartoon fans seem thrilled for Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection, on sale Feb. 11th from Warner Archive Collection, for the simple fact that any classic animation on physical media is worth celebrating. This single disc collects all of the widescreen Tom & Jerry cartoons (and three non-T&J scope titles) released from 1954-58 in their original aspect ratio, an idea so obvious it’s surprising Warners hadn’t already done this years ago.

But there is a small amount of grumbling that’s a little justified. For one, this disc jumps ahead in the series’ available-on-Blu-Ray chronology, as we still don’t have the long-cancelled Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Vol. 2 (way back in 2011) that would’ve collected the remaining Academy ratio 1948-54 titles from the MGM cartoon series in high-definition.

For another, to state the obvious: those earlier cartoons are so much better than these. This disc represents the waning Golden Age of theatrical animation, when the major studios were finding it harder and harder to justify a cartoon department, and that proved to be the case here: MGM decided to close its animation studio in 1957 and these are the final productions of a shorts unit that earned a lot of revenue and unprecedented accolades.

While I have no shortage of love for the 1940s Tom & Jerry cartoons, the series was never a trailblazer, and the trail is well-worn by this point in the 1950s. For the most part, it’s just the regular core of T&J animators going through the motions, and the lack of ideas is getting painfully obvious. The new composition also proves the late Gene Deitch was mostly right in his view that the widescreen aspect ratio makes character acting difficult in animation. Joe Barbera’s penchant for constantly wanting a cute lil’ co-star is in full force here to an irritating degree (lots of Tuffy, Quacker, Tyke, and a nameless ugly baby).

Most of these don’t embrace the “modern” graphic design influence of UPA as an artistic choice the way Tex Avery’s ‘50s cartoons did. Hanna and Barbera’s just look simpler to be cheap. The earliest titles here look no different (save the widescreen) than what they’d been doing for years with their Cartoon 101 layouts and paintings by Dick Bickenbach and Bob Gentle. With each year, the outlines get thicker, Tom loses colors, the backgrounds get simpler… “Appeal” is an aspect blatantly missing here, which is shocking considering this was once the lushest cartoon series of all.

Still, it’s important this disc exists simply for the fact that it presents all of the cartoons in their original 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and even in their original Stereo sound when possible. It was a godsend when the original Art of Tom and Jerry Vol. 2 laserdisc came out thirty years ago and presented letterboxed versions of most of these cartoons. Seeing them in any approximation of their original release was unheard of in those days. And it’s astonishingly uncommon even in today’s world where widescreen televisions and monitors are the norm, since these cartoons still go out cropped in some capacity to MeTV and various streamers. These aren’t the prettiest cartoons, but copies in which half of the composition (being charitable here) is missing should never be used. It’s especially inexcusable today.

These restored transfers were done back in the DVD days, originating some two decades ago. But, as with restorations done for the Looney Tunes Golden Collections, because the standard was so high and they made the very wise decision to do the work in high-definition, they still hold up in the audio/visual department. Additional clean-up and color grading work was also done on these transfers, to WAC’s great credit. WAC also fixed a few long-standing audio glitches that originated from errant sound mixes that removed Tuffy’s singing in Touché, Pussycat! and a car’s sound effects in Blue Cat Blues, so this disc very much has the discerning collector in mind. (To not be entirely sycophantic, the transfers for the three cartoons that were done way back for the very first Tom & Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD, Touché, Pussycat!, The Flying Sorceress, and Blue Cat Blues, do look noticeably weaker than the rest.)

The collection has its share of classics and funny moments, even some with drawings that are highly “meme’ed” in today’s anti-social media world. Scott Bradley remains a consummate professional as ever, always delivering Hollywood epic-worthy scores for cartoons even as insipid as Busy Buddies and Happy Go Ducky. The disc also showcases several bits of cartoon history: the first major character series to be produced exclusively in widescreen, of course; directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera taking over as producers after Fred Quimby’s retirement and expanding the screen credits (sometimes as many as six animators are credited) if not the budgets; and most importantly, as noted earlier, these showcase Hanna and Barbera setting up their TV empire with many characters, motifs, and designs that would become H-B TV staples. (They would do better work again, or at least more appealing and charming work, after the leap to TV.)

As per usual for my Cartoon Research reviews, here are my notes. All cartoons were, of course, directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. For history’s sake, I’m also including the cartoons’ in-house production numbers, so you can see the order they were actually started in.

PET PEEVE (Prod. #296)
Unusually, Tom is in competition with Spike to catch Jerry in order to justify their spoiled existence. The owners (voiced by Daws Butler and June Foray) add a unique “battle of the sexes” vibe that was popular in media at the time. The first widescreen release, although it, like the following three cartoons, was designed and released in both Academy and CinemaScope ratio.


TOUCHÉ, PUSSYCAT! (Prod. #294)
Follow-up to Two Mouseketeers, with Tuffy earning his stripes under Jerry’s tutelage. Oscar nominee.


SOUTHBOUND DUCKLING (Prod. #298)
Jerry reluctantly helps Quacker go south for the winter and evade duck-hungry Tom. Memorable enough for ending with the impending doom of Jerry and Quacker in Miami.


PUP ON A PICNIC (Prod. #285)
The eternal chase interrupts Spike and Tyke’s picnic outing. The best gag is a classist Ray Patterson scene with a disgusted Spike preventing Tyke from eating a sandwich Tom briefly touched. “Don’t eat that one, son! It’s doity!”


TOM AND CHERIÉ (Prod. #299)
Mouseketeer Tuffy must deliver Jerry’s love letters to his latest squeeze, and be subjected to Tom’s swashbuckling ambushes. The first exclusively CinemaScope release, and all MGM cartoons henceforth production-wise would be so. And the last cartoon bearing Fred Quimby’s name as sole producer.


THAT’S MY MOMMY (Prod. #300)
Quacker hatches underneath Tom and thinks he’s his mommy, regardless of the cat’s attempts to eat him. The cloying sentimentality is at such an all-time high that it actually breaks Tom’s brain so he does think he’s a mama duck. The first cartoon to credit Hanna and Barbera as sole producers.


THE FLYING SORCERESS (Prod. #301)
Tom finds out he probably shouldn’t have answered that ad seeking a “traveling companion for elderly lady,” and June Foray officially corners the market on cartoon witch voices for the biggest studios in town.


THE EGG AND JERRY (Prod. #314)
For some reason, Bill and Joe had the bright idea that money could be saved by doing remakes that consisted of reshooting an entire old cartoon’s animation in widescreen composition with new backgrounds and reusing the old soundtrack. The results were hideous, with the old ‘40s animation in cropped form only emphasizing how chintzy the new background paintings and layouts look. (Two done of Tex Avery’s cartoons Wags to Riches and Ventriloquist Cat, without him, are particularly offensive.) This one, a shot-for-shot remake of Hatch Up Your Troubles, has the laughably bad error of Jerry’s body remaining onscreen when he’s supposed to be slamming a door offscreen thanks to the new aspect ratio.


BUSY BUDDIES (Prod. #303)
Tom and Jerry must rescue a wandering baby while the babysitter gabs on the phone. This is the first time in the series where any characters could have been inserted into the starring roles and it would’ve been just the same mediocrity. A sign of things to come for later reprisals of Tom and Jerry.


MUSCLE BEACH TOM (Prod. #304)
Tom and Butch compete for a lady cat’s affections at the beach. We saw this detached sort of story done much more soulfully by Bob McKimson in Muscle Tussle with Daffy, but this cartoon has a lively Bradley score, and maybe the best “scope” gag of all: Tom digging a hole for Butch to fall into, and ultimately getting frustrated and bodily shoving Butch in himself. It utilizes the entire length of the screen to underline Tom’s impatience.


DOWN BEAT BEAR (Prod. #305)
Tom attempts to capture an escaped circus bear that can’t stop dancing when he hears music, and Jerry does all he can to thwart him for spite. The bear’s hat and the tie-like rope around his neck make it hard to miss that this character was referenced by the crew two years later for Yogi.


BLUE CAT BLUES (Prod. #306)
One of the few CinemaScope Tom & Jerrys with thoughtful art direction that’s intentionally ugly to highlight the abject misery of a failed romance. Famously ends with both Tom and Jerry awaiting their demise on train tracks.


BARBECUE BRAWL (Prod. #307)
Tom and Jerry practically guest star in their own cartoon, with Spike and Tyke’s barbecue facing interruptions from both the cat and mouse and an army of ants.


TOPS WITH POPS (Prod. #318)
Shot-for-shot remake of Love That Pup.


TIMID TABBY (Prod. #308)
Tom’s identical and mouse-phobic cousin George (voiced by Bill Thompson) visits. The two cats conspire to send Jerry to the Home for Mice with Nervous Breakdowns.


FEEDIN’ THE KIDDIE (Prod. #321)
Shot-for-shot remake of The Little Orphan. This is the original version of the 1957 release, which cut out the animation of the black owner placing a turkey on the table, yet left the actually racist extended bit of Tom getting burnt into a pickaninny intact.


MUCHO MOUSE (Prod. #310)
Olympic, U.S. and World Champion Mouse Catcher Tom travels to Madrid to take on Jerry, El Magnifico. Designer legend Ed Benedict’s only Tom & Jerry credit.


TOM’S PHOTO FINISH (Prod. #311)
Tom frames Spike for his chicken thievery, which is unfortunately caught on film by Jerry. Has the last real laugh of the series with the owner thinking Tom is just making stupid faces at an empty window. “Do you want the neighbors to think you’re crazy!?”


HAPPY GO DUCKY (Prod. #309)
Quacker is a surprise hatchling at Tom and Jerry’s house Easter morning. Tied with the two wandering baby cartoons for most cripplingly generic entries in the original series.


ROYAL CAT NAP (Prod. #317)
The gang in their Mouseketeer roles for the final time, in a stupefyingly all-thumbs variation of Avery’s “be quiet or else” story he loved so much and did masterfully at least three times before. This is the first of Joe Barbera’s old Terrytoon cohort Carlo Vinci’s screen credits on the T&J cartoons (he has six other MGM credits). Vinci was a top animator (along with Connie Rasinski and Jim Tyer) at Terrytoons, and spent an unhappy decade ostracized by his peers for crossing the picket line in the 1947 Terry strike. He went to Hollywood around the time Paul Terry sold his studio to CBS, and worked briefly and miserably at the Disney Studio before joining MGM. He, naturally, became one of the standout talents in the early years of Hanna-Barbera’s studio (doing slick, fast work came naturally to Vinci having survived Terry’s “two weeks in each department” schedule for two decades), and animated some of the most visually exceptional episodes of Yogi Bear and The Flintstones single handedly.


THE VANISHING DUCK (Prod. #325)
Quacker and Jerry become invisible with vanishing cream and proceed to torture Tom. The cat gets wise and the film ends with him becoming invisible and brutally beating the pair.


ROBIN HOODWINKED (Prod. #329)
Jerry and Tuffy as merry mice who rescue the captured Robin Hood from guardsman Tom. Smells like the endless “X characters in generic retelling of old literature” that would be an H-B trademark. There’s a sequence of Tuffy in Tom’s stomach that’s particularly choppy, almost like a proof-of-concept for how few drawings they could get away with.


TOT WATCHERS (Prod. #330)
The final Tom & Jerry cartoon (the second with the wandering baby) ends with our heroes in the back of a police van. Enough said. With a resounding fatally bland dud like this, maybe it was time for these guys to hang it up at this operation and give into the villain that forced the CinemaScope process, television.


Bonus Cartoons:

GOOD WILL TO MEN (Prod. #302)
An updated remake of Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth for the atomic age that earned an Oscar nominee. Gene Hazelton is an uncredited designer.


GIVE AND TYKE (Prod. #313)
The first of two Spike and Tyke cartoons without Tom and Jerry. An alley dog (complete with Yogi’s hat and Art Carney voice by Daws Butler), Spike, and Tyke play tag with their licenses to evade a relentless dogcatcher. It’s a shame they only made two Spike and Tyke cartoons, as both come close enough to recapturing the old marathon run energy without the burden of having to think how to shoehorn a cat-and-mouse conflict into the story. Having Daws Butler voice everyone helps, too (something Bill and Joe clearly noticed).


SCAT CATS (Prod. #319)
Spike and Tyke prevent the cats from having a party while the owners are gone. Inexplicably, Butch is the housecat, with Tom’s usual alley cat gang (Meathead and Topsy) now having a generic orange cat in what should’ve been Butch’s lead role. Clearly the result of some ingenious executive order that Tom couldn’t appear without Jerry. Carlo Vinci animates at least half the picture, and you can see glimpses of why the other guys teased him that his drawing still couldn’t quite shake the look of cats and dogs that might be at home in one of the million Mighty Mouse cartoons he worked on.


While I doubt these are anyone’s favorite MGM cartoons, Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection is a highly convenient package that tells the closing chapter of one of the most popular cartoon studios ever with exceptional restorations and presentations of all the films. My only complaint about the release is that it wasn’t two discs so it could include every CinemaScope MGM cartoon. Thus, Mike Lah’s oddball but endearing clump of CinemaScope Droopy cartoons still have no high-definition home (and I guess those two appalling Avery remakes, Millionaire Droopy and Cat’s Meow, as well, for completeness’ sake). Warner Archive Collection has continued its high standard releases of Warner, MGM, Famous Studios, and Hanna-Barbera classics. I hope we see more cartoon shorts of Hanna and Barbera’s from before and after this period make their Blu-Ray debuts soon enough, too.

39 Comments

  • The letterbox format pretty much butchers many amusing gags; Muscle Beach Tom was the most infamous for me (as a kid, I can barely tell what the hell was going on in that scene).

    • I was going to say that my main memory of seeing these on TV was that they were often panned and scanned or cropped to the point of incoherence. Weirdly, the Cinemascope remakes of earlier cartoons were shown in their original aspect ratio.

      The often maligned ‘Blue Cat Blues’ (singled out by Leonard Maltin as a low point in the series) is actually one of the better entries here. Though an example of where ‘any characters could have been inserted into the starring roles’, it’s at least somewhat more original and unique.

      In addition to the error Thad highlighted in ‘The Egg and Jerry’, ‘Royal Cat Nap’ has one that’s bugged me for years, where they accidentally include
      two different Jerrys in the same scene (or coloured Tuffy brown by mistake). Very sloppy for the studio that once prided itself on producing some of the classiest and most expensive looking cartoons.

      • ” panned and scanned or cropped to the point of incoherence.”

        Most infamously Mucho Mouse as seen on WPIX in the 1970’s and 80’s. ESPECIALLY AS LEO GIVES HIS ROAR…IT WAS SQUISHED BEYOND ANYTHING!

        Also, many of the ‘Scope pictures had the “Color by Technicolor” cropped out or had a different Leo card altogether. And of course, the beginning and end titles were severely cropped for any TV station that had those prints like PIX, WTTG in Washington or even WYAH/WGNT in Norfolk, VA. I would note for Chicago residents, WFLD did not air beginning or ending title cards back in the day.

        To be honest, CinemaScope like Paramount’s VistaVision was the movie industry’s way of trying to get back at television which was entering its golden age in the mid 1950’s.

        Of the Scopes I do like, yes Muscle Beach Tom is a good one as is Down Beat Bear. But they are for the most part useless, especially the last T&J H-B Theatrical Tot Watchers. Was dull and predictable. And I have the pun intended lion’s share of them in my T&J DVD collections.

  • “Small amount of grumbling” amounts to 4 paragraphs of trashing the cartoons.

    “if it was anything but Looney Tunes it was garbage” apart from Ren And Stimpy which was an “anamoly”
    (Thad K. preface of his book “Sick Little Monkeys”)

    You certainly has the right to have and express these opinions.
    We are all different.
    Bluray.com, Home Theater Forum and countless others will all have opinions which will likely vary in tone.

    But it continually baffles me why Jerry gives you a forum on this website to throw mud on projects he not only considers as labours of love for his home library, but also actively promotes sales (the ad has been on this website for a month or so), with the hope that the upper echelon at Warner Brothers will then give the green light to further projects.

    Bottom line – How many potential sales will Warner Archive lose with this article?

    • “But it continually baffles me why Jerry gives you a forum on this website to throw mud on projects he not only considers as labours of love for his home library, but also actively promotes sales (the ad has been on this website for a month or so), with the hope that the upper echelon at Warner Brothers will then give the green light to further projects.”

      Because clearly Jerry is not as thin-skinned as you and a lot of other cartoon fans.

      “Bottom line – How many potential sales will Warner Archive lose with this article?”

      Would be surprising since I, despite not really caring for most of these things, ultimately recommend people buy it.

    • Don’t tell me that the baby cartoons or Happy Go Ducky or the various clip shows and cinemascope remakes aren’t trash level.

      If you can’t tell the quality difference of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse or Robin Hoodwinked, you shouldn’t really consider yourself an acknowledged animation historian.

    • I actually agree with the review that these cartoons don’t represent the height of T&J. They’re not awful cartoons or anything, but the series’s peak was from roughly 1943-1953. By this point they were running low on inspiration, and the simpler designs had more in common with low budget TV than the lavish artwork of the previous decade.

      That said, I do love Muscle Beach Tom, Pet Peeve, Down Beat Bear and Tom’s Photo Finish. The Flying Sorceress too I guess, for being a bit different than the usual.

      And since you claimed this review will result in lower sales… I already pre-ordered it well before Thad’s review and didn’t cancel my pre-order after reading it. I want to support classic animation on home video, even if these aren’t the absolute best of their filmography.

    • They may well gain at least one; I’m impressed with Thad’s compliments concerning the presentation of the cartoons, enough so that I’ll try to keep space in my budget for next month to buy it, despite already knowing I only care for four or five cartoons in this collection. Before reading this review, I absolutely wouldn’t have considered buying it.

      Even on this website, which tends to be extraordinarily more positive about theatrical animated shorts than almost any other site. I see plenty of scorn heaped on various cartoons that I’m fond of. And I’m OK with that; different people will have different tastes and different opinions, and reading opinions that differ from one’s own is a great way to learn more.

    • I’m pretty surprised M. Kirby was this upset at you’re review, Thad. I know you can be somewhat cynical in your reviews sometimes, but this one was a lot fairer and more justified.

  • Thanks for the review, Thad – I was wondering whether or not to upgrade from the letterbox versions I’ve had for decades on DVD, but your review has helped me make my decision.

    If only we could get the long-delay T & J Golden Collection Volume 2 released….

  • Believe it or not, I am very much looking forward to this collection. And again, as stated above, I’m looking forward to just about any cartoons collection from the theatrical age from the WarnerArchive because I expect they will do it right! It is a shame that they could not have included some of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons that don’t deal with any specific character that Had a series. In other words, these are one shots. I’m talking about cartoons like “swing social“, “the goose goes south“ and “officer pooch“. To prepare myself, I was watching the laser discs which actually contain the cartoons that I mentioned here. Bill and Joe also did a couple of “captain and the kids“ cartoons, disgruntled as they might have been when they produced them. I thought they did quite a nice job on them, actually. at any rate, like the review here I look forward to more classic theatrical MGM cartoons of the mid 1930s and early 1940s! Still so much to explore.

  • Even though the CinemaScope remakes are pointless, the one nice thing I have to say about them is that they prevented the original cartoons they were copies of from getting reissued and therefore having their attractive opening titles replaced and lost.

  • Already preordered my copy. No, they’re not the best cartoons in the series, but there are still a few standouts — “Down Beat Bear” and “Tom’s Photo Finish” are still some of my favorite T&J episodes — and it’s always a treat to see them in their original aspect ratio instead of the pan-and-scan versions shown on TV.

  • Nah, That’s My Mommy is a guilty pleasure of many. Timid Tabby and Blue Cat Blues are also good.

    The less talked about the rest is the best.

  • Thanks for the review. I think FEEDIN’ THE KIDDIE’s removal of the maid’s scene but reanimation of the pickaninny scene reflects that in the 1940s and 1950s, activists protested filmed appearances of “mammy” figures but not characters exploding (or, in this case, burning) into blackface. The activists seemed to prioritize characterizations instead of blackface designs for characters’ faces.
    I’ve always found TOT WATCHERS the most intriguing, because the scenes with the babysitter on the phone have music from Scott Bradley that sounds like he’s trying to adapt to early rock ‘n’ roll. Considering that his scores featured songs by Duke Ellington, the Ink Spots, and Louis Jordan over the years, it’s nice that he never stopped evolving musically.

  • “Happy-Go-Ducky” can be summed up in two sentences: “Happy Easter!” and “Oh boy, a swimming pool!”.

    These cartoons may not be stand outs, but they are mostly pleasant films, except maybe “Blue Cat Blues”, which seems to go out of its way to be depressing. It feels like some weird hybrid of a Tom and Jerry and a Tex Avery short, without really capturing what made either of them work.

  • Being a fan of Tom and Jerry since I was little, I’m looking forward to getting this release as well, since it’s coming out 2 weeks before my birthday (I’m turning 30 the same year Tom and Jerry turn 85). While I can’t say these particular Tom and Jerry shorts are good as the ones from the 1940s and even the early 1950s, there are some that I enjoy very much, like Touché Pussy Cat, The Flying Sorceress, and Barbecue Brawl.

    Here’s hoping the rest of the classic Tom and Jerry shorts from the late 1940s and early 1950s, along with all of MGM’s one-shot cartoon shorts produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising from the late 1930s and early 1940s make their way to Blu-Ray real soon.

  • Thanks for the detailed and informative review. Excellent work, as usual.

  • it’s not so much that the cinemascope format makes character acting difficult, it’s more like all filmmakers including live action just weren’t used to the format yet. There was a lot to learn about widescreen. in my opinion, it took another two or three decades to know their way around that aspect ratio.

  • I agree with M Kirby I respectfully ask why give a guy a platform to trash classic toons on a site devoted to them past, present, and future? If you want to trash them on your site, that’s your business. Believe it or not, there are those of us who are really looking forward to this release (even if you aren’t) While you may ultimately recommend a purchase, you undermine the larger cause with these negative, and nitpicky reviews.

    • Where are all these Tot Watchers fans coming from?

      • Apparently, in this day and age, a review has to be 100% positive to have a recommendation be justified.

  • This looks nice but–already owning the Spotlight Collection–I’m satisfied.

  • Honestly, except for the remakes and the two babysitting the baby shorts which I didn’t like as much, I do have a soft spot for these cartoons and I like the cinemascope era cartoons and I think your review is justified, it’s not too nitpicky judging by how I feel how awful the larry doyle looney tunes shorts are in my opinion. Also Tom’s Photo Finish is hands down, my personal favorite tom and jerry cartoon as a whole. I never get tired of watching that episode.

  • “For one, this disc jumps ahead in the series’ available-on-Blu-Ray chronology, as we still don’t have the long-cancelled Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Vol. 2 (way back in 2011) that would’ve collected the remaining Academy ratio 1948-54 titles from the MGM cartoon series in high-definition.”

    That because two cartoons (“Mouse Cleaning” and “Cassanova Cat”) that were skipped in “The Spotlight Collection” that had gags Warners considered too P.C. (despite some shorts that were previously released also had similar racial gags) were also going to be skipped in the “Golden Collection” series and fans, including myself, were not happy with this decision. Although at this point, I doubt they will be ever included in any future Blu-Ray releases.

  • By coincidence, my least favourite Van Beuren Tom and Jerry cartoons are also the late ones with the annoying baby.

    Thank you, as always, for this cogent and insightful review. I, too, hope to see additional collections of Hanna-Barbera cartoon shorts make their Blu-Ray debut, and I look forward to reading your reviews of them when the time comes.

  • In “Muscle Beach Tom”, the girl cat looks a bit alien in Tom and Jerry’s world. A bit like those late Sylvester cartoons when the sleek and rounded puddy tat plays opposite other cats with skinny limbs and squarish heads.

    • The same female cat or (a variant of it) was also in “Cool Cat Blues”.

  • Really enjoyed this review, thanks. Even though the series’ best entries were earlier, I have happily preordered because I do like some of them well enough, but more importantly it’s always a treat to see classic animation in high definition. It’ll be great to show people Blue Cat Blues on Blu-ray, for one.

    I’m sure everything has already been suggested regarding the Golden Collection Vol. 2, but my vote would be to put the two problem cartoons under their own From the Vault menu, like Disney did. Then nobody stumbles onto them accidentally, and if a disclaimer is added then people will have appropriate context.

  • For some reason, I’ve always liked Happy Go Ducky. IDK why to be honest, maybe it’s because of how Tom and Jerry are friends instead of enemies here. Though yeah, I do agree that when you get down to it it’s a pretty generic cartoon (you could replace Tom and Jerry with any other duo and nothing would have changed).

    Anyway, I agree: these cartoons aren’t that good overall. Still, it’s a great package and a wonderful buy for any Tom and Jerry fan.

    Never noticed the audio glitches. Still, it’s nice to know that the versions here are fixed.

    • To be honest, I feel like that type of cartoon would’ve worked better with Yogi and Boo Boo.

  • As a sentimentalist, a lot of these I like, particularly That’s My Mommy.

    For MGM completists, this set is worth the purchase for Scat Cats and Give And Tyke, which haven’t seen a physical media release since The Art Of Tom And Jerry Vol. 2 laserdisc in the 90s (if I’m not mistaken).

    Thad, you should seriously write an episode guidebook on the WB, MGM, and Paramount cartoons. (The latter two need to be written).

  • Looks like I’ll be getting this collection just for Good Will to Men, that one has a special place in my less than three.

    What bothers me is how the Chuck Jones shorts never got a Bluray. Was film scanned at sub-1080 resolution for the DVD?

    • No, those were done full HD. I think the issue is that they’re oversaturated and WAC’s goal is to get stuff out that hasn’t been properly available. Also, could you imagine the garment rending from some of these dudes with an honest review? (And I really wouldn’t want to do one…)

  • These may not be top level Tom & Jerry cartoons, but they are approximately 1000 times better than anything Chuck Jones did with the characters.

  • My Blu-ray copy just showed up on my doorstep and I’m pumped to have it. Even if these aren’t perfectly restored and aren’t the best Tom & Jerry cartoons, having them in CinemaScope and available in a single collection is great! They are kind of an animation historical oddity, I suppose.

    Thanks once again, Thad, for an honestly opinionated and detailed breakdown of the shorts. Now, onto the task of picking up the T&J Gene Deitch Collection on DVD…yeah, I didn’t know that such a thing existed and having them as my own little slice of animation history is fun for me.

  • Had to address something from the review as I’m making my way through the set:

    “This one, a shot-for-shot remake of Hatch Up Your Troubles, has the laughably bad error of Jerry’s body remaining onscreen when he’s supposed to be slamming a door offscreen thanks to the new aspect ratio.”

    Not sure what you mean? Both Hatch and Egg have Jerry slamming the door on-screen at 3m42s.

    • In HATCH UP YOUR TROUBLES, the camera has panned away, so Jerry is offscreen slamming the door on the woodpecker. In EGG AND JERRY, since no one bothered to account for the new AR, Jerry’s body remains completely still onscreen with the door slamming sound effect.

  • “A sign of things to come for later reprisals of Tom and Jerry.”
    A reprisal is an act of retaliation. Did you perhaps mean “reprise” or “revival”?

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