Cat and Mouse Games: The History of Tom and Jerry (Part 5)

In 1975, Tom and Jerry were reunited with their creators, William Hanna and Joesph Barbera. Thiis show was called The Tom and Jerry Show, or The New Tom and Jerry Show. However this reunion was cursed by something called the 1970's. This was not a good decade for television cartoons in America. TV cartoons had now been deemed as strictly children's entertainment, and parents were worried about the violence in cartoons. Why this may have not been a problem for some cartoons, it definitely was not helpful to Tom and Jerry. After all these characters's cartoons elevated cartoon violence to an art form. This was not helped by the way they decided to lessen the violence was to make Tom and Jerry friends. Another problem that plagued the show was TV's limited budget. This meant limited animation, something that worked just fine for Yogi Bear or The Flintstones, but not for pantomime characters such as Tom and Jerry. With all this in mind there still was much of an effort to make these cartoons as good as humanly possible. Therefore they didn't turn out as bad as they could have, but this was still a very disappointing reunion.      


If all this doesn't sound bad enough next came the ultimate insult to Tom and Jerry. This was called The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show and premiered on TV in 1980. While on the bright side Tom and Jerry were allowed to be more violent and antagonistic towards each other, that was the only bright side. This TV series was produced by Filmation Studios, who had actually made some very fun and entertaining super hero TV shows(If you haven't yet I recommend checking them out) . The animation in this series was beyond limited. While Hanna and Barbera were able to use limited animation well, and make it part of the charm of their TV shows, here the animation gets no such luxury. The animation looks stiff, unappealing, and cheap. The characters barely move and even more rarely express emotion. The soundtrack was even worse. The music was canned and irritating. On top of that you heard the same irritating musical cues over and over, and the music rarely if ever matched what was going on on the TV screen. The voices felt as if they had been recorded using the cheapest possible technology available. They also were horribly irritating voices as well. Strangely many were done by Frank Welker (Runt on Animaniacs, Nibbler on Futurama, Fred on Scooby Doo) a very talented voice actor who gives some very rare bad performances here (His other voices though should give us more than enough reasons to forgive these very rare misses). This show was an insult to Tom and Jerry and cartoons as a whole, and I feel sorry for all the talent that was wasted (and there was actually some good talent working on this show) on this poor excuse for an animated TV show.

....To Be Continued

-Michael J. Ruhland