The Egg and Jerry is actually a repurposed-for-widescreen version of the 1949 short Hatch Up Your Troubles. The brilliance of the bit is in how Barbera and Hanna turn the environment against their players, crafting pin tables into Play-Doh molds and smooshing Tom’s body into shapes that would make David Cronenberg wince. He goes to work thrashing the poor mouse, but his instruments of destruction (numerous bowling balls) tend to bounce back hard. As the night watchman, Tom can’t stand idly by. The short starts with Jerry wandering into a bowling alley where he transforms its lanes into his own personal skating rink. The oldest entry on the list, The Bowling Alley-Cat, is only the seventh Tom and Jerry cartoon, but Barbera and Hanna have already perfected their protagonists’ tantalizing mixture of playfulness and viciousness. Yet, I can assure you that nothing could shake my top spot.

You could land on any dozen and be satisfied, but the ten listed below are my favorite as of today. The cartoons generally run six or seven minutes in length, and while some ideas are repeated or remade, it’s still incredible how much variety these creators mined from their simple versus concept.ĭiscerning the ten best Tom and Jerry shorts is a little bit like blindly throwing a dart at a board that’s all bullseye. With Tom & Jerry: The Movie, the ultimate cat and mouse rivalry returns this weekend on HBO Max. Inspired by our heroes dabbling into the semi-live-action realm, we wanted to reevaluate the original 114 Tom and Jerry cartoons written and directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna. No weapon too dangerous, no action too outlandish. These karmic, ferocious feuds stir laughter because we know they can take it. Often a character may start as one and end as the other. Tom and Jerry take turns being predator and prey.

Where Godzilla and Kong can go along their merry way within their own franchises, Tom and Jerry need each other to sell their appeal-the never-ending contest. Before all these classic title bouts, there was Tom vs. In this entry, we celebrate the new Tom and Jerry movie’s arrival on HBO Max by ranking the ten best classics depicting their ancient rivalry. Our lives may no longer be scheduled around small screen programming, but that doesn’t mean we should forget the necessary sanctuary of Saturday ‘toons. Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, our weekly column where we continue the animated boob tube ritual of yesteryear.

Bird in tom and jerry