Friday, April 01, 2011

Tom and Jerry - Filmation Goodness

Of all the revivals of Tom and Jerry since Hanna and Barbera's original theatricals I have to say that the 1980 "Tom and Jerry Comedy Show" produced by Filmation is hands down the best. You could make the case that the shorts rival HB's MGM classics. The chase scenes look like they could have been animated by Irv Spence himself, they're so good. Enjoy some art from "The Great Mousini" and "Invasion Of The Mouse Snatchers". Fortunately, someone was kind enough to upload the cartoons to youtube.


The Great Mousini


Invasion Of The Mouse Snatchers

10 comments:

  1. Funny you should say that, becuase I remember these Filmation T&J's being pretty awful.

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  2. "Of all the revivals of Tom and Jerry since Hanna and Barbera's original theatricals I have to say that the 1980 "Tom and Jerry Comedy Show" produced by Filmation is hands down the best. You could make the case that the shorts rival HB's MGM classics. The chase scenes look like they could have been animated by Irv Spence himself, they're so good."

    I hope this is an April Fools Joke.

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  3. You mean I'm alone in thinking these are great?!?

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  4. Some of the writing isn't half-bad, but the inbred execution of everything makes these worthless. Thank god I didn't spend much time in the 80s.

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  5. I'm always surprised at how nostalgic people are about cartoons made in the eighties. Growing up I would watch loads of classic shorts, then crap like Heathcliff, the endless "action" shows and this mess would come on hammer home just how damn good those classics were. Bakshi's "Christmas In Tattertown" and The New Mighty Mouse Adventures were the best things I can remember from the 80s.

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  6. I don't agree, Klangley. Those drawings are stiff and mechanically drawn, having more in common with Gene Deitch's Tom and Jerry cartoons than anything MGM churned out.

    Of course, that post IS an April Fools Day prank, right?

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  7. You think those are mechanical, you should the still I didn't bother to scan. Brutal stuff.

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  8. Good one, Kevin. Even as an April Fool's joke, the ineptness and lousy execution of these 80s cartoons is still painfully obvious, unfortunately. Why would anyone be nostalgic over such piss poor drawings like the ones in these cartoons? I wasn't even around or born in the 1980s, and even I can tell these were mostly terrible, and that the artists who worked on them thought so too (poor Eddie on the second cartoon for example). Oh well. I'm very thankful that cartoony animation, for a while anyway, was allowed to flourish again in the 1990s, or otherwise, that artform might have gone extinct a long time ago.

    Can you post some real cartoons, please? How about some Heckle and Jeckle or a rare Disney cartoon? Please???

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  9. Hey Roberto, haven't had much time for posting but I'll be sure to get back to some real cartoons. I spent way more time than I would like to scanning this crap in today.

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  10. For a sec there, Kevin, I thought you had lost your mind!

    Unwatchable stuff!

    Happy April 1!

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