Tom and Jerry - your thoughts?

Well, guys, since i'm a lion myself and that these great cartoons themselves open with a lion in the titles, I might as well start a thread about these famous and well known guys, forget the utterly unwatchable Gene Deitch stuff and the reasanobly better Chuck Jones' stuff for now, i'm talking about the original Hanna-Barbera stuff.

Based on the one shot Rudy Ising produced cartoon " Puss Gets the Boot" and a long time television and cinema staple from the MGM cartoon department, handled by none other than Harman-Ising leftover Bill Hanna and former Van Beuren/ Terrytoons artist Joe Barbera, this humble Cat and Mouse team is very fondly remebered by their great animation from Kenneth Muse, Ray Patterson, Irvin Spence, Mike Lah and the others, and their breakneck proffessional timing supplied by Bill Hanna, not to metion those hillarious screams and sounds preformed by Bill Hanna as well.

All of those have made them extremely well known and very fondly liked by many people, both young and old alike, in fact, just about the only things that have been critized was the violence within the chase scenes, resorting to use of weapons to make it stand out from the usual cat and mouse fare, but there has been MUCH worse, look at the Herman and Katnip series from Famous Studios, the violence in those things are much more gruesome (specifically also see Herman the Cattoonist, where Herman slices off one of Katnip's appeandages, his leg) and more morbid, not to metion it goes to the point were it gets severly traumatizing (what kind of preception of reality is that sending to innocent little kids and even youthful adults who already know better by now, considering no blood is shown in those things, when if the actions in the H&K cartoons were done in real life there most defiently will be blood and even more extremely worse dire carange shown indeed!, in my defense, i know it's all just a cartoon and therfore it's defiantly not real at all, but still, cartoons still have to show a sense of balance inbetween the funny stuff) that they make Tom and Jerry feel extremely tame and like 1980s Hanna Barbera (psst, Kwicky Koala), but all in all, though, i consider Tom and Jerry to be much more better drawn and better animated (and even sometimes better written) than any of those Herman and Katnip cartoons, plus when Tom and Jerry had it's share of animation going downhill, at least, the animation (while it already became extremely bland and sterile, especially in the one with the Barbecue) still at least still moved flowingly and fluidly while Herman and Katnip having it's animation downfall share was reduced to static lines, unnessacary holds, and clunky choppy movement and stilted talking heads (rarely bobbing the head at times, even, just goes to show you, with huge execptions of course with Morey Reden and Johnny Gent being one of them, how bland and stiff the Famous Studios animators were in comparision to the best and even the average of the other animators on the studios out west) , which was later pretty much the animation formula standard for the TV Popeyes Seymour Knietel did and those ugly and extreanous Modern Madcaps.

Anway, back on topic by moving on to the good things, i think one of the characters' best and most heartwarming cartoons were The Little Orphan, The Missing Mouse, Mouse in Mahattan, Love That Pup, Jerry and the Lion and Cat Napping and one of their wildest was Zoot Cat, Yankee Doodle Mouse and the Million Dollar Cat and by far for now, their most violent was in Quiet Please, The Flying Cat and Trap Happy (funny, Trap Happy is pretty tame compared to the two).

Meanwhile let's hear your say on Tom and Jerry, the famous cat and mouse duo .