Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray Movie Review

Is you is... or is you ain't?

Reviewed by Randy Miller III December 9, 2025

Celebrating its 85th anniversary this year, Tom and Jerry still remains an enduring and internationally loved animated franchise that first scored big with audiences of all ages and maturity levels upon its 1940 debut. Though it stood on its own even back then, Tom and Jerry certainly had plenty in common with the other "big fish" in the pond, Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes, since both productions were fueled by madcap comedy, slapstick shenanigans, and a fully orchestrated score. It was created by the recently-united team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for MGM, who co-directed 114 shorts during the next 18 years before the studio abruptly shuttered its animation division and they formed their own production company. Hanna and Barbera's shared output on Tom and Jerry remains a career highlight with seven Academy Award wins and six more nominations dating back to the very first short, "Puss Gets the Boot."

That's the starting point for this long-awaited new Blu-ray collection, which finally presents all 114 uncut, uncensored, and chronological Hanna-Barbera shorts on five of these six discs. It follows two earlier Tom and Jerry Blu-ray releases: 2011's Golden Collection, Volume One (whose planned 2013 follow-up was abruptly cancelled due to fan backlash from two missing shorts) as well as this year's Complete CinemaScope Collection. For that alone, The Golden Era Anthology will rightfully pique the interest of any and all Tom and Jerry fans and makes this a truly special collection, although its varied source material couldn't possibly make this as consistent-looking a visual presentation as everyone would have liked. Even so, this set represents a much stronger effort than the mostly disappointing Peanuts Ultimate TV Specials Collection, which was crippled by glaring quality control issues that still haven't been addressed.

There's a lot included here... but The Golden Era Anthology doesn't include a disc-by-disc breakdown of the 114 shorts included, so see below for a helpful guide to track down all of your favorites. Word also has it that Warner Archive will at least be offering a downloadable PDF with this information, so I'll post a link when it's made available.

List of Included Shorts

DISC ONE

"Puss Gets The Boot", "The Midnight Snack", "The Night Before Christmas", "Fraidy Cat", "Dog Trouble", "Puss N’ Toots", "The Bowling Alley-Cat", "Fine-Feathered Friend", "Sufferin’ Cats!", "The Lonesome Mouse", "The Yankee Doodle Mouse", "Baby Puss", "The Zoot Cat", "The Million Dollar Cat", "The Bodyguard", "Puttin’ On The Dog", "Mouse Trouble", "The Mouse Comes To Dinner", "Mouse In Manhattan", "Tee For Two", "Flirty Birdy", "Quiet Please!"

DISC TWO

"Springtime For Thomas", "The Milky Waif", "Trap Happy", "Solid Serenade", "Cat Fishin’", "Part Time Pal", "The Cat Concerto", "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", "Salt Water Tabby", "A Mouse In The House", "The Invisible Mouse", "Kitty Foiled", "The Truce Hurts", "Old Rockin’ Chair Tom", "Professor Tom", "Mouse Cleaning", "Polka-Dot Puss", "The Little Orphan", "Hatch Up Your Troubles", "Heavenly Puss", "The Cat and the Mermouse", "Love That Pup", "Jerry’s Diary", "Tennis Chumps"

DISC THREE

"Little Quacker", "Saturday Evening Puss", "Texas Tom", "Jerry and the Lion", "Safety Second", "Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl", "The Framed Cat", "Cue Ball Cat", "Casanova Cat", "Jerry and the Goldfish", "Jerry’s Cousin", "Sleepy-Time Tom", "His Mouse Friday", "Slicked-Up Pup", "Nit-Witty Kitty", "Cat Napping", "The Flying Cat", "The Duck Doctor", "The Two Mouseketeers", "Smitten Kitten", "Triplet Trouble", "Little Runaway", "Fit To Be Tied", "Push-Button Kitty", "Cruise Cat", "The Dog House"

DISC FOUR

"The Missing Mouse", "Jerry and Jumbo", "Johann Mouse", "That’s My Pup", "Just Ducky", "Two Little Indians", "Life With Tom", "Puppy Tale", "Posse Cat", "Hic-Cup Pup", "Little School Mouse", "Baby Butch", "Mice Follies", "Neapolitan Mouse", "Down-Hearted Duckling", "Pet Peeve", "Touché Pussycat", "Southbound Duckling", "Pup On A Picnic", "Mouse For Sale", "Designs On Jerry", "Tom and Cherie", "Smarty Cat", "Pecos Pest", "That’s My Mommy"

DISC FIVE

"The Flying Sorceress", "The Egg and Jerry", "Busy Buddies", "Muscle Beach Tom", "Down Beat Bear", "Blue Cat Blues", "Barbecue Brawl", "Tops With Pops", "Timid Tabbie", "Feedin’ The Kiddie", "Mucho Mouse", "Tom’s Photo Finish", "Happy Go Ducky", "Royal Cat Nap", "The Vanishing Duck", "Robin Hoodwinked", "Tot Watchers"

Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As with many films and cartoons in MGM's library, nearly all of the original negatives for these Tom and Jerry shorts (most everything before 1951) were lost in the 1978 George Eastman House fire, so the sources for those without negatives were materials from MGM's nitrate-to-safety conversion program undertaken in the early 1960s.

These masters can be divided into four groups. The first -- about a dozen shorts -- were handled entirely by Warner Archive and include the previously banned cartoons "Casanova Cat", "Mouse Cleaning", and "His Mouse Friday" (which weren't even released on DVD in most countries, including the United States), as well as "The Bowling Alley-Cat", "The Zoot Cat", "The Million Dollar Cat", "Hatch Up Your Troubles", and a few others. These look basically flawless under the circumstances with a healthy amount of organic film grain and have been cleaned of most age-related wear-and-tear, although cel dirt and other more "natural" imperfections remain. In short, purists will love them.

The second and largest group is where things get a little trickier, as the overwhelming majority of these shorts were sourced from inherited masters prepared by Warner Home Video (for TV and streaming, as well as Golden Collection Volume One and the scrapped Volume Two), with 60 of them additionally touched up by Warner Archive to fine-tune color correction, remove film damage, and increase audio quality. Their collective appearances range from satisfactory to surprisingly good; while this includes a necessary disclaimer of "your mileage may vary" due to their varying levels of perceivable film grain, the colors and original linework of these shorts remain overwhelmingly intact and you can still regularly see organic textural remnants such as patchy paint strokes. That said, a handful shorts from this group (which includes several dozen debuting on Blu-ray) don't look as appealing in that they're either (a) much softer due to source elements, or (b) the color palette is notably dark and dreary, such as "Quiet Please!", "Jerry's Diary", "Heavenly Puss", and a few others. This "b" group was sourced from Metrocolor-processed internegatives that WAC's mastering team judged as the highest-quality source available. (Many of these looked more colorful on WB's "Spotlight Collection" DVDs, but the superior sources for those dated masters have since been deemed unusable.)

The third and fourth groups are comprised of shorts returning from previous Warner Archive Blu-rays. Some were first offered as bonus features on various WAC film releases and these include "Jerry's Cousin", "Slicked-Up Pup", "Polka-Dot Puss", "Little Quacker", and "Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl", to name a few. Although some of the grain levels seen here are different than their earlier HD iterations, this is a byproduct of WAC's manual fine-tuning which removed film damage and reduced excessive grain levels to avoid problematic noise prior to the disc compression and encoding process. Rounding out the bunch are all 23 widescreen shorts from The Complete CinemaScope Collection released by Warner Archive earlier this year; these all appear identical to that previous set and thus generally look good but show sporadic amounts of gate weave or "telecine wobble" (as do a few other cartoons in the second group above); this is perhaps most obvious during the opening titles since there's absolutely no movement involved.

Regarding "what could have been": there has been and will be ongoing arguments about The Golden Era Anthology's so-called "lesser" masters but, despite a few unavoidable consistencies between these shorts, Warner Archive has done a remarkable job gathering so many best-available sources together in a curated collection that contains more than 50 new-to-Blu cartoons... including a few that have never appeared on digital home video. Under the circumstances, I'm perfectly happy with what Warner Archive was able to accomplish with this release and I was able to enjoy many of these shorts like never before thanks to their renewed visual clarity.

Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's less to say about the DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio, which presents these shorts' original mono mixes* in a split two-channel container for wider playback. As you might expect from the visual variances in quality, there are several sonic peaks and valleys along the way... but this mostly arrives in noticeable volume changes between certain shorts so you might want to keep the remote handy. Fidelity remains solid throughout despite a handful of source-related issues, such as occasional distortion and other brief anomalies... but as usual, I'd imagine that Warner Archive did the best job they could with what they were given. Unlike the Peanuts Ultimate TV Collection, the good news here is that the audio is in its original format throughout and hasn't been remixed, so it easily earns passing marks overall.

* - Regarding the 23 Cinemascope shorts on Discs 4 and 5: the first three are sourced from original magnetic stereo tracks, while the remaining 20 are all in mono. This was due to a budget-related change in policy at MGM back in 1955, so no true stereo versions of the other 20 shorts has ever existed. (Most of the mono tracks are at least sourced from magnetic masters, but a few were not usable due to damage so optical tracks were used instead.)

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during all 114 shorts only... but not the bonus material listed below, despite there being a subtitle option on the bonus disc's main menu. (Essentially, it does nothing.)

Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This six-disc release ships in a multi-hinged keepcase with classy cover art and a matching slipcover that also holds a 28-page booklet titled "The Art of Tom and Jerry" that features sketches from a handful of cartoons as well as timeline featuring character debuts and other notable events during the H-B era. But much like WB's recent Peanuts Ultimate TV Specials Collection, this booklet sadly doesn't include any sort of episode list (hence my homemade one above) and sits snugly inside the slipcover. I'd have preferred a little more space inside the case to fit it properly.

The extras include two new retrospective pieces as well as several items ported over from Golden Collection, Volume One and The Complete CinemaScope Collection, plus a few from WB's Spotlight Collection DVD set. It's an impressive cross-section of material and again shows what the Peanuts Ultimate TV Specials Collection could have been.

DISCS 1-5

• Audio Commentaries - "Puss Gets the Boot", "The Night Before Christmas", "The Yankee Doodle Mouse", "The Zoot Cat", "Mouse Trouble", "Quiet Please!", "The Cat Concerto", "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", and other classic shorts (20 in all) are presented with optional DVD-era commentaries featuring author Michael Mallory, animator Mark Kausler, animation historians Jerry Beck and Earl Kress, comedienne Nicole Parker, and others.

DISC SIX

• NEW! Lady of the House: The Story of Mammy Two Shoes (27:41) - Originally intended for inclusion on the cancelled Golden Collection, Volume 2 but left unfinished, this now-completed retrospective featurette pays tribute to one of Tom and Jerry's most memorable supporting characters and her history. Featured participants include animation historian Jerry Beck, critic/author Charles Solomon, author Michael Mallory, writer/producer Rodney Barnes, animator/writer Floyd Norman, film historian/author Dr. Donald Bogle, animator/director Mark Kausler, voice actors June Foray and Keith Scott, and more; all of them discuss her importance to the franchise and, of course, the vocal contributions of radio and film actress Lillian Randolph.

• NEW! Animal Hijinks: The Friends and Foes of Tom (30:58) - This like-minded short features new and returning participants including Jerry Beck, Eric Goldberg, Michael Mallory, cartoon producer John R. Dilworth, animation historians David Gerstein and Will Friedwald, and others. The obvious topic of discussion here is Tom and Jerry's roster of supporting animal characters such as Spike and Tyke, Nibbles, Butch, Quacker, Muscles, Toots, Toodles, and how their inclusion added more flavor and occasional exposition through vocals that Tom and Jerry (usually) didn't provide. Oddly, a small handful of a supportive cartoon clips show signs of jagged edges and aliasing, perhaps due to their respective restorations not being complete at the time.

• The Midnight Snack Pencil Test - Side by Side (9:01)

• Cat and Mouse: The Tale of Tom and Jerry (31:39)

• Tom and Jerry: Behind the Tunes (17:09)

• Animators as Actors (7:15)

• 1953 Excerpt from "Dangerous When Wet" (7:50) - Now sourced from WAC's 2023 Blu-ray.

• How Bill and Joe Met Tom and Jerry (27:12)

• Vaudeville, Slapstick and Tom and Jerry (22:47)

• The Comedy Stylings of Tom and Jerry (5:30)

• "The Worry Song" from "Anchors Aweigh" (9:08) - Now sourced from WB's 2015 Blu-ray.

• Good Will to Men (8:30) - An Oscar-nominated short that's essentially a remake of "Peace on Earth" (1939), updating the subject matter of this cautionary church-mouse tale with destructive post-WWII warfare.

• Give and Tyke (6:39) - The first of only two proposed spin-off Spike and Tyke cartoons, this one sees the poor little pup in deep doo-doo after a stray dog steals his license to avoid a trip to the local pound.

• Scat Cats (6:30) - "When the owners are away, the cats will play." This second Spike and Tyke short finds them in charge of the house... that is, until Butch the cat calls his friends over for a big party.

Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Tom and Jerry during the Hanna-Barbera years was lightning in a bottle, a truly outstanding run of cartoon shorts that combined terrific voice work, first-rate animation, memorable music, and top-tier slapstick that places them among the best the genre has to offer. Warner Archive's long-awaited Golden Era Anthology does them justice and will entertain fans of all ages for years to come. Even the bonus features are comprehensive and many of them even date back to ye olde DVD days, which is always appreciated. It will undoubtedly be a huge seller during the holiday season (assuming you can get a copy), and for good reason. Highly Recommended to any and all interested parties, Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology will undoubtedly show up on my forthcoming list of this year's best releases.