1930
In August 1937, animator and storyman Joseph Barbera began to work at MGM, then the largest studio in Hollywood. He learned that co-owner Louis B. Mayer wished to boost the animation department by encouraging the artists to develop some new cartoon characters, following the lack of success with its earlier cartoon series based on the Captain and the Kids comic strip. Barbera then teamed with fellow Harman-Ising unit animator and director William Hanna, who joined Harman-Ising Productions in 1930, and pitched new ideas, among them was the concept of two "equal characters who were always in conflict with each other". An early thought involved a fox and a dog before they settled on a cat and mouse. The pair discussed their ideas with producer Fred Quimby, then the head of the short film department who, despite a lack of interest in it, gave them the green-light to produce one cartoon short.
1940
Created in 1940 as the MGM cartoon studio struggled to compete with Walt Disney Productions and Leon Schlesinger Productions (Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies), Tom and Jerry's initial short-film titled Puss Gets the Boot proved successful in theaters and garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Cartoon). Hanna and Barbera later directed a total of 114 Tom and Jerry shorts for its initial MGM run from 1940 to 1958. During this time, they won seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, tying for first place with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies with the most awards in the category. After the MGM cartoon studio closed in 1957, MGM revived the series with Gene Deitch directing an additional thirteen Tom and Jerry shorts for Rembrandt Films in Czechoslovakia, from 1961 to 1962. Tom and Jerry became the highest-grossing animated short-film series of that time, overtaking Looney Tunes. Chuck Jones produced another 34 shorts with Sib Tower 12 Productions between 1963 and 1967. Five more shorts have been produced since 2001, making a total of 166 shorts.
1940
Tom and Jerry (also known as Tom & Jerry) is an American animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series centers on the rivalry between a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. Many shorts also feature several recurring characters.
February 10, 1940
The first short, Puss Gets the Boot, features a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse, named Jinx in pre-production, and an African American housemaid named Mammy Two Shoes. Leonard Maltin described it as "very new and special [...] that was to change the course of MGM cartoon production" and established the successful Tom and Jerry formula of comical cat and mouse chases with slapstick gags. It was released onto the theatre circuit on February 10, 1940. The pair, having been advised by management not to produce any more, focused on other cartoons including Gallopin' Gals (1940) and Officer Pooch (1941). Matters changed when Texas businesswoman Bessa Short sent a letter to MGM, asking whether more cat and mouse shorts would be produced, which helped convince management to commission a series.
1941
A studio contest held to rename both characters was won by animator John Carr, who suggested Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse. Carr was awarded a first-place prize of $50, equivalent to $1,149 in 2025. It has been suggested, but not proven, that the names were derived from a 1932 story by Damon Runyon, who took them from the name of a popular Christmastime cocktail, itself derived from the names of two characters in an 1821 stage play by William Moncrieff, an adaptation of 1821 Egan's book titled Life in London where the names originated, which was based on George Cruikshank's, Isaac Robert Cruikshank's, and Egan's own careers. Puss Gets the Boot was a critical success, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject: Cartoons in 1941 despite the credits listing Ising and omitting Hanna and Barbera.
1942
Tom and Jerry began appearing in comic books in 1942, as one of the features in Dell Comics' Our Gang Comics. In 1949, with MGM's live-action Our Gang shorts having ceased production five years earlier, the series was renamed Tom and Jerry Comics. That title ran 212 issues with Dell before being handed off to Western Publishing's line of Gold Key Comics, where it ran until issue #344 (June 1984). Tom and Jerry continued to appear in various comic books for the rest of the 20th century. Tom and Jerry comics were also extremely popular in Norway, Germany, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Australia. A licensed European version has been drawn by Spanish artist Oscar Martin since 1986. Another licensed version was published in Yugoslavia, started in 1983 and drawn by a number of artists, including Zoran Kovačević, Bojan Đukić, Zdravko Zupan and Dušan Reljić.
1952
Following the 1949 re-issue of the 1943 Tom and Jerry short The Lonesome Mouse, the NAACP, which had begun protesting stereotypical and racist depictions of African-Americans in Hollywood cinema, began a campaign against the use of the maid character in the Tom and Jerry shorts. Lillian Randolph left her role as the voice of Mammy Two Shoes in 1952 to instead take a job on television in Amos & Andy, and Hanna and Barbera retired the character at that time.
1953
In 1953, Tom and Jerry's second feature film appearance was swimming with Esther Williams in a dream sequence in another MGM musical, Dangerous When Wet.
1954
Before 1954, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio and format. In 1954 and 1955, some of the output was dually produced in dual versions: one Academy-ratio negative composed for a flat widescreen (1.75:1) format and one shot in the CinemaScope process. From 1955 until the closure of the MGM cartoon studio a year later, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in CinemaScope. Some even had their soundtracks recorded in Perspecta directional audio. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were shot as successive color exposure negatives in Technicolor.
November 1954
The rise in television in the 1950s caused problems for the MGM animation studio, leading to budget cuts on Tom and Jerry cartoons due to decreased revenue from theatrical screenings. In an attempt to combat this, MGM ordered that all subsequent shorts be produced in the widescreen CinemaScope format. The first, Pet Peeve, was released in November 1954. The studio found that re-releases of older cartoons were earning as much as new ones, resulting in the executive decision to cease production on Tom and Jerry and later the animation studio on May 15, 1957. The final cartoon produced by Hanna and Barbera, Tot Watchers, was released on June 25, 1958. The pair decided to leave and went on to focus on their own production company Hanna-Barbera Productions, which went on to produce such popular animated television series including The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons and Scooby-Doo.
1961
In 1961, MGM revived the Tom and Jerry franchise, and contracted European animation studio Rembrandt Films to produce 13 Tom and Jerry shorts in Prague, Czechoslovakia. All were directed by Gene Deitch and produced by William L. Snyder. Deitch wrote most of the cartoons, with occasional assistance from Larz Bourne and Eli Bauer. Štěpán Koníček provided the musical score for the Deitch shorts. Sound effects were produced by electronic music composer Tod Dockstader and Deitch. The majority of vocal effects and voices in Deitch's films were provided by Allen Swift and Deitch.
1962
Deitch's shorts were commercial successes. In 1962, the Tom and Jerry series became the highest-grossing animated short film series of that time, dethroning Looney Tunes, which had held the position for 16 years. However, unlike the Hanna-Barbera shorts, none of Deitch's films were nominated for any Academy Awards. In retrospect, these shorts are often considered the worst of the Tom and Jerry theatrical output. Deitch stated that due to his team's inexperience as well as their low budget, he "hardly had a chance to succeed", and "well understand[s] the negative reactions" to his shorts. He believes "They could all have been better animated – truer to the characters – but our T&Js were produced in the early 1960s, near the beginning of my presence here, over a half-century ago as I write this!" Despite the criticism, Deitch's Tom and Jerry shorts are appreciated by some fans due to their uniquely surreal nature. The shorts were released on DVD in 2015 in Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection.
December 21, 1962
To avoid being linked to Communism, Deitch modified the Czech names of his crew in the opening credits of the shorts to look more conventional to English-speaking audiences, e.g. Štěpán Koníček became "Steven Konichek" and Václav Lídl became "Victor Little". These shorts are among the few Tom and Jerry cartoons not to carry the "Made In Hollywood, U.S.A." phrase on the end title card. Due to Deitch's studio being behind the Iron Curtain, the production studio's location is omitted entirely on it. After the 13 shorts were completed, Joe Vogel, the head of production, was fired from MGM. Vogel had approved of Deitch and his team's work, but MGM decided not to renew their contract after Vogel's departure. The final of the 13 shorts, Carmen Get It!, was released on December 21, 1962.
1963
After the last of the Deitch cartoons were released, Chuck Jones, who had been fired from his 30-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons, started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions (later renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts), with partner Les Goldman. Beginning in 1963, Jones and Goldman went on to produce 34 more Tom and Jerry shorts, all of which carried Jones' distinctive style, and a slight psychedelic influence.
1965
Beginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons began to appear on television in heavily edited versions. The Jones team was required to take the cartoons featuring Mammy Two Shoes and remove her by pasting over the scenes featuring her with new scenes. Most of the time, she was replaced with a similarly fat white Irish woman. Occasionally, as in Saturday Evening Puss, a thin white teenager took her place instead, with both characters voiced by June Foray.
1965
Due to its very limited use of dialogue, Tom and Jerry was easily translated into various foreign languages. Tom and Jerry began broadcasting in Japan in 1965. A 2005 nationwide survey taken in Japan by TV Asahi, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, ranked Tom and Jerry No. 85 in a list of the top 100 "anime" of all time. Their web poll taken after the airing of the list ranked it at No. 58 – the only non-Japanese animation on the list, and beating anime classics like Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, A Little Princess Sara, and the ultra-classics Macross and Ghost in the Shell. In Japan, the word "anime" refers to all animation regardless of origin, not just Japanese animation.
September 25, 1965
Debuting on CBS' Saturday morning schedule on September 25, 1965, Tom and Jerry moved to CBS Sundays in 1967 and remained there until September 17, 1972.
1967
Though Jones's shorts were generally considered an improvement over Deitch's, they had varying degrees of critical success. MGM ceased production of Tom and Jerry shorts in 1967, by which time Jones had moved on to television specials and the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth. The shorts were released on DVD in 2009 on Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection.
April 1967
When shown on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom, from April 1967 to February 2001, usually on the BBC, Tom and Jerry cartoons were not edited for violence, and Mammy was retained. As well as having regular slots, mainly after the evening BBC News with around two shorts shown every evening and occasionally shown on children's network CBBC in the morning, Tom and Jerry served the BBC in another way. When faced with disruption to the schedules, for example when live broadcasts overran, the BBC would invariably turn to Tom and Jerry to fill any gaps, confident that it would retain much of an audience that might otherwise channel hop. This proved particularly helpful in 1993, when Noel's House Party had to be cancelled due to an IRA bomb scare at BBC Television Centre. Tom and Jerry was shown instead, bridging the gap until the next programme. In 2006, a mother complained to Ofcom about the smoking shown in the cartoons, since Tom often attempts to impress love interests with the habit, resulting in reports that the smoking scenes in Tom and Jerry films may be subject to censorship.
1972
In the Philippines, the series was aired on ABS-CBN from 1966 until its closure due to the country's declaration of martial law in 1972, with the later Hanna-Barbera shorts from Barbecue Brawl to Tot Watchers and all of Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts. RPN aired most of Hanna-Barbera shorts from 1977 until 1989. ABS-CBN would later return to the air after the restoration of democracy in 1986 and air the same shorts as in the pre-martial law era. This lasted until the end of 1988.
1973
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were originally meant to parody Tom and Jerry. In 1973, the magazine National Lampoon referenced Tom and Jerry in a violence-filled comic book parody, Kit 'n' Kaboodle. In The Simpsons, The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a spoof of Tom and Jerry—a "cartoon within a cartoon". In an episode of the series titled "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Worker and Parasite, a replacement cartoon for Itchy & Scratchy, is a reference to Soviet-era animation. The Italian adult black comedy comic strip Squeak the Mouse created by artist Massimo Mattioli satirizes Tom and Jerry, taking the content to extreme levels, which includes gory, horror, violence, and explicit sexual content.
1975
In 1975, Tom and Jerry were reunited with Hanna and Barbera, who produced The Tom and Jerry Show for Saturday mornings. These 48 seven-minute cartoon shorts were paired with Grape Ape and Mumbly cartoons, to create The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show, The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show, and The Tom and Jerry/Mumbly Show, all of which initially ran on ABC Saturday mornings between September 6, 1975, and September 3, 1977. In these cartoons, Tom and Jerry, now with a red bow tie, who had been enemies during their formative years, became nonviolent pals who went on adventures together, as Hanna-Barbera had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's TV. This format has not been used in newer Tom and Jerry entries.
1980
Filmation Studios were commissioned by MGM Television to produce a Tom and Jerry TV series, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, which debuted in 1980 and featured new cartoons starring Droopy, Spike, Slick Wolf, and Barney Bear, not seen since the original MGM shorts. The Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoons were noticeably different from Hanna-Barbera's efforts, as they returned Tom and Jerry to the original chase formula, with a somewhat more "slapstick" humor format. This incarnation, much like the 1975 version, was not as well received by audiences as the originals, and lasted on CBS Saturday mornings from September 6, 1980, to September 4, 1982.
1986
In 1986, MGM was purchased by WTBS founder Ted Turner. Turner sold the company a short while later, but retained MGM's pre-1986 film library. Tom and Jerry became the property of Turner Entertainment Co., where the rights stand today via Warner Bros., and have in subsequent years appeared on Turner-run channels, such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, The WB, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies.
1986
In the 1960s, shorts featuring Mammy Two Shoes were re-animated in part by Chuck Jones' team at MGM, alongside their work on the newer entries produced by Jones, in order to be shown on television. These versions of the shorts replace the African-American maid with a white woman, voiced by June Foray with an Irish accent. These versions of the Tom and Jerry shorts were broadcast on television until the MGM catalog's acquisition by Turner in 1986. Turner redubbed Mammy Two Shoes' voice in these shorts in the mid-1990s to make the character sound less stereotypical.
1988
Even though Gene Deitch's shorts were created in Czechoslovakia (1960–1962), the first official TV release of Tom and Jerry were in 1988. It was one of the few cartoons of western origin broadcast in Czechoslovakia (1988) and Romania (until 1989) before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.
1990
A Tom and Jerry comic strip was syndicated from 1950 to 1952. Although credited to MGM animation studio head Fred Quimby, experts believe the strips were ghosted by Gene Hazelton and possibly Ernie Stanzoni and Dan Gormley. Tom and Jerry was revived as a comic strip from 1989 to 1994, syndicated to the South American market by Editors Press Service. The strip was produced by Kelley Jarvis during this era, with the exception of a short period in 1990–1991 when it was done by Paul Kupperberg & Rich Maurizio.
March 02, 1990
One of the biggest trends for Saturday morning television in the 1980s and 1990s was the "babyfication" (child versions) of classic cartoon stars. On March 2, 1990, Tom & Jerry Kids, co-produced by Turner Entertainment Co. and Hanna-Barbera Productions (which was sold to Turner in 1991). debuted on Fox Kids, and aired for a few years on British children's block, CBBC. It featured a youthful version of the famous cat-and-mouse duo chasing each other. As with the 1975 H-B series, Jerry wears his red bowtie, while Tom now wears a red cap. Spike and his son Tyke, who now had talking dialogue, and Droopy and his son Dripple, appeared in back-up segments for the show, which ran until November 18, 1994. Tom & Jerry Kids was the last Tom and Jerry cartoon series produced in 4:3 (full screen) aspect ratio.
1992
A number of spin-offs have been made, including the television series The Tom and Jerry Show (1975), The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (1980–1982), Tom & Jerry Kids (1990–1993), Tom and Jerry Tales (2006–2008), and The Tom and Jerry Show (2014–2021). In 1992, the first feature-length film based on the series, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, was released. Thirteen direct-to-video films have been produced since 2002. In 2019, a musical adaptation of the series, titled Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream, debuted in Japan, in advance of Tom and Jerry's 80th anniversary. In 2021, the live-action/animated hybrid film Tom and Jerry was released, while a Chinese-American computer-animated film, Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass, premiered in June 2025.
October 01, 1992
On October 1, 1992, the first international release of Tom and Jerry: The Movie arrived when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe and then domestically by Miramax Films on July 30, 1993, with future video and DVD releases that would be sold under Warner Home Video, which, following Disney's acquisition of Miramax and Turner's subsequent merger with Time Warner, had acquired the film's distribution rights. Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman. The film was a musical with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain.
1996
In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros. The characters from the MGM library, including Tom and Jerry, were placed under the control of Warner Bros. Animation. A relaunch of the theatrical shorts series was planned for 2003 alongside a similar relaunch of the Looney Tunes theatrical shorts, but was canceled after the financial failure of Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
1999
In 1999, three years after Time Warner's acquisition of Turner Broadcasting, the rights to Tom and Jerry (along with the rest of MGM's Pre-1986 library) moved from MGM to Warner Bros. with Warner Home Video handling all future releases. DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Tom and Jerry have encountered difficulties in terms of restoration, due to most of the original film negatives to the Pre-1951 MGM cartoons being destroyed in a vault fire in the 1970s, leaving only inferior duplicate copies.
2001
In 2001, Warner Bros., which had, by then, merged with Turner and assumed its properties, released the duo's first direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring, in which Tom covets a ring that grants mystical powers to the wearer, and has become accidentally stuck on Jerry's head. It was the last time Hanna and Barbera co-produced a Tom and Jerry cartoon together, as William Hanna died shortly after The Magic Ring was released.
2001
In 2001, a new television special titled Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat premiered on Boomerang. It featured Joe Barbera (who was also a creative consultant) as the voice of Tom's owner, whose face is never seen. In this cartoon, Jerry, housed in a habitrail, is as much of a house pet as Tom is, and their owner has to remind Tom to not "blame everything on the mouse".
2003
In 2003, British agency Ogilvy & Mather produced a 40-minute Ford UK commercial promoting their then-recent Ford Mondeo, which featured Tom and Jerry. In the commercial, the characters break out of a television, wrecking the living room, and eventually breaking the door and going outside. Jerry then enters the Ford Mondeo via the exhaust pipe, and Tom gets chased away by a bulldog. The commercial was directed by Jeff Stark, written by Dale Winton, drafted by Paul Frost, and produced by Kim Parrot and Cathy Green. Animation was done by Jerry Forder at Icepics Animation Studios, with backgrounds by Monica Herman and art direction by Hamish Pinnell and John Bramble. Sound design was done by James Saunders. The music was composed by Goldstein. Post-production was done by Paul Hannaford at Rushes.
2003
In 2006, a new series called Tom and Jerry Tales premiered. Thirteen half-hour episodes each consisting of three shorts were produced. Some of the segments, like The Karate Guard, had originally been produced and completed in 2003 and/or 2005 as part of the planned theatrical cartoon relaunch. The show debuted in markets outside the US and UK, before premiering in February 2006 on the UK version of Boomerang, and the following autumn in the US on Kids' WB on The CW. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the slapstick. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry production produced in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, but was cropped to 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio when initially aired in the United States. The series was canceled in 2008, shortly before the Kids' WB block shut down.
April 2004
In April 2004, Warner Home Video released Tom and Jerry: The Classic Collection in Regions 2 and 4; a six disc double-sided DVD box-set in the United Kingdom, and 12 single-layer individual DVD volumes issued throughout Western Europe and Australia. The set includes almost every single Tom and Jerry cartoon released between 1940 and 1967 in chronological order; with the exceptions of The Million Dollar Cat and Busy Buddies, which were not included for unexplained reasons. The cartoons on this set were sourced from unrestored 1980s Turner broadcast prints as seen on TNT and Cartoon Network, and therefore many of the shorts were censored: with many blackface gags being cut (including His Mouse Friday being heavily edited) and almost all of Mammy Two Shoes' dialogue being redubbed by Thea Vidale. Also the CinemaScope cartoons were presented in 4:3 pan and scan, with the exceptions of The Egg and Jerry, Tops with Pops and Feedin' the Kiddie which were released in non-anamorphic widescreen as seen on The Art of Tom and Jerry laserdiscs. The Classic Collection also contained no bonus material. Unlike the U.S. DVDs however, Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat were included on these sets and were presented uncut.
October 2004
There have been several Tom and Jerry DVDs released in Region 1 (United States and Canada), such as the Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases DVDs. In October 2004, Warner Home Video released the first volume of Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection; a two-disc set with an assortment of Tom and Jerry cartoons presented in random order. Much like the U.K Classic Collection, most of the cartoons were unrestored and sourced from the '80s Turner prints, however the CinemaScope cartoons were restored in their correct 2.35:1 aspect ratios and released in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. The Spotlight Collection also contained numerous special features. In October 2005, Volume 2 of the Spotlight Collection was released - which much like the first volume had a random assortment of cartoons, sourced from unrestored Turner Prints (except the CinemaScope cartoons), and contained numerous extras - including an introduction by Whoopi Goldberg about the politically incorrect content in some cartoons. Despite this however, some of the cartoons on Volumes 1 & 2 were censored: having cuts and redubbed Mammy Two Shoes dialogue. Warner Home Video eventually offered a disc replacement program offering fixing these errors, and modern pressings of Volumes 1 & 2 present the cartoons uncut. A third and final volume of the Spotlight Collection was released in September 2007 - bringing a total of 112 of the 114 original Hanna and Barbera-era Tom and Jerry shorts having been released. Volume 3 received a negative response from fans due to His Mouse Friday being edited (with an extreme zoom-in towards the end to avoid showing a pygmy cannibal), the CinemaScope cartoon Pup on a Picnic being cropped to 16:9, and the cartoons Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat being excluded from these sets due to brief blackface gags.
2005
Four years later, Bill Kopp scripted and directed two more Tom and Jerry DTV features for the studio, Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars and Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry, the latter one based on a story by Barbera. Both were released on DVD in 2005, marking the celebration of Tom and Jerry's 65th anniversary. In 2006, another direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers, tells the story about the pair having to work together to find the treasure. Joe came up with the storyline for the next film, Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale, as well as the initial idea of synchronizing the on-screen actions to music from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. This DTV film, directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, was Joe Barbera's last Tom and Jerry project due to his death in December 2006. The holiday-set animated film was released on DVD in late 2007 and dedicated to Barbera.
2005
In 2005, a new Tom and Jerry theatrical short, titled The Karate Guard, which had been written and directed by Barbera and Spike Brandt, storyboarded by Joseph Barbera and Iwao Takamoto and produced by Joseph Barbera, Spike Brandt, and Tony Cervone premiered in Los Angeles cinemas on September 27, 2005, as part of the celebration of Tom and Jerry's sixty-fifth anniversary. This marked Barbera's first return as a writer, director and storyboard artist on the series since his and Hanna's original MGM cartoon shorts, and last overall. He died shortly after production ended. Director/animator, Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. The short debuted on the Cartoon Network on January 27, 2006. The short was filmed in the standard Academy ratio and format.
2005
Throughout the years, the term and title Tom and Jerry became practically synonymous with never-ending rivalry, as much as the related "cat and mouse fight" metaphor has. Yet in Tom and Jerry it was not the more powerful Tom who usually came out on top. In 2005, TV Asahi ranked Tom and Jerry as 58th of the Top 100 Animated TV Series in Japan overall, outranking titles like Rurouni Kenshin, Initial D, and even Macross. In January 2009, IGN named Tom and Jerry as the 66th best in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows.
2006
In 2006, the British version of the Boomerang channel made plans to edit Tom and Jerry cartoons being aired in the UK where the characters were seen to be smoking. There was a subsequent investigation by UK media watchdog Ofcom. It has also taken the U.S. approach by censoring blackface gags, though this seems to be random as not all scenes of this type are cut. One Gene Deitch-era short, Buddies Thicker Than Water, is shortened as one scene involves drunkenness.
June 23, 2009
On June 23, 2009, Warner Home Video released the Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection DVD, which contains all thirty-four shorts as well as special features. Prior to 2015, the Gene Deitch-era Tom and Jerry shorts saw limited availability on home media, with the most notable release being on the U.K. Classic Collection box-set. The Gene Deitch-era Tom and Jerry shorts were released in a one-disc set titled Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection in June 2015.
August 24, 2010
A new direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes, was released on August 24, 2010. It is the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry film produced without any of the characters' original creators. The next direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz, was released on August 23, 2011, and was the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry film made for Blu-ray. It had a preview showing on Cartoon Network. Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse was released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 2, 2012.
October 2011
In October 2011, Warner Home Video released the first volume of the Tom and Jerry Golden Collection on DVD and Blu-ray. Unlike the Spotlight Collections, the Golden Collections were aimed at adult collectors. This time the cartoons were presented uncut, in chronological order and restored from color reversal intermediates resulting in a much more pristine image quality. Despite this however, 12 cartoons (Puss n' Toots, The Bowling Alley Cat, Sufferin' Cats!, The Lonesome Mouse, The Zoot Cat, The Million-Dollar Cat, Puttin' on the Dog, Mouse Trouble, Quiet Please!, The Milky Waif, Heavenly Puss and Jerry's Diary) were sourced from 1960s Metrocolor prints, resulting in a washed out image, which drew some criticism from fans and collectors. A second volume of the Golden Collection series was scheduled to be released in June 2013. However, in February 2013, it was announced by TVShowsOnDVD.com that, much like the Spotlight Collections, Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat would not be included. The product received negative reviews on Amazon and various other websites, which eventually led Warner Home Video to cancel Volume 2 and the Golden Collection series. The transfers made for Volume 2 (excluding Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat) were eventually made available on the ITunes Store and YouTube Movies.
2013
In 2013, it was reported that Cartoon Network of Brazil censored 27 shorts on the grounds of being "politically incorrect". In an official release, the channel confirmed that it had censored only two shorts, The Two Mouseketeers and Heavenly Puss "by editorial issues and appropriateness of the content to the target audience—children of 7 to 11 years".
2013
Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure was released in 2013 on Blu-ray and DVD. Tom and Jerry: The Lost Dragon was released on DVD on September 2, 2014. Tom and Jerry: Spy Quest was released on DVD on June 23, 2015. Tom and Jerry: Back to Oz was released on DVD on June 21, 2016. Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was released on DVD on July 11, 2017.
April 09, 2014
Following Cartoon Network's 2012 reruns of Tom and Jerry Tales, the channel launched The Tom and Jerry Show (2014). Initially featuring two 11-minute segments, the series later shifted to 7-minute segments to better match the look and tone of the original theatrical shorts. Similar to other reboot works like Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and New Looney Tunes, several episodes the new series brought Tom and Jerry into contemporary environments, telling new stories and relocating the characters to more fantastic worlds, from a medieval castle to a mad scientist's lab. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Animation, with Sam Register serving as executive producer in collaboration with Darrell Van Citters and Ashley Postlewaite at Renegade Animation. Originally slated for a 2013 Cartoon Network premiere, the series was pushed back to April 9, 2014. It is the second Tom and Jerry production presented in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.
November 2014
In November 2014, a two-minute sketch was shown as part of the Children in Need telethon in the United Kingdom. The sketch was produced as a collaboration with Warner Bros.
May 2016
In May 2016, WB Kids began releasing excerpts from various Tom and Jerry works to the online platform YouTube. By January 2017, compilation videos of the Tom and Jerry franchise began to be released by WB Kids on the platform.
2019
A musical, or music drama (音楽劇, ongaku geki), adaptation of the cartoon series, titled Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream (トムとジェリー 夢よもう一度, Tomu to Jerī Yume yo Mōichido), debuted in Japan in 2019 in advance of the series' upcoming 80th anniversary. The musical was composed by Masataka Matsutoya, staged by Seiji Nozoe, and written by Shigeki Motoiki.
February 20, 2021
On February 20, 2021, Warner Bros. released two new shorts onto HBO Max titled Tom and Jerry Special Shorts to honor the 81st anniversary of Tom and Jerry, as well as to promote the 2021 film. These shorts share the style of the other HBO Max original Looney Tunes Cartoons, also produced by Warner Bros. Animation.
February 26, 2021
A live action/3D animated hybrid film was directed by Tim Story and starred Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña Colin Jost, Rob Delaney and Ken Jeong. The film was released on February 26, 2021.
July 01, 2021
A new Tom and Jerry series made its debut on July 1, 2021, as a Max Original on HBO Max, called Tom and Jerry in New York, which basically served as a spin-off of The Tom and Jerry Show by having the exact same animation style and slapstick, except that the events take place in the city of New York City. It was loosely based on the 2021 film, as the humans in the series were shown with their faces intact.
August 2021
Tom to Jerry: Nanairo (Japanese: とむとじぇりーナナイロ, romanized: Tomu to Jerī Nanairo, lit. 'Tom and Jerry: Seven Colors') is a short-lived series of Japanese comics authored by Chara Chara Makiart as a spin-off of Tom and Jerry. It was first featured in the August 2021 issue of the Nakayoshi magazine. Nanairo, along with Chara Chara Makiart's other project Harapeko Penguin Cafe, was cancelled in December 2021 as Kodansha (Nakayoshi's publisher) has terminated its contract with the creative unit after one of Makiart members was found guilty for sexually assaulting a minor.
November 11, 2022
On November 11, 2022, Cartoon Network in Japan premiered a new series of animated shorts, Tom and Jerry (Japanese: とむとじぇりー, romanized: Tomu to Jerī ), marking the first Japanese production based on the property. Featuring the voices of Megumi Aratake (as Tom), Aya Yonekura (as Jerry) and Eri Tanaka and Nana Kumagai (as Tuffy), the shorts were animated by Fanworks in co-operation with Studio Nanahoshi. Ayu handled the character design and Captain Mirai composed the musical scores. The November 11, 2022 premiere coincided with Cartoon Network's celebration of Cheese Day, which is organized by cheese industry in Japan. In 2025, the series was renamed Tom and Jerry Gokko (Japanese: とむとじぇりーごっこ, romanized: Tomu to Jerī Gokko).
July 25, 2023
On July 25, 2023, the Southeast Asian version of Tom and Jerry animated shorts was announced, to be presented on Cartoon Network Asia alongside HBO Asia streaming platform HBO GO before it was aired globally. The animated shorts, which were set in Singapore, were produced by Warner Bros. Discovery Asia-Pacific's director of original kids content Carlene Tan, with animation by Aum Animation Studios India alongside Singapore-based Robot Playground Media and Chips and Toon Studios for both the stories and designs.
December 12, 2024
On December 12, 2024, it was announced that a new animated Tom and Jerry feature film is in the works from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, with Rashida Jones, Will McCormack and Michael Govier writing the script.
February 2025
In February 2025, to coincide with Tom and Jerry's 85th Anniversary, Warner Archive Collection released Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection, a single disc Blu-Ray set which contained all 23 CinemaScope Tom and Jerry cartoons presented in their correct aspect ratios - including Pup on a Picnic. The set also included three non-Tom and Jerry CinemaScope cartoons by Hanna and Barbera - Good Will to Men (1955), Give and Tyke and Scat Cats (both 1957) - which were included as extras. This set received mostly positive feedback from fans and collectors.
June 21, 2025
A feature-length computer-animated film titled Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass (Chinese: 猫和老鼠:星盘奇缘), directed by Zhang Gang and co-produced by China and the United States, premiered at the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival on June 21, 2025, and is set for general release in China on August 9, 2025. It will be released in theaters in the United States on September 9, 2026.
September 2025
In September 2025, Warner Archive announced Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology, a multi-disc Blu Ray set collecting the entirety of the original 114 Hanna-Barbera era shorts. Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology was released on December 2, 2025 and presented all 114 shorts in chronological order and uncut - including Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat - as well as an unedited version of His Mouse Friday, over three hours of bonus material and a 28-page booklet.
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