| Amazingly, Tom and Jerry have just
become old age pensioners. 65 years ago, in August 1940, Hanna and
Barbera joined forces to direct the furry feline and mouse in their
first six-minute cinema cartoon ‘Puss Gets the Boot’ which was an
instant success and was nominated for an Academy Award. Other cartoons
quickly followed, the hilarious cat and mouse antics providing
much-needed laughter during the darkest years of the war, and in 1944,
Jerry won audiences’ hearts when he danced a sequence with Gene Kelly
in the musical ‘Anchors Aweigh’. The comic duo continued to delight
the critics too, and in 1953 they awarded their eighth Oscar. Tom and
Jerry’s lives changed in 1958 when MGM’s animation studios closed, a
move which motivated Hanna and Barbera to start up their own
television production company which not only originated new cartoons,
but also re-animated many of the old ones. Kids, of course, love Tom
and Jerry, so its hardly surprising to find Barratt’s issuing a series
of fifty cards featuring the cartoon favourites, with their sweet
cigarettes back in 1971, each colour picture being a self-evident
situation in which Tom usually comes of worst, with a suitable
description on the back. This
set of Barratt 50 Tom & Jerry 1971 in mint condition is catalogued at
£25.00.
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