The MGM classics comedies of Tom and Jerry deserve a special place in the animated Hall of Fame.

They never reach the inspired lunatic levels of the Warners classics -- they're aimed at a different age-group, of around six to eight years, where Chuck Jones set out, with Bugs, Daffy and co, to reach just about everyone between 8 and 80.

But Tom the cat and Jerry his constant companion-victim were downright cute. And the violence as cat pursued mouse, dog pursued cat and so on in a never-ending cycle of baseball-bats and bombs, so often described by deluded psychologists as dangerous, was so firmly rooted in fantasy as to never disturb even the gentlest of young viewers.

More significantly, these were amongst the very first animated outings of two of the greatest animators of all -- Hanna and Barbera. They later upped the ante as they created the immortal Flintstones -- the most successful television series of all time, until The Simpsons came along.

In The Flintstones they created family animation, to appeal to all age-groups. But it's nice to revisit their past, to see their efforts when no one pretended that the matinee cartoons were for anyone except kids.

For adults, this is lovely stuff, in very small doses. For children, I think an entire DVD could easily be consumed in one sitting. And then again, and again, and again.....

Instalments here in the ongoing Tom and Jerry saga are:

Muscle Beach Tom Pup on a Picnic Mouse For Sale Designs on Jerry Tom & Cherie Smarty Cat Pecos Pest That’s My Mommy The Flying Sorceress The Egg & Jerry Downbeat Bear Blue Cat Blues Barbecue Brawl

The classic, I think, is the Mouseketeer romp of Tom and Cherie but they are all pleasant, nostalgic windows into our comically violent past.

Firstly, the colours of these early-1950s cartoons are simply beautiful -- delicate pastels and bold primaries, with luscious slightly-aged radiance. There is quite a bit of image-damage evident in the form of scratches and light-flecks, but you soon adjust to those. Sound bears up extremely well -- the original soundtracks are beautifully preserved.

The big criticism however is that with these cartoons being made right at the cusp of the cinema-industry conversion from Academy ratio to Widescreen, it would have been good to have had the few Widescreen cartoons presented here shown in actual Widescreen, instead of them being cropped for television fullscreen display.

We resent Widescreen movies being letter-boxed for DVDs. Original ratio should be the constant rule -- with no exceptions, not even for cartoons. There's enough room on an 84-minute disc to present a choice between widescreen or cropped versions, to please those very few viewers who still worry about seeing black bars on top and bottom of their screen.

There are no extras of any sort.