Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology is a six-disc DVD and Blu-ray set produced by Warner Archive and Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment that collects the entirety of the original 114 theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoon shorts directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1940 to 1958 – with the shorts being comprehensively presented uncut, uncensored, restored (using the best available post-1978 negatives), remastered in 1080phigh-definition, and in chronological order for the first time - including unedited versions of Mouse Cleaning (sourced from its original nitrate elements that had been discovered a decade ago),[1]Casanova Cat, and His Mouse Friday, all three of whom had never before been released on DVD or Blu-ray in restored form.
The set also features brand new transfers of 5 cartoons previously sourced from inferior Metrocolor[2][3] (which were their 1960s television transfers, so some of the cartoons weren't presented in pristine condition) prints on the previous Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Blu-rays,[4][5] 20 commentaries on five content discs, a sixth disc dedicated to over 3 hours of bonus material (including Lady of the House: The Story of Mammy Two-Shoes and Animal Hijinks: The Friends and Foes of Tom, two new featurettes), HD excerpts from Anchors Aweigh and Dangerous When Wet, 9 vintage featurettes,[6] 3 bonus cartoons,[6] and a packaged collectible 32-page booklet with artwork and essays.[6]
Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology was released on December 2, 2025 to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the franchise.[7][8][9][10] It is similar to the Tom and Jerry Spotlight and Golden Collections, two previous DVD series that focused on the Hanna-Barbera era shorts,[11] and supersedes the scrapped[12][13][14][15][16]Golden Collection series.
Differences with the Spotlight and Golden Collections
Warner Home Video had previously released the majority of the original 114 Hanna-Barbera-directed shorts in the Spotlight Collection over three volumes, and roughly a third of the shorts in the previous Golden Collection DVD series. The primary differences between the Spotlight and Golden Collections and the Golden Era Anthology is that the latter is intended to feature the shorts in chronological order and completely uncensored. The Golden Era Anthology was released on both DVD and Blu-ray (the latter restored to HD quality), much like the Golden Collection,[17][18] whereas the Spotlight Collection was only available on DVD. Some of the shorts were already remastered for the planned second volume of the Golden Collection and the CinemaScope Collection, and these versions are used in this release. Unlike the Spotlight Collection, the Golden Era Anthology is aimed at adult collectors, also much like the Golden Collection.
Also, because most of the original pre-1951 MGM cartoon film negatives were destroyed in the MGM vault fire of 1965, followed by another batch in the George Eastman House fire of 1978 (leaving only inferior duplicate copies and resulting in DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Tom and Jerry encountering difficulties in terms of restoration), the Golden Era Anthology features new, restored transfers, resulting in a much more pristine image condition, as opposed to the poor, unrestored, washed-out 1980s and 1990s Turner broadcast television and/or 1960s Metrocolor prints previously used. Although the Golden Collection shorts were presented digitally restored (just like how they were shown in theaters), however, because many of the original pre-1951 Technicolor MGM cartoon negatives were destroyed in the aforementioned GEH fire, some of the pre-1951 Tom and Jerry cartoons were restored using their Metrocolor negatives. In the first volume, a handful of shorts[a] appeared with grainy picture quality. This new anthology not only preserves the legacy of Tom and Jerry's golden era, but also enhances it, featuring several fully remastered shorts and quality improvements made to many others (now re-restored with the best earliest-generation elements in Warner Bros' archive)[19] to make the original Hanna-Barbera classics look and sound better than they ever have since their original film presentations.[20]
Lastly, the Golden Era Anthology contains shorts that have been unaltered from their original versions. The original releases of the first two volumes of the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection contain three shorts (The Milky Waif, The Truce Hurts, and The Little Orphan) that include censored depictions of blackface for the first volume, and edited sound tracks containing redubbed Mammy Two-Shoes audio tracks for four shorts (The Lonesome Mouse, Polka-Dot Puss, Saturday Evening Puss and Nit-Witty Kitty) for the second volume. The final volume contains an edited version of His Mouse Friday (1951; with an extreme zoom-in towards the end to avoid showing a pygmy cannibal), the CinemaScope cartoon Pup on a Picnic was cropped to 16:9, and Touché, Pussy Cat! had an audio issue where Jerry's nephew sings, but it cannot be heard, due to using a rare stereo soundtrack. The shorts Mouse Cleaning (1948) and Casanova Cat (1951) were also omitted from the set due to their perceived inappropriate racial stereotypes - according to a statement from Warner Home Video,[21] both cartoons featured controversial content: specifically brief scenes of the characters of Tom and Jerry in blackface.[22][23][24] Unlike Volumes 1 and 2, Warner Home Video did not correct this through instating a disc replacement program beginning in 2006, and modern pressings of Volume 3 continue to present the cartoons edited and/or excluded. These two shorts were the only original Tom and Jerry shorts not present in the Spotlight Collection series; however, the two shorts are presented uncut on the Golden Era Anthology, as well as the European PAL DVD set Classic Collection, with Mouse Cleaning appearing on Vol. 2 and Casanova Cat appearing on Vol. 3 of that series.
Contents
The set was released on December 2, 2025 in the US. All of the shorts are shown in their original 4:3 aspect ratio.
Thad Komorowski praised the set on his and Beck's Cartoon Research blog, writing "By far: this is the best comprehensive presentation Tom & Jerry has ever received on home video. It took over thirty years to improve upon the scope of the Beck/Feltenstein Art of Tom & JerryLaserDisc collections, and to upgrade the middling jobs previously done on DVD and Blu-ray. We all expected most of these would end up on Blu-ray, never all of them with how much the characters remain an evergreen kids and family property. Everyone involved clearly went the extra mile with next to no time to do it, and we've all been rewarded with an unprecedented complete and uncensored collection."[25]
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