TOM AND JERRY DVD/VHS

Tom and Jerry: The Spotlight Collection vol 2

Available on: DVD
Availabity: In Stores
Release Date: October 25, 2005
Release Location: US

Contents:

2 disc set.

Disc One:
Puss Gets the Boot
The Midnight Snack
The Night Before Christmas
Fraidy Cat
Dog Trouble
Puss and Toots
The Bowling Alley Cat
Fine Feathered Friend
The Lonesome mouse
Puttin' On the Dog
The Mouse Comes To Dinner
Mouse In Manhattan
Springtime For Thomas
Trap Happy
Part Time Pal
Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Mouse
Old Rockin' Tom
Professor Tom
The Cat and the Mermouse
Polka-Dot Puss

Disc Two:
Saturday Evening Puss
Little Quacker
Texas Tom
Safety Second
Sleepy-Time Tom
Nit-Witty Kitty
Cruise Cat
Triplet Trouble
Push Button Kitty
The Missing Mouse
Jerry and Jumbo
Just Ducky
Little School Mouse
Tom and Cherie - Cinemascope
Muscle Beach Tom - Cinemascope
Down Beat Bear - Cinemascope
Mucho Mouse - Cinemascope
Tot Watchers - Cinemascope

My Opinion:

Thankfully, most of the glitches in this set have been corrected, but one has to go through a lot just to get replacements as these are not sold in stores. Yes, there was so much talk and angry reaction from fans of this series that Warner Brothers Home Video did indeed offer replacements, but in all honesty, they should have recalled the entire shipment and started from scratch! Expensive? Yeah, possibly, but at least they wouldn't have lost possible sales and there wouldn't be this future lack of trust that the quality control at Warner Brothers would be diligent from now on! From what I hear, this was done with the SUPERMAN ULTRA-DVD box set (tin) and, so, those fans can take heart that someone was listening and wanted this to succeed. I just wish that the cartoon collections were thought of as highly.

But TOM & JERRY SPOTLIGHT COLLECTION II is the place where you will find most of the imfamous MAMMY TWO SHOES shorts that have been heavily edited or completely excised from the TV packages, depending on what part of the world you see them being aired in.

The original problem lay with four of the cartoons which were featured, accidentally, in altered states for current airings. These were "LONESOME MOUSE", "POLKA DOT PUSS", "SATURDAY EVENING PUSS" and "KNIT-WITTY KITTY". I'd gone through the trouble of getting the corrected disks, but it looked like touch and go for a while, with the company doing the quality control/correcting sending out the wrong sleeve in which to send back the defective DVD's. Yes, I wrongly received a CD mailer for the SUPERMAN ULTRA-DVD set. Thanks, guys, but I hadn't decided on whether I wanted to take a chance on that one yet!

Months later, I received the corrected disks and like the set a lot, although technically only the first six cartoons are fully restored. I don't know why they stopped at that number, but fans who have never seen the uncut, unaltered MAMMY TWO SHOES titles are in for a treat here. For those out of the loop, Mammy Two Shoes is the character we see from the waste down, the only human in the series, aside from an annoying little girl in "BABY PUSS", and the one that we suspect owns Tom as a housecat. She is voiced by veteran radio and movie actress Lillian Randolph who was quite good at the dialect humor it took to bring this character to life. Background is given on her by comedienne actress Whoopi Goldberg, but still these altered versions existed, so you get the feeling that this collection was fought by the powers that be at Warner Brothers all the way up until its eventual street date!! Again, it is nice that you can now get replacements, but ya have to go through the process of mailing back the disks you have and just hoping and hoping each day that passes that the replacements arrive!! Do this, though, as the replacements are well worth having, especially since there have never been any collections previous that have the original copy of "SATURDAY EVENING PUSS".

Many Thanks to Kevin for his review!