Region 4 Winners and Losers

There have been various DVD releases of Tom and Jerry cartoons in themed compilations. In terms of the “classic collection” there have been two other major releases:

R1 - Tom and Jerry: Spotlight Collection.

This 2 DISC DVD set contains a selection of 40 cartoons. Various cartoons have been omitted due to censorship, while at least three cartoons on this release have been altered in terms of dialogue and have had visual gags edited out due to being regarded as racially contentious. These cartoons are The Milky Waif, The Truce Hurts and The Little Orphan.

Extras included on this set are:

• Animation historian Jerry Beck providing a commentary on three episodes.

• A 27 minute documentary entitled How Bill and Joe met Tom and Jerry.

• A 17 minute documentary entitled Behind the tunes: the MGM orchestra.

• “Anchors Aweigh”: a dance sequence with Gene Kelly (8:11)

• “Dangerous When Wet”: swimming sequence with Esther Williams (7:46)

This NTSC set includes a English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono soundtrack and English, French and Spanish subtitles.

R2 – Tom and Jerry: Complete Collector's Edition.

This 6 Disc double-sided DVD collection includes 157 Tom and Jerry cartoons out of the 161 episodes produced. The negative is that 15 episodes have had either audio changed or video edited out. The only soundtrack available is English Mono with no extras.

An excellent visual guide to the censorship implications can be found here

R4 – Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 1-12

It seems the local release is actually the R2 DVD collection released as single-layer, single-sided DVD releases and as such the censorship still exists on the local release.

Overall, each region unfortunately has become a victim of political correctness and your preference for version will depend on whether the R1 extras are of importance to you or whether you'd rather have the majority of episodes. Also, the R2 release suggests the cartons have been digitally re-mastered but this apparently is not the case.