Noiretirc wrote: Tue Dec 23, 2025 3:13 am
Hmm. I wonder if it's an age thing?
I'm nearly 64. I adored these cartoons as a kid...
Yes, I'm about the same age and (while I can't speak for the North American experience) in the UK I think the appeal of T&J among our generation is partly linked to the fact that, from 1967 and throughout the 1970s, they were regularly broadcast on BBC1 around 7pm immediately after the early evening news programmes as a curtain-raiser for the evening entertainment schedule. So they were very much part of
family viewing (not in "children's TV" slots as they later became) and it was almost impossible to miss them, especially when there were only three channels and channel-hopping had to be done manually on the TV itself.
I assume the BBC regarded them as safe, wholesome fun - even though Mary Whitehouse famously denounced them for excessive violence! For an autistic person like myself, I think their largely non-verbal mode was part of their appeal and that aspect perhaps made it easier for parents to ignore them, compared to the loud, brash, garrulous Warner cartoon characters who irritated me (the only exception being the generally silent Wile E Coyote with whose Sisyphus-like sufferings I sympathised). IIRC, the BBC usually showed the versions with the black maid redubbed in an Irish accent - ironic since "The Troubles" were always in the British news at that time. Perhaps that made T&J seem like more universal characters or even potentially British, at least compared to the Warner cartoons which were instantly recognisable as American - and when I was a boy "American" was often a dirty word in Britain in relation to children's entertainment (American comics in particular were frowned on).
In the early 1980s, I started making VHS off-air compilations of T&J. About 20 years ago, I bought the more or less complete UK DVD set, which included
Casanova Cat and
Mouse Cleaning, then the US DVD sets missing those two. I enjoyed watching them occasionally as a prelude to features, so it took me years to get through each set.
I've never rebought them on Blu-ray and probably won't, the main reason being that I now rarely have the patience to find and load discs just to watch one cartoon. I salute those who can enjoy multiple consecutive cartoons but two has always been my max for any series. Having to skip or even sit through company logos, copyright notices, verbal or written warnings about racism, intros by Oprah or Leonard Maltin (Disney), noisy menu screens, etc. - all just for 10 or 15 minutes of entertainment - has always been a deterrent to me. At least setting up an 8mm projector (another hangover from the '70s which I still indulge in occasionally) is more fun than that!
He's used to 5min blasts. 
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