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Last Updated: Tuesday, 19 December 2006, 13:34 GMT
Tom and Jerry 'were works of art'
Following the death of cartoonist Joseph Barbera, Giles Pilbrow, producer of British satirical animation 2DTV, told the BBC News website of the "incalculable" influence of Barbera and his partner, William Hanna.

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The generation of kids who grew up on a diet of Hanna-Barbera have been massively influenced by their work.

If you look at any of the hit TV animation shows, they all draw heavily on influences from the Hanna-Barbera era.

Certainly 2DTV had an homage to them in some of its sketches.

We had the Roonstones - Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin as, effectively, Flintstones-style characters.

Instantly we had something that was very visual, very funny, and which everybody could relate to.

I think that approach has been seen the world over.

I'm sure Matt Groening would agree that Itchy and Scratchy wouldn't exist without Tom and Jerry.

I can only imagine what children's faces must have looked like when they first saw Tom and Jerry in the cinema
Giles Pilbrow, 2DTV producer

It's a modern-day, very twisted, Reservoir Dogs version of what happened in the original Tom and Jerry cartoons.

I think their influence is so massive, it's incalculable.

It's very difficult to imagine just how influential their material was when it came out.

The Tom and Jerry cartoons are Oscar-winning works of arts that you could watch again and again, and spot different things and forget some of the details within them.


Joseph Barbera will be remembered for a body of work rather than one character.

Lots of people aren't aware of the scale of the characters that are part of the Hanna-Barbera stable.

It's an amazing list and I think no-one can compare to the genius behind them all.

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