Warner Brothers’ WB Kids imprint is doing what Disney doesn’t: this holiday season, they’re adding to their extensive animation/home video catalog and taking some great old material out of the vault instead of putting it in.

For example, Tom and Jerry Greatest Chases Volume 3 hit the shelves on October 13. While this particular video used to be available on VHS, this is consumers’ first opportunity to own it on DVD and fans (as well as parents who hate the insipid, hyper-stimulating brain candy that passes for kids’ entertainment these days) can pick it up and relive some of the pair’s most popular and wild animated shorts. The disc contains 14 animated shorts, including “The Pecos Pest,” “Blue Cat Blues” and “The Night Before Christmas,” with the added benefit that if your kids (or you) like one or two much better than the rest, a DVD doesn’t wear out when replaying the track, the way videotapes used to.

In terms of preserving the feel of our childhood, there’s little more authentic than Warner’s collections of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960’s Volume 2 and Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970’s Volume 2 both hit on October 27, and are available at http://www.kidswb.com as well as at your local Wal-Mart. Featuring everything from Droopy Dog and Porky Pig to Magilla Gorilla and Sealab (the original, not the [Adult Swim] version), it’s like a mix CD you find deep in the recesses of you glove box from five years ago—even if Shazzan or Wally Gator haven’t aged as well as some of the other characters, the whole package feels like home in a way that’s as real as it is hard to quantify.

There’s a nice variety on each disc, with 13 episodes on the ‘60s collection and 12 on the ‘70s collection. Of course, there’s also the incentive to buy these in the form of the words “Volume 2,” which to me suggests that strong sales will encourage Warner Brothers to release more volumes in the future. With a little luck, we’ll start to see more of this stuff available in standalone boxes, like what Hanna-Barbera put out a few years ago. They started out with The Flintstones and The Jetsons (while Warner Brothers owns, and has similar collections for, Looney Tunes) and worked their way down to things like Top Cat by the time all was said and done.

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