Slew of family-friendly DVDs available this week

Here are some family DVDs released this week, led by a collection of classic Tom and Jerry cartoons and a holiday special from Pee-wee Herman.

• "Tom and Jerry: Spotlight Collection" (Warner, 1943-56, not rated, $26.99, two discs). When I was a kid, I loved seeing Tom and Jerry cartoons in theaters. They were always funny and a real treat for moviegoers back in those days.

When I saw later TV incarnations, and the Tom and Jerry feature film of some years back, I couldn't help but feel sorry for kids who had to settle for second-rate material from an animated team that was so riotous in its earlier years. Now there's a remedy for that, this collection of 40 short cartoons that played in theaters from 1943 to 1956, including seven Oscar-winners, and many others that are just hysterical.

After watching some of these, I couldn't help but wonder how in the world the animators came up with so many variations on what was essentially a one-joke premise — cat chases mouse, mouse fights back. But they never seemed to run out of ideas, and these essentially pantomime shorts are filled with clever gags (and clever music accentuating those gags).

"Yankee Doodle Mouse" and "The Cat Concerto" are among the best here, and there are also three made in CinemaScope, shown here in widescreen. The bonus featurette with William Hannah and Joseph Barbera discussing the history of Tom and Jerry is also enjoyable.

Extras: Full frame (three cartoons in widescreen), 40 cartoons, audio commentary (by historian Jerry Beck on "The Zoot Cat," "Kitty Foiled" and "Heavenly Puss"), making-of featurettes, "Anchors Aweigh" dance sequence with Gene Kelly, "Dangerous When Wet" swimming sequence with Esther Williams, chapters.

• "Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special" (Image, 1988, not rated, $14.99). To say the Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) series "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was wacky doesn't really do it justice. Zany and often very funny, it was actually an offshoot of a much raunchier show, though this version was family-friendly.

This one is a Christmas special that employs Pee-wee's regulars (including Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis), along with a bevy of guest stars — Oprah Winfrey, Cher, Whoopie Goldberg, Dinah Shore, Little Richard, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, k.d. lang and many more.

The plot (there is one . . . sort of) has Pee-wee making a Christmas list that's 1 1/2 miles long, so Santa pleads with him to give up his multitude of requests so the children of the world can have presents, too. And there's a funny running gag about fruitcakes.