Garfield is a comic strip about a furry orange cat created by Jim Davis featuring Garfield the cat, Odie the dog, and their owner Jon Arbuckle. As of 2007, it is syndicated in roughly 2,570 newspapers and journals and it currently holds the Guinness World Record for being the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip. The popularity of the strip has led to an animated television series, several animated television specials and two theatrical feature-length live-action films, as well as a large amount of Garfield merchandise.

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Tom and Jerry is an Academy Award-winning animated cartoon series of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theatrical shorts created, written and directed by animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (later of Hanna-Barbera fame). One hundred and fourteen Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced by the MGM cartoon studio in Hollywood from 1940 until 1957, when the animation unit was closed down. These shorts are notable for having won seven Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), tying it with Disney’s Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical animated series.

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  The central character, Top Cat — called T.C. by close friends — is the leader of a gang of Manhattan alley cats: Fancy Fancy, Spook, Benny the Ball, The Brain, and Choo Choo. Top Cat and his gang were inspired by characters from the popular situation comedy The Phil Silvers Show. It has also been said that the Bowery Boys influenced the show. Maurice Gosfield, who played Private Duane Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show, also provided the voice for Benny the Ball in Top Cat (Benny’s rotund appearance was based on Gosfield too). Arnold Stang’s voicing of Top Cat strongly resembled Phil Silvers’ voice as well.

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 Felix the Cat is a cartoon character from the silent-film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combined to make Felix one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world. Felix was the first character from animation to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences based solely on his star power.

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