O-Solar-Meow is a 1967 Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Plot
A (comparatively) small white ball labelled Supply Satellite No.1 is hit with a very strong spring and shot into space as the title and credits are shown. It falls into a groove running along the outer edge of Space Station No.1 and moves around like a ball in a roulette wheel, after which the station appears to be designed, until it comes to rest on bay number 36. Immediately, "baggage" is deposited out of a machine and one of the packages is a large hunk of cheese, which attracts Jerry. He gets in his Space Age vehicle and goes after what he saw on his monitor, but soon breaks a beam without even noticing. This beam sets off a rocket, which then sets off a Rube Goldberg contraption in order to alert the resident cat on duty: Tom. Tom is thrown into his work chair in front of his surveillance monitor and woken up with a stream of water. Tom wakes up, and seeing Jerry in his cheese-vehicle, signals Robocat to go after it.
Robot Cat chases Jerry and attempts to chomp on Jerry's vehicle, but Jerry leaves a stream of exhaust in Robot Cat's mouth causing him to cough repeatedly. Jerry speeds past Tom and Tom moves his chair to the left, but is soon dragged along on the chase by Robot Cat. Tom remotely stops Robot Cat, but since Sir Isaac Newton had a first law, he kept on moving as Robot Cat didn't force him in an unbalanced way. He runs into a nearby wall and is temporarily knocked out. Tom then runs up to his robot, turns him around, and kicks him. Sir Isaac Newton then gets the last laugh with his third law, and the robot applied an equal and opposite reaction on Tom's foot, so all three of Tom's right toes swell and turn red and Tom is left to clutch his foot and hop around in pain.
Tom is then shown testing out a new incisive laser machine. He tests it out on a safe and a glass water container, which both slice cleanly in half. Tom then cuts out a large portion of the wall containing Jerry's hole, causing the mouse to walk out in bewilderment. He suffers a near miss from the laser and Jerry puts on his jetpack and blinds the cat with its smoke. Tom then chases Jerry and the mouse cuts him in two with the laser beam. Jerry is hovering in the air and Tom jumps at the mouse, without success, until he realizes he's in two pieces and then, embarrassed, checks himself into the nearby medical facility.
Tom then puts on an Ajax Flying Belt, but it repeatedly backfires on him: It slips to his feet and drags him by the feet, and then flips over and carries him through the air as if he was being hung by the feet. Tom runs into another wall and then is shown being dragged across the ground by his ankles and then returning to being hung by the feet. Tom blocks the air flow, but soon suffers under gravity. The cat points the jet stream down and floats in the air next to Jerry, who starts laughing at him. Tom bites at the mouse and then starts chasing him, but instead of biting the mouse on the second try, he bites a pipe and spins around again in an exercise wheel. But Jerry stops the spinning with a rod and the cat falls down, with a scream and a "BONK!"
Jerry is then shown cruising through the air, and then spots Tom behind him. He continues on his course, but pulls up just in front of a fast-rotating fan, leaving Tom to fall into the duct and be shredded. Tom falls out of the duct and has a striped appearance. The belt starts flying by itself in the air until Tom squirts it with gas and stops the belt from working again. Tom then laughs himself silly.
The wheel of cheese is then shown being propelled through the air. Jerry is inside, about to dine on a tiny bit of cheese, when Tom shoots a harpoon into the wheel and pins it to a wall. Jerry finds himself looking down the barrel of a gun and is forced to surrender. Tom places him inside a large, powerful cannon and fires it, sending Jerry to the Moon. Tom celebrates his victory over Jerry by shooting off his gun everywhere. It is then revealed to create holes in anything it hits, puncturing the hull of the entire space station and causing it to lose air.
This turns out to be a big mistake on Tom's end. A space police officer (resembling Moe Howard from The Three Stooges) later arrives and puts Tom (in his space suit) at gunpoint while he re-inflates the entire space station with a gas pump as his punishment. Meanwhile, Jerry is enjoying himself on the Moon, as it is shown to contain large quantities of cheese.
Characters
Starring
- Tom Cat (main antagonist)
- Jerry Mouse
Featuring
- Robocat
- Robot Mouse (prototype)
- Space police officer
Gallery
- Main article: O-Solar Meow/Gallery
Availability
.jpg "T&J - FFA (Vol. 1).jpg (547 KB)")
.jpg "T&J in Space (DVD, 2013).jpg (586 KB)")
Notes
- This cartoon was the first of the three outer space-related shorts to be released in the Chuck Jones era, albeit the second of the three to be produced, according to the MPAA code in the opening credits. Additionally, the MPAA code and not episode number indicate this Tom and Jerry cartoon as the last one to feature music from Eugene Poddany (both regarding its entirety, and regarding the Sib Tower 12/Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons).
- This cartoon marks one of the only times that Tom's victory over Jerry results in a pyrrhic victory. Tom later loses his victorious advantage, having damaged the roulette-shaped space station, and is forced to repair it as his punishment. Meanwhile, Jerry, the true victor, is lounging on a moon that is literally made out of cheese.
- On that topic, the ending of Jerry eating some pieces of the moon, which happens to be made out of cheese, is really an old myth of the moon being made out of cheese, especially "green cheese". In real life, the moon is actually made out of rock.
- This is the 153rd entry of the series overall.
- Robot Cat later appeared in Guided Mouse-ille and Advance and Be Mechanized, both of which are also set in space. He also appeared in the video game Tom and Jerry in War of the Whiskers as a playable character.
- The gag with Tom's torso split then him walking out while lifting his torso is borrowed from the Looney Tunes cartoon, "Show Biz Bugs", with Tom as the victim instead of Daffy Duck. Abe Levitow, the cartoon's director, was previously an animator at the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio that produced the aforementioned cartoon.