MGM soon “realized that they had made a big booboo,” according to the director who replaced Hanna and Barbera, the leader of a Czech animation team who had themselves just won an Oscar. As they were still living behind the Iron Curtain at the time, they had never even actually seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon and were kind of offended by the whole concept, but they managed to churn out a more emotional interpretation that put the mutual antagonists in increasingly surreal battles in increasingly exotic locations. MGM couldn’t say where these episodes were produced, though, even going so far as giving the animators Anglicized pseudonyms.