Spike & Tyke is a short-lived theatrical animated short subject

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

 series, based upon the bulldog

Bulldog

Bulldog is the name for a breed of dog commonly referred to as the English Bulldog. Other Bulldog breeds include the American Bulldog, Olde English Bulldogge and the French Bulldog. The Bulldog is a muscular heavy dog with a wrinkled face and a distinctive pushed-in nose...

 father-and-son team from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

's Tom and Jerry

Tom and Jerry

Tom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...

 cartoons. Only two films were made in this spin-off series: Give and Tyke and Scat Cats, both released in 1957, and produced in CinemaScope

CinemaScope

CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...

 and Technicolor

Technicolor

Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

, as the cartoon studio

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio

The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was the in-house division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture studio in Hollywood, California during the Golden Age of American animation, responsible for producing animated short subjects to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters...

 shut down the year the spin-off series was started.

The Spike & Tyke cartoons were produced and directed by Tom and Jerry creators William Hanna

William Hanna

William Denby Hanna was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by...

 and Joseph Barbera

Joseph Barbera

Joseph Roland Barbera was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century....

, and were among the last of the original MGM theatrical cartoons made. The studio was shut down in 1957, and Hanna and Barbera would move on to television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 production success with their own Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Spike was voiced by Billy Bletcher

Billy Bletcher

William "Billy" Bletcher was an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.-Career:...

, and later Daws Butler

Daws Butler

Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for Hanna-Barbera and originated the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound.Daws Butler trained many working actors...

. Tyke did not talk in these theatrical shorts, but did speak on the FOX television series Tom & Jerry Kids, for which the duo appeared in their own segments, and occasionally in the Tom and Jerry segments. Spike and Tyke are voiced by Richard Gautier

Richard Gautier

Richard "Dick" Gautier is an actor, comedian, composer, singer and author. Among his most well-known television roles are for Hymie the Robot in the television series Get Smart, and Robin Hood in the short-lived TV comedy series When Things Were Rotten, a Mel Brooks send-up of the classic...

 and Patric Zimmerman

Patric Zimmerman

Patric Laine Zimmerman is an American voice actor.He began his career in 1990, providing big voices for the animated television series Tale Spin and Tom & Jerry Kids. He voiced the character of Elroy Jetson in the film Jetsons: The Movie that same year...

, respectively. They appeared in the straight to video film Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring

Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring

Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring is a 2001 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry. This was the first made-for-video attempt to recapture the style of Hanna and Barbera's original Tom & Jerry theatricals...

Spike was voiced by Maurice LaMarche

Maurice LaMarche

Maurice LaMarche is an Emmy Award winning Canadian-American voice actor and former stand up comedian. He is best known for his voicework in Futurama as Kif Kroker, as Egon Spengler in The Real Ghostbusters, Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem in Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Big Bob Pataki in Hey...

 and Tyke's barks were done by Frank Welker

Frank Welker

Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...

.