The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit is a sarcastic attack on the series as a whole and its formulaic approach, which the short mocks as excessively violent and designed solely for profit.

[4] Deitch had strongly divergent views on animation compared to Tom and Jerry's creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, that he openly expressed throughout his lifetime.

Jerry swallows the seeds by accident, causing him to turn green for a moment and then make sounds like a shaker when he moves and goes into a lively dance until Tom traps him in a metal can.

Outraged, he devours the rest of the watermelon and turns his head into a cannon to fire blasts of seeds at Jerry, who takes cover in the kit box just before Tom hits it, damaging it and destroying the stick of dynamite.

The knife included in the kit sticks in the floor, barely missing Jerry, who begins to teach himself judo from a book that has landed nearby.