Master cartoonist who created Tom and Jerry draws his last

• In pictures: Barbera's most colourful creations
• Video: Clips of Barbera's work

In Jellystone Yogi Bear might wipe away a tear. The Flintstone family will be in mourning in Bedrock and, just possibly, Tom and Jerry might declare a truce as a mark of respect.

For, after decades of entertaining children and adults with some of the finest cartoons ever drawn, their creator, Joseph Barbera, has died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95.

Barbera and his late partner William Hanna formed a revered Hollywood animation team which also created Huckleberry Hound and Friends, Top Cat, Scooby Doo, Johnny Quest, and The Jetsons.

On top of that, Fred Flintstone's "yabba dabba doo" and Yogi's "smarter than the average bear" became part of the language.

"When we started, people said, 'Cat and mouse? That's old stuff'," Barbera once said of Tom and Jerry. "They said it had been done by everybody – Felix the Cat, Ignatz the Cat, not to mention Mickey Mouse. But I felt that in any country you wouldn't need dialogue to understand the plot. All you needed was a cat and mouse, and everybody knew what was going to happen."

Hanna and Barbera first tried the theme in the 1937 Puss Gets the Boot with a cat named Jasper and a mouse called Jinx. It earned an Oscar nomination, and MGM let the pair keep experimenting until the full-fledged Tom and Jerry characters were born.

Tom and Jerry won seven Oscars for MGM – more than its great rivals Disney or Warner Brothers earned for any individual creation. Their fantastically violent plots included Tom using everything from guns, axes, poison and dynamite to murder Jerry, while Jerry would retaliate by putting Tom's tail in a waffle iron.

In an age before computer-generated images, each cartoon was hugely labour intensive. At 24 frames per second, a Tom and Jerry cartoon running at five minutes would have taken 7,200 hand drawn and painted frames.

Tom and Jerry were the inspiration for Itchy and Scratchy, the sadistic cat and mouse in The Simpsons and even today they are often cited in debates about children being exposed to violence on screen.

Not that that has ever bothered each new generation of youngsters who adore the venomous glee which Tom and Jerry bring to their murderous plots.

After MGM closed its animation department in the mid-1950s, Barbera and Hanna founded their own company and made their fortune with the launch of The Flintstones on television in 1960.

With television's sharply lower budgets, their new cartoons put more stress on verbal wit than the detailed – and expensive – action of theatrical cartoons.

Like The Simpsons decades later, The Flintstones found success by not limiting its reach to children. The show is still broadcast in more that 80 countries.

Among Barbera and Hanna's other major creations was Scooby Doo, which started in 1969 and became the longest-running American cartoon series.

Warner Brothers chairman Barry Meyer said of Barbera: "The characters he created with his late partner William Hanna are not only animated superstars, but also a very beloved part of American pop culture. While he will be missed by his family and friends, Joe will live on through his work,"

Flowers were yesterday being laid on Barbera's star on the Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Hanna, who died in 2001, once said he was never a good artist but his partner could "capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I've ever known". Barbera brought the comic gags and skilled drawing, while Hanna brought a keen sense of timing.

Critic Leonard Maltin wrote in his book, Of Mice and Magic, that "this writing-directing team may hold a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year – without a break or change in routine".

Barbera was born in New York to Lebanese parents and began his career as a delivery boy for a tailor. In 1937 he left for Los Angeles where he met Hanna at MGM.