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Gumby
Into and Out of the Books
In
many episodes, Gumby is in a toy store playing with other toys,
and in the store there are books. Gumby, Pokey, and their fellow
adventurers are able to go in and out of the books and explore
different environments. We wondered if this was done to promote
literacy or imagination. Art surprised us, again.
"The
books were a gimmick, you might say, for getting out of the toy
shop and into another world or another setting. That's the main
reason we used them, not to encourage kinds to read. That's the
way they are using these parts of our stories now, which is good.
But at that time, it was just a gimmick for getting us
 out
of the toy store and back into the toy store from the book. It
turned out to be a beautiful device."
The
traveling into and out of inanimate objects did not stop with
books for Gumby.
"In
one of the early episodes we had a musical note that was magic.
We animated the note and its stem to fly through and into a 78
RPM record. It vanished into a music-land in the record the same
way Gumby could vanish into a book. When the videocassette came
along we had it go into videocassettes, and we'll be going into
computers in the future."
Where
it all started
The shape of Gumby's head and
body
Gumby's Name and Personality
The Pilot Episodes
The Second Pilot: Gumby's Trip
to the Moon
What Gumby Represents to Art
Clokey
Gumby's Eyes, from Red to Black
Gumby's Voice
Gumby Into and Out of the Books
Art Clokey on the Future of
Gumby
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