Art Clokey was arguably the first man to do claymation (although this is incorrect, as an early French silent short film entitled "Modern Sculptors" (1908) did the technique) and as such an important figure in animation history. His first film that utilized the technique was an abstract one, created while still a college student - a three-minute feature entitled "Gumbasia" (1955). From this brief independent art film alone, "The Gumby Show" was born, thanks to film producer Sam Engel who realized Clokey's potential. What followed from the fifteen-minute Gumby short "Moon Trip" (which I haven't seen) was an entire TV series centered around the clay boy Gumby, his horse Pokey and his dog Nopey, which remained significant in television history as being the first claymation series.
In terms of visual merits, "The Gumby Show" is quite a success: superb animation, interesting stories and fantastic ideas. Being a clay boy, Gumby can do virtually anything - walk into books, use his imagination to create a car out of thin air to win a race, and more. The episodes are creative and clever, with some having no plot and relying mainly on visuals alone (such as "Tricky Train" and "Toying Around") which are quite enjoyable, while others have unique stories to tell ("Gumby Crosses the Delaware" and "Sad King Ott's Daughter"). In general, each episode is always fun to see, and while maybe somewhat outdated-looking today, it retains its entertainment value through the interesting visuals.
On the technical side, the series is rather poor in places, and gives the viewer the assumption that it was meant to be more for kids aged ten and under. The early episodes are more primitive in terms of syncing speech with mouths (Gumby had a much larger mouth originally), but the later ones fix this problem by making Gumby's mouth smaller and changing his look some. Dialogue is mostly horrible and cringey to hear these days, sounding as if it was written by a five-year-old, which is no surprise considering Clokey was an animator, not a writer (although I'm not sure if he wrote the episodes). The voice acting is alright, but is again somewhat amateurish, mainly due to how forced the dialogue is in the first place. These nitpicks definitely show the series was going for a younger audience - so if one was to watch it, it would probably tend to be for the imagination and creativity alone rather than as being a truly 'good' show. Or maybe it was intended to be more like a family show for everyone - in which case, the technical flaws mentioned truly are problematic by today's and possibly the 50's and 60's standards.
Nonetheless, "The Gumby Show" is a fun series to watch, with plenty of enjoyable episodes and being just good, lighthearted and entertaining fun overall. It has a certain charm that for many audiences today would make it work on its own level, and for being the first show of its kind it is probably among the best. Clokey's later claymation show "Davy and Goliath" was more realistic in premise and hence not as fun when seen on the standards of this one.
