By Marc Laidlaw
All Gumby fans know that the main buzz those episodes promised arose from the show's weird sets, suggesting infinite tabletops, an aching Crayola-colored emptiness, a child's surreal bedroom cosmology. No wonder Gumby's dog said nothing but "No!"
Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends is nearly as strange, if not so feverish. Episodes are available in pure form on videotape. The (cost-free) alternative is to suffer through the intolerable surrounding material of PBS kids' show Shining Time Station.
More moralistic than Gumby (though not nearly so bad as Davy and Goliath), Thomas features intricately detailed railroad miniatures set against painted skies that make the skull ring with zoned-out hollowness; its characters are caught in fixed poses where anguish seems almost inseparable from ecstasy.
Thomas is bound to be trendy when the current generation of toddlers grows up and gets nostalgic for its toys. Maybe it's already happening: one New Yorker photograph of novelist Will Self (Cock & Bull, My Idea of Fun) shows him posing in his study near a shelf displaying a miniature of Thomas character Sir Topham Hatt, sure to be as valuable someday as a vintage Pez dispenser.
Brit Allcroft's Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends home video series: US$12.99 each. Distributed by Video Treasures: +1 (810) 362 4400.
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