When you view the title, The Amazing World of Gumball: The DVD, two things may come to mind. If you’re a fan of The Amazing World of Gumball, you’ll immediately think of the show titled, "The DVD," in which Gumball and Darwin incur a late fee for their Alligators on a Train DVD. Rather than face the music, they cook up schemes ranging from returning a cardboard copy of the DVD, to filming a 30-second version they burn and attempt to return. When their mother catches them, it appears a teachable moment is in the offing, until she finds out about the late fees... To the uninitiated, The Amazing World of Gumball: The DVD sounds like just what it is, a collection of the first season of Cartoon Network’s show about a boy, his family, and his pet fish.

To grasp the zany nature of The Amazing World of Gumball, it helps to understand that Darwin is only Gumball’s former fish; just backstory, buckos. Darwin now appears to be a walking, talking, school-attending younger brother. Complete with vestigial tail and fins, of course... More adult references like the previously mentioned Alligators on a Train flick, are littered throughout the show. The Amazing World of Gumball is primarily aimed at kids, but there’s a goodly amount of genuinely surreal stuff to draw in older kids and even adults. Let’s face it, many people who qualify as adults right now are products of shows like Ren and Stimpy, which bear more than a passing likeness to The Amazing World of Gumball. No copying or derivative plotlines, just a general sense of otherworldliness. For example, Gumball (who is some sort of cat creature) has in his orbit at school a talking T-Rex and other large, nondescript things, plus a "cute" girl purported to be a peanut who has antler-like protrusions coming from both sides of her head.

Although many of the characters in this show looked pulled straight out of a Jim Woodring comic, the backdrop for all the action is 100% real. "Real," as in shot with a camera. Gumball’s home exterior/interior, school lockers, etc. are all not animated, but instead presented as a static backdrop for the animation. It’s almost like a cut-paper show got mashed up with an animation series... Some highlights from actual episodes bundled into this compilation include "The Laziest," which prominently features Gumball’s father. It seems that Richard "Gumball’s Dad" Watterson was once crowned as The Laziest Man in Elmore Town, which is no surprise given his depiction throughout the show as a total layabout. If Gumball and Darwin hope to unseat him, they’ll have to inspire the town’s second laziest man to give up his productive ways and return to a life of sloth. "The GI" will resonate with the parents and kids involved in youth karate classes. When the kids sign up and receive their uniforms, they decide that displaying bravado in martial arts might just be their new full-time job. Mother Watterson worries about the obvious ridicule they are receiving at school, in part because of her own personal history.

The Amazing World of Gumball: The DVD contains a dozen hilarious, short episodes. The show is a winner, not just because it appeals to kids, but because of the great production and subtext, that will mostly appeal to older folks. If you’ve caught a few episodes on Cartoon Network, you already know the appeal, but this is a collection you’ll have on rotation for a good long while, if your kids have anything to say about it.