Gumby
Encyclopedia
Gumby is a green clay
humanoid
character created and modeled by Art Clokey
, who also created Davey and Goliath
. Gumby has been the subject of a 233-episode series of American television
as well as a feature-length film and other media. Since the original series' run, he has become well known as an example of stop motion
clay animation
and an influential cultural icon, spawning many tributes and parodies, including a video game and toys.
is Pokey, a talking orange pony voiced by Art Clokey
and Dallas McKennon
at different times, and his nemeses are the Blockheads, a pair of humanoid, red-colored figures with block-shaped heads, who wreak mischief and havoc at all times. The Blockheads were inspired by the Katzenjammer Kids
, who were always getting into scrapes and causing discomfort to others. Other characters are Gumby's dog Nopey (whose entire vocabulary is the word "nope"); and Prickle, a yellow dinosaur who sometimes styles himself as a detective
with pipe and deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes
. Also featured are Goo, a flying blue mermaid who spits blue goo balls and can change shape at will; Gumby's mother Gumba and father Gumbo. The later syndicated series in 1988 added Gumby's sister Minga and mastodon friend Denali.
in the early 1950s after finishing film school at University of Southern California
. Clokey's first animated film was a 1953 three-minute short called Gumbasia
, a surreal montage of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music in a parody of Disney's Fantasia
. Gumbasia was created in a style Vorkapich taught called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells", this technique of camera movements and editing was responsible for much of the Gumby look and feel. Clokey and his wife, Ruth (née
Parkander), invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their Covina home shortly after Art finished film school at USC. In 1955 Clokey showed Gumbasia to movie producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by adding figures. Of the three pilot episodes of Gumby, the first was done by Clokey on his own, and the next two were done for NBC and shown on The Howdy Doody Show to test audience reaction. The second 15-minute pilot, "Gumby Goes to the Moon", was initially rejected by NBC
executive Thomas Warren Sarnoff. The third Gumby episode, "Robot Rumpus", made a successful debut on the Howdy Doody Show in August 1956.
Gumby was an NBC series (a Howdy Doody
spin-off) during 1957. Featuring lots of Clokey's puppet films, as well as variety, interviews and games, it was hosted by Robert "Nick" Nicholson from March to June, then by Pinky Lee
until November.
Gumby was inspired by a suggestion from Clokey's wife Ruth that he base his character on the Gingerbread man
. Gumby was green because it was Clokey's favorite color. Gumby's legs and feet were made wide for pragmatic reasons: they ensured the clay character would stand up during stop-motion filming
. The famous slanted shape of Gumby's head was based on the hair style of Clokey's father Charles Farrington in an old photograph.
Female performers (among them Ginny Tyler
and Nancy Wible) supplied Gumby's voice during the initial episodes. New episodes were added from 1961 to 1963, at which time Dallas McKennon
became the voice of Gumby. Production continued through 1966–1968, by which time Norma MacMillan
voiced Gumby.
By the 1980s, the original Gumby shorts had enjoyed a revival, both on television and home video
. This led to a new incarnation of the series for television syndication
by Lorimar-Telepictures
in 1988 that included new characters, such as Gumby's little sister Minga and a mastodon
named Denali. Dallas McKennon
returned as the voice of Gumby in new adventures that would take Gumby and his pals beyond their toyland-type setting and establish themselves as a rock band.
In addition to the new episodes, the classic 1950s and 1960s shorts were re-run as part of the series, but with newly recorded soundtracks, with the voices re-recorded and the original music replaced by Jerry Gerber's score from the 1988 series. (Clokey's rights to use the original Capitol Records production tracks could not be renewed at the time, due to legal issues.)
Art Clokey reportedly gave many movie industry talents their first break in the business. A number of the clay animators who worked on the new series went on to work for Pixar
, Disney and other studios.
Beginning in 1982, Eddie Murphy
began a parody of Gumby on Saturday Night Live
. According to Murphy’s parody, when the television cameras were turned off, the sweet Gumby reverted to his true self: a cigar chomping, irascible celebrity who was highly demanding of the production executives. Whenever the executives refused to give into his demands, Gumby would assert his star status by saying “I’m Gumby, Dammit.”
In 1987, the character appeared in The Puppetoon Movie
. In 1995, Clokey's production company produced an independently released theatrical film, Gumby: The Movie
(aka Gumby 1), marking the clay character's first feature-length adventure. In it, the villainous Blockheads replace Gumby and his band with robots and kidnap their dog, Lowbelly. The movie featured in-joke homages to such sci-fi classics as Star Wars
, The Terminator
, and 2001: A Space Odyssey
. Starting in 1992, TV channels like Nickelodeon
and Cartoon Network
aired re-runs of Gumby episodes. The original cartoon, "Robot Rumpus", was featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
The Library of Congress
had Gumby as a spokescharacter from 1994 to 1995, due to a common sequence in his shows where Gumby walks into a book, and then experiences the world inside the book as a tangible place. By the end of the decade, Gumby and Pokey had appeared in commercials for Cheerios
cereal, most notably Frosted Cheerios. Although no new animated Gumby material is planned for the foreseeable future, most of the episodes (with a few exceptions) of the two series are available on home video and DVD
.
In August 2005, the first video game featuring Gumby, Gumby vs. the Astrobots, was released by Namco
for the Game Boy Advance
. In it, Gumby must rescue Pokey, Prickle, and Goo after they are captured by the Blockheads and their cohorts, the Astrobots.
Bob Burden
wrote the Gumby comic series with art by Rick Geary
, colors by Steve Oliff and Lance Borde, published by Mel Smith and Wildcard Ink/Gumby Comics. The first issue dated July 2006. It won an honor for Best Publication for a Younger Audience at the 2007 Eisner Awards.
The Gumby images and toys are registered trademarks of Prema Toy Company. Premavision owns the distribution rights to the Gumby cartoons (having been reverted from previous distributor Warner Bros. Television
), and has licensed the rights to Classic Media
.
On March 16, 2007, YouTube
announced that all Gumby episodes would appear in their full-length form on its site, digitally remastered and with their original soundtracks. This deal also extended to other video sites, including AOL. In March 2007, KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary "Gumby Dharma" as part of their "Truly CA" series.
On October 12, 2011, Google
paid tribute to Art Clokey’s 90th birthday featuring clay balls transforming into characters from Gumby. The doodle was composed of five clay balls in the Google colors placed beside a toy block with a "G" on it. Clicking any of the balls revealed the Blockheads, Prickle, Goo, Gumby himself, and Pokey (all characters from Gumby).
), as well as a 50th anniversary collection, have been made of the Gumby characters. Also included in the Gumby merchandise catalog are plush dolls, keychain
s, mug
s, a 1988 Colorforms
set, a 1995 Trendmasters playset, and a Kubricks set by Medicom. A tribute album, Gumby
, was released in 1989 by Buena Vista records.
Clay
Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...
humanoid
Humanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
character created and modeled by Art Clokey
Art Clokey
Arthur "Art" Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California.After the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth came up...
, who also created Davey and Goliath
Davey and Goliath
Davey and Goliath is a 1960s stop-motion animated children's Christian television series. The programs, produced by the Lutheran Church in America , were produced by Art Clokey after the success of his Gumby series.Each 15-minute episode features the adventures of Davey Hansen and his "talking"...
. Gumby has been the subject of a 233-episode series of American television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
as well as a feature-length film and other media. Since the original series' run, he has become well known as an example of stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
clay animation
Clay animation
Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay....
and an influential cultural icon, spawning many tributes and parodies, including a video game and toys.
Characters
Gumby's principal sidekickSidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
is Pokey, a talking orange pony voiced by Art Clokey
Art Clokey
Arthur "Art" Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California.After the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth came up...
and Dallas McKennon
Dallas McKennon
Dallas Raymond McKennon , sometimes credited as Dal McKennon, was an American actor, with extensive work as a voice actor, in a career lasting over 50 years.-Career:...
at different times, and his nemeses are the Blockheads, a pair of humanoid, red-colored figures with block-shaped heads, who wreak mischief and havoc at all times. The Blockheads were inspired by the Katzenjammer Kids
Katzenjammer Kids
The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 37 years...
, who were always getting into scrapes and causing discomfort to others. Other characters are Gumby's dog Nopey (whose entire vocabulary is the word "nope"); and Prickle, a yellow dinosaur who sometimes styles himself as a detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
with pipe and deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
. Also featured are Goo, a flying blue mermaid who spits blue goo balls and can change shape at will; Gumby's mother Gumba and father Gumbo. The later syndicated series in 1988 added Gumby's sister Minga and mastodon friend Denali.
Origins
Gumby was created by Art ClokeyArt Clokey
Arthur "Art" Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California.After the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth came up...
in the early 1950s after finishing film school at University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. Clokey's first animated film was a 1953 three-minute short called Gumbasia
Gumbasia
Gumbasia, a 3 minute 34 second short film produced in 1953 and released on September 2, 1955, was the first clay animation produced by Art Clokey, who went on to create the classic series Gumby and Davey and Goliath using the same technique. Many of his later animations have influenced many, many...
, a surreal montage of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music in a parody of Disney's Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
. Gumbasia was created in a style Vorkapich taught called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells", this technique of camera movements and editing was responsible for much of the Gumby look and feel. Clokey and his wife, Ruth (née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Parkander), invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their Covina home shortly after Art finished film school at USC. In 1955 Clokey showed Gumbasia to movie producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by adding figures. Of the three pilot episodes of Gumby, the first was done by Clokey on his own, and the next two were done for NBC and shown on The Howdy Doody Show to test audience reaction. The second 15-minute pilot, "Gumby Goes to the Moon", was initially rejected by NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
executive Thomas Warren Sarnoff. The third Gumby episode, "Robot Rumpus", made a successful debut on the Howdy Doody Show in August 1956.
Gumby was an NBC series (a Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United States from 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows...
spin-off) during 1957. Featuring lots of Clokey's puppet films, as well as variety, interviews and games, it was hosted by Robert "Nick" Nicholson from March to June, then by Pinky Lee
Pinky Lee
Pincus Leff , better known as Pinky Lee, was an American burlesque comic and host of a children's television program, The Pinky Lee Show, in the early 1950s.-Biography:...
until November.
Gumby was inspired by a suggestion from Clokey's wife Ruth that he base his character on the Gingerbread man
Gingerbread man
A gingerbread man is a biscuit or cookie made of gingerbread, usually in the shape of a stylized human, commonly male as the name suggests, although making other shapes, especially seasonal themes and characters, is quite common as well.-History:...
. Gumby was green because it was Clokey's favorite color. Gumby's legs and feet were made wide for pragmatic reasons: they ensured the clay character would stand up during stop-motion filming
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
. The famous slanted shape of Gumby's head was based on the hair style of Clokey's father Charles Farrington in an old photograph.
Female performers (among them Ginny Tyler
Ginny Tyler
Ginny Tyler is a Native American voice actress who appeared in dozens of cartoons and animated films from 1957 to 1992. In 2006, she was inducted into the Disney Legends program.-Life and work:...
and Nancy Wible) supplied Gumby's voice during the initial episodes. New episodes were added from 1961 to 1963, at which time Dallas McKennon
Dallas McKennon
Dallas Raymond McKennon , sometimes credited as Dal McKennon, was an American actor, with extensive work as a voice actor, in a career lasting over 50 years.-Career:...
became the voice of Gumby. Production continued through 1966–1968, by which time Norma MacMillan
Norma MacMillan
Norma MacMillan was a Canadian voice actor.Norma MacMillan was a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was there that she met, worked with and married her producer/manager husband Thor Arngrim. Arngrim had started the now-legendary, but short-lived Totem Theatre company in 1951...
voiced Gumby.
Lorimar-Telepictures years
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
. This led to a new incarnation of the series for television syndication
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
by Lorimar-Telepictures
Lorimar-Telepictures
Lorimar-Telepictures was a production and television syndication firm established in 1986 with the merger of Lorimar and Telepictures until both TV divisions became separate in 1988...
in 1988 that included new characters, such as Gumby's little sister Minga and a mastodon
Mastodon
Mastodons were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut which inhabited Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...
named Denali. Dallas McKennon
Dallas McKennon
Dallas Raymond McKennon , sometimes credited as Dal McKennon, was an American actor, with extensive work as a voice actor, in a career lasting over 50 years.-Career:...
returned as the voice of Gumby in new adventures that would take Gumby and his pals beyond their toyland-type setting and establish themselves as a rock band.
In addition to the new episodes, the classic 1950s and 1960s shorts were re-run as part of the series, but with newly recorded soundtracks, with the voices re-recorded and the original music replaced by Jerry Gerber's score from the 1988 series. (Clokey's rights to use the original Capitol Records production tracks could not be renewed at the time, due to legal issues.)
Art Clokey reportedly gave many movie industry talents their first break in the business. A number of the clay animators who worked on the new series went on to work for Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
, Disney and other studios.
Movie and beyond
Eddie Murphy
Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....
began a parody of Gumby on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
. According to Murphy’s parody, when the television cameras were turned off, the sweet Gumby reverted to his true self: a cigar chomping, irascible celebrity who was highly demanding of the production executives. Whenever the executives refused to give into his demands, Gumby would assert his star status by saying “I’m Gumby, Dammit.”
In 1987, the character appeared in The Puppetoon Movie
The Puppetoon Movie
The Puppetoon Movie, released in June 1987, is an animated film that pays tribute to the Oscar-winning Puppetoons of George Pal. Written, produced, and directed by Arnold Leibovit and Arnold Leibovit Entertainment, The Puppetoon Movie is composed of animated sequences featuring George Pal's Academy...
. In 1995, Clokey's production company produced an independently released theatrical film, Gumby: The Movie
Gumby: The Movie
Gumby: The Movie is a 1995 clay animation feature film featuring the character Gumby.The movie is rated G by the MPAA.-Opening sequence clip:...
(aka Gumby 1), marking the clay character's first feature-length adventure. In it, the villainous Blockheads replace Gumby and his band with robots and kidnap their dog, Lowbelly. The movie featured in-joke homages to such sci-fi classics as Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
, The Terminator
The Terminator
The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, co-written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton. The film was produced by Hemdale Film Corporation and distributed by Orion Pictures, and filmed in Los...
, and 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
. Starting in 1992, TV channels like Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
and Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991...
aired re-runs of Gumby episodes. The original cartoon, "Robot Rumpus", was featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
The Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
had Gumby as a spokescharacter from 1994 to 1995, due to a common sequence in his shows where Gumby walks into a book, and then experiences the world inside the book as a tangible place. By the end of the decade, Gumby and Pokey had appeared in commercials for Cheerios
Cheerios
Cheerios is a brand of breakfast cereal by General Mills introduced on May 1, 1941 as the first oat-based, ready-to-eat cold cereal. Originally named CheeriOats, the name was changed to Cheerios in 1945 because of a trade name dispute with Quaker Oats. The name fit the "O" shape of the cereal pieces...
cereal, most notably Frosted Cheerios. Although no new animated Gumby material is planned for the foreseeable future, most of the episodes (with a few exceptions) of the two series are available on home video and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
.
In August 2005, the first video game featuring Gumby, Gumby vs. the Astrobots, was released by Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
for the Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
. In it, Gumby must rescue Pokey, Prickle, and Goo after they are captured by the Blockheads and their cohorts, the Astrobots.
Bob Burden
Bob Burden
Bob Burden is an American comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of Flaming Carrot Comics and the Mystery Men.-Early life:Burden grew up in the industrial rust belt of the Northeast United States...
wrote the Gumby comic series with art by Rick Geary
Rick Geary
Rick Geary is an American cartoonist and illustrator.-Biography:Rick Geary was born on February 25, 1946 in Kansas City, Missouri. Geary was initially introduced to comics readers with his contributions to the Heavy Metal and National Lampoon magazines...
, colors by Steve Oliff and Lance Borde, published by Mel Smith and Wildcard Ink/Gumby Comics. The first issue dated July 2006. It won an honor for Best Publication for a Younger Audience at the 2007 Eisner Awards.
The Gumby images and toys are registered trademarks of Prema Toy Company. Premavision owns the distribution rights to the Gumby cartoons (having been reverted from previous distributor Warner Bros. Television
Warner Bros. Television
Warner Bros. Television is the television production arm of Warner Bros. Entertainment, itself part of Time Warner. Alongside CBS Television Studios, it serves as a television production arm of The CW Television Network , though it also produces shows for other networks, such as Shameless on...
), and has licensed the rights to Classic Media
Classic Media
Classic Media, LLC, is an American production company and distributor of family programming. It was founded in 2000 by former Marvel Entertainment CEO Eric Ellenbogen and former Broadway Video executive John Engelman in hopes of acquiring mismanaged classic properties and giving exposure to...
.
On March 16, 2007, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
announced that all Gumby episodes would appear in their full-length form on its site, digitally remastered and with their original soundtracks. This deal also extended to other video sites, including AOL. In March 2007, KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary "Gumby Dharma" as part of their "Truly CA" series.
On October 12, 2011, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
paid tribute to Art Clokey’s 90th birthday featuring clay balls transforming into characters from Gumby. The doodle was composed of five clay balls in the Google colors placed beside a toy block with a "G" on it. Clicking any of the balls revealed the Blockheads, Prickle, Goo, Gumby himself, and Pokey (all characters from Gumby).
Toys and merchandise
Various Gumby merchandise has been produced over the years, the most prominent item being bendable figures. Several single packs and multi-figure sets by Jesco (later TrendmastersTrendmasters
Trendmasters was an American toy company most notable for its figures based on the Godzilla series, as well as the 1998 film of the same name...
), as well as a 50th anniversary collection, have been made of the Gumby characters. Also included in the Gumby merchandise catalog are plush dolls, keychain
Keychain
A keychain or key chain is a small chain, usually made from metal or plastic, that connects a small item to a keyring. The length of a keychain allows an item to be used more easily than if connected directly to a keyring...
s, mug
Mug
A mug is a sturdily built type of cup often used for drinking hot beverages, such as coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. Mugs, by definition, have handles and often hold a larger amount of fluid than other types of cup. Usually a mug holds approximately 12 fluid ounces of liquid; double a tea cup...
s, a 1988 Colorforms
Colorforms
Colorforms, invented by Harry and Patricia Kislevitz, refer to a general type of vinyl adhesive toy set produced under the Colorforms brand.-Definition:...
set, a 1995 Trendmasters playset, and a Kubricks set by Medicom. A tribute album, Gumby
Gumby (album)
Gumby is an album produced by Shepard Stern and released in 1989 as a tribute to Art Clokey's stop-motion animated series Gumby. The cover is reminiscent of The Beatles' White Album.-Track listing:-Additional personnel:...
, was released in 1989 by Buena Vista records.
See also
- List of Gumby episodes
- HaibaoHaibaoHaibao , meaning "jewel of the sea", is the mascot of Expo 2010, which was held in the city of Shanghai, China from May 1 to October 31, 2010.-Meaning:...
- MorphMorph (character)Morph is an animated Plasticine stop-motion character that appeared with the late Tony Hart, beginning in 1977, on several of his UK TV programmes, notably Take Hart and Hartbeat.-Details:...
- Semper GumbySemper GumbySemper Gumby The real Latin phrase meaning "always flexible" is Semper Flexibilis is an unofficial motto for all U.S. military services Explosive Ordnance Disposal detachments and later on for Navy Seabees. They have been using it since at least 1985...