Gumby stars in two television series, Gumby: The Movie, and other media. Upon his debut in 1953, he immediately became a famous example of stop motion clay animation and an American cultural icon, spawning tributes, parodies, and merchandising.
Overview
The Gumby franchise follows Gumby's adventures through different environments and historical eras. His primary sidekick is Pokey, an anthropomorphic orange pony. His arch-nemeses are the Blockheads, a pair of silent antagonistic red humanoid figures with cube-shaped heads; one has the letter G on the side of his head, while the other has a J. Their creation was inspired by the trouble-making Katzenjammer Kids.[4][5] Other characters include Prickle, a yellow fire-breathing dinosaur who sometimes styles himself as a detective with pipe and deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes; Goo, a flying blue shapeshifting mermaid who spits blue goo balls;[6] Gumbo and Gumba, Gumby's parents;[7] and Nopey, Gumby's dog whose entire vocabulary is the word "nope". The 1988 syndicated series added Gumby's sister Minga, mastodon friend Denali, and chicken friend Tilly.[8][9]
Clokey's first animated film was a 1953 three-minute student film, titled Gumbasia, a surreal montage of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music in a parody of Disney's Fantasia.[10]Gumbasia was created in the "kinesthetic" style taught by Clokey's USC professor Slavko Vorkapić, described as "massaging of the eye cells". Much of Gumby's look and feel was inspired by this technique of camera movements and editing.
In 1955, Clokey showed Gumbasia to film producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by animating figures into children's stories.[11] On January 29, 1955, Clokey produced and filmed the first pilot episode starring Gumby, titled Adventures of Gumby: A Sample, but never aired.[12]
The name "Gumby" came from the muddy clay found at Clokey's grandparents' farm that his family named "gumbo".[13] Gumby's appearance was inspired by a suggestion from his wife, Ruth (née Parkander), that Gumby be based on the Gingerbread Man. Clokey saw the color green as both racially neutral and a symbol of life.[14] Gumby's legs and feet were made wide to pragmatically ensure that the figure would stand up during stop motion filming. Gumby's slanted head was based on the hairstyle of Clokey's father, Charles Farrington, in an old photograph.[15][16]
The pilot episode was seen by NBC executive Thomas Warren Sarnoff, who asked Clokey to make another one. The second episode, Gumby on the Moon, became a huge hit on Howdy Doody, so Sarnoff ordered a series in 1955 titled The Gumby Show.[17] In 1955 and 1956, 25 11-minute episodes aired on NBC.[18] In early episodes, Gumby's voice was provided by Ruth Eggleston, wife of the show's art director Al Eggleston, until 1957 when Dallas McKennon assumed the role.[19][20] Al Eggleston also invented Pokey, the little orange pony who was Gumby's best friend and was introduced during the earliest episodes.
Because of its variety format, The Gumby Show features Clokey's animations plus interviews and games. During this time, the show had two successive hosts, Robert Nicholson and Pinky Lee.[21][22]
In 1959, The Gumby Show entered syndication, and more episodes were produced in the 1960s.[23] Production started in Hollywood and in 1960 moved to a larger studio in Glendora, California, where it remained until production ended in 1969. During this time, Gumby was primarily voiced by Norma MacMillan and occasionally by Ginny Tyler.[19][24][25] The cartoon shorts introduce new characters including a blue mermaid named Goo and a yellow dinosaur named Prickle.[6]
Several sources claim that Dick Beals also voiced Gumby in the 1960s series.[25][26][19] However, Beals himself refuted this claim in a 2001 interview.[27]
1982–1989: Revival
Beginning in 1982, Gumby was parodied by Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live.[28] In it, when the cameras are off, the sweet Gumby reverts to his true self of an irascible, cigar-chomping celebrity who is highly demanding of the production executives. Whenever they refuse his demands, Gumby asserts his star status by saying "I'm Gumby, dammit!" in an exaggerated Jewish accent.[29] According to Joseph Clokey, Art's son, he and Art "thought Eddie was a genius in the way he played that character".[30] In 1987, the original Gumby shorts were released on home video.[31] In 1988, Gumby appeared in The Puppetoon Movie.[32]
This renewed interest led to a new Gumby Adventures series of 99 seven-minute episodes, produced for television syndication in association with Lorimar-Telepictures in 1988.[33][34]Dallas McKennon voices Gumby in the new adventures, in which Gumby and his pals travels beyond their toyland setting as a musical band. Gumby Adventures includes new characters, such as Gumby's little sister Minga, a mastodon named Denali and a chicken named Tilly.[8]
The new series includes the 1950s and 1960s shorts, with new audio. The voices were re-recorded and the music was replaced by Jerry Gerber's new synthesizer score.[34] Legal issues prevented Clokey from renewing rights to the original Capitol Records production tracks.
1990–2021: feature film and reruns
Starting in 1992, TV channels such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network aired reruns of Gumby episodes. In 1995, Clokey's production company produced an independently released theatrical film, Gumby: The Movie, as the character's first feature-length adventure, with John R. Dilworth, creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, as animation consultant.[35] In it, the villainous Blockheads replace Gumby and his band with robots and kidnap their dog, Lowbelly. It has in-joke homages to science-fiction films such as Star Wars, The Terminator, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 1998, the Gumby episode "Robot Rumpus" was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.[36]
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.[37] In March 2007, KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary Gumby Dharma in its Truly CA series.[38] It details Clokey's life and work, and has new animation of Gumby and Pokey.[39] For these sequences, animator Stephen A. Buckley voiced Gumby and Clokey voiced Pokey.[40]
In 2012, MeTV began airing Gumby in its weekend morning animation block[41] until the end of the year.[42]
In 2017, a comic series was published that seemingly takes place after the movie. The series was canceled after three issues.
2022–present: Fox ownership
In February 2022, Fox Entertainment, the TV production division of the Murdoch family's Fox Corporation, announced it had acquired the Gumbyintellectual property from the estate of Art's son, Joseph Clokey, encompassing all rights including "film, TV and streaming, consumer products, licensing, publishing and all other categories", with plans to launch new series across linear and digital platforms, while adding to the classic Gumby material available on its free streaming platform Tubi.[44][45] Before Fox took ownership of the series, Gumby made a cameo in the seventeenth season of The Simpsons; he appeared in the episode "The Girl Who Slept Too Little".
In June 2024, it was announced that two Gumby series are currently in the works: a 2D children's animated series titled Gumby Kids and an adult animated series. Both series will be produced by Bento Box Entertainment.[46]
In 1993, TV Guide named Gumby the best cartoon series of the 1950s in its issue celebrating 40 years of television.[47]
Beginning in 1994, the Library of Congress used Gumby as a "spokescharacter" for Adventures into Books: Gumby's World, a traveling exhibition promoting the Center for the Book's national reading campaign from 1997 to 2000.[48] By the end of the 1990s, Gumby and Pokey had also appeared in various commercials for Cheerios cereal, with Gumby voiced by Stephen A. Buckley.[49][40]
On August 4, 2006, the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta opened Art Clokey's Gumby: The First Fifty Years. This exhibition featured many of the original puppets and sets, along with screening of Clokey's films. This event was conceived by David Scheve of T.D.A. Animation and Joe Clokey of Premavision, and was one of several exhibits that opened around the country, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Gumby Show.[50] The children's book Gumby Goes to the Sun was also published that year to commemorate the anniversary. The book was originally created in the 1980s by Clokey's daughter, Holly Harman (who voiced Gumby's sister, Minga, in the 1988 series).[51]
In 2007, the Gumby comic book series was nominated for two Eisner Awards, Best New Series and Best Publication for a Young Audience, and won the latter.[52] A Gumby graphic novel titled Gumby: 50 Shades of Clay was released in 2017.[53][54]
On October 12, 2011, a Google Doodle acknowledged Art Clokey's 90th birthday. It was composed of a toy block with a "G" and five clay balls in the Google colors. Clicking each ball revealed the Blockheads, Prickle, Goo, Gumby, and Pokey.[55]
On December 21, 2019, Eddie Murphy reprised his role while hosting SNL during a sketch on Weekend Update.[56]
Merchandising
The video game Gumby vs. the Astrobots
The most prominent of Gumby merchandise is the bendable figure set by Lakeside Toys. Several single packs and multi-figure sets were made by Jesco (later Trendmasters), and a 50th anniversary collection. There are plush dolls, keychains, mugs, a 1988 Colorforms set, a 1995 Trendmasters playset, and a Kubricks set by Medicom. A tribute album, Gumby: The Green Album, produced by Shepard Stern, was released in 1989.[57]
In August 2005, the first video game featuring Gumby, Gumby vs. the Astrobots, was released by Namco for the Game Boy Advance. The plot follows the Blockheads and their cohorts, the Astrobots capturing Pokey, Prickle, Goo, Gumbo and Gumba and placing them in books. With his friends and parents in trouble, Gumby sets out to rescue them and defeat the Blockheads.[58] The game is a sidescrollingplatformer, where Gumby must navigate stages to reach the end, whilst avoiding enemies, pitfalls, and defeating a number of bosses from the game's various worlds. Gumby vs. the Astrobots received generally average reviews according to Review aggregatorMetacritic, with an average score of 63 out of 100, based on four reviews.[59]
The Gumby images and toys are registered trademarks of Fox Entertainment. Premavision owned the distribution rights to the Gumby cartoons, having been reverted from previous distributor Warner Bros. Television in 2003, and had licensed the rights to Classic Media until September 30, 2012.[60] At this time, Classic Media was officially acquired by DreamWorks Animation and branded as DreamWorks Classics, which became a subsidiary of NBCUniversal in 2016.[61] As of April 2015, NCircle Entertainment owns home video and digital distribution rights to the cartoons.[62]
^Butler, Kevin S. "Gumby on TV". Retrieved April 6, 2011.
^Woolery, George W. (1985). Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946-1981, Part II: Live, Film, and Tape Series. The Scarecrow Press. pp. 207–208. ISBN0-8108-1651-2.
^Lenburg, Jeff (June 1, 2006). Who's Who in Animated Cartoons: An International Guide to Film and Television's Award-Winning and Legendary Animators. Applause Books. p. 51.
