Gumby

Gumby is a green clay humanoid figure who was the subject of a series of television shows totaling 223 episodes over a three-and-a-half decade period, animated using stop motion clay animation. The shows also featured Pokey, an orange clay horse, and Gumby's nemeses, the Block-heads. more...

The beginning years

Created by Art Clokey, Gumby had its genesis in a 1955 theatrical short called Gumbasia, which featured similar claymation characters. Gumby himself first appeared on the Howdy Doody show in 1956 and was given his own NBC series in 1957. Female voice actors originally supplied the voice of the title character during the initial episodes. Newly produced episodes were added in 1962 (by which time Dallas McKinnon became the voice of Gumby), and 1966-67. Besides Pokey (voiced by creator Art Clokey) and his dog Nopey, Gumby's pals included Prickle (a yellow dinosaur), and Goo (a blue thumb-type mermaid blob who could fly).

The series went dormant for years, but during all of this time Gumby had developed an audience interested in classic television animation. Soon, the marketing of Gumby had exploded, as it became the most popular flexible toy on the market, and later appearing in many forms, from cups to ice cream bars.

The Lorimar years

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. Actor Charles Farrington assumed 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org