Gumby - Movie and Beyond

Movie and Beyond

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.

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.

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 of which said licensing ends in September 2012. In 2012, Classic Media was sold to DreamWorks Animation and renamed DreamWorks Classics. Prema Toy Inc. and Premavision Inc own all of the rights to Gumby.

August 4, 2006, in Atlanta at The Center For Puppetry Arts opened Art Clokey's Gumby: The First Fifty Years, an exhibition featuring many of the original Puppets and sets; along with screening the films of Art Clokey. The event, conceived by David Scheve of T.D.A. Animation and Joe Clokey of Premavision was one of several exhibits that opened around the country, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the animated series The Gumby Show, which began production in the fall of 1956, and debuted on NBC in March of 1957

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.

In 2007, Gumby was nominated for two Eisner Awards. In July of that year, it won one of them, Best Publication For a Younger Audience.

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, and Pokey.