Vintage Gumby & Pokey Bendable Figures 🟢 Set of 5 or 4, 1970s-1980s Teal & Orange Plastic Toys, CHINA Mark Figurine

Where Did Gumby's Slanted Head Come From? 🟢 Vintage Gumby & Pokey Bendable Figures, 1970s-1980s

Size: Approx. 2" tall — molded plastic construction ~ New old stock, sold loose.

The story goes that Gumby's slanted head came from an old photograph of Art Clokey's father, who died in a car accident when Art was nine. The boy grew up to animate clay, and he gave the hairstyle in that photograph to the little green figure who made him famous.

These are the little flat Gumby and Pokey minis that came out of gumball and vending machines, and I have them in two groups. Set 1 is five figures: one teal Gumby, two orange Gumbys and two teal Pokeys. Set 2 is the same group without the teal Gumby, four figures in all.

🧸 What You Get

Gumby stands in his familiar pose, one arm raised beside his slanted head, his legs a long split V that flares out at the feet. The teal Gumby has white eyes and a red smile, some with painted brows too. The orange Gumbys share the same molded shape, with white-and-black eyes and painted brows, and a faint molded mark on the back. Pokey is a long-faced pony with a white eye, an open grin, and a glossy black mane and tail painted over the teal.

The word CHINA is molded in raised letters on Pokey's flank, and if you flip a Gumby over you'll find the same word running right down his back. The paint varies a little from figure to figure, which is half the fun of a set.

🎬 Art Clokey and the Clay Boy

Art Clokey was born Arthur Charles Farrington in Detroit, Michigan, on October 12, 1921. After his father's death he was adopted, at 11, by the composer Joseph Waddell Clokey. He studied geology at Pomona College, served as an Air Corps reconnaissance photographer in World War II, and at the University of Southern California came under the influence of the film teacher Slavko Vorkapich. In 1953 he made Gumbasia, a three-minute film of clay shapes moving to music, its title a wink at Disney's Fantasia.

That student film caught the eye of Samuel G. Engel, president of the Motion Picture Producers Association, who paid for a pilot. Gumby first appeared on Howdy Doody and then got his own program, The Gumby Show, in 1957. His name, as the story is told, came from "gumbo," the sticky, muddy clay on Clokey's grandparents' farm. The story goes that Clokey chose green because it was both racially neutral and a symbol of life, and he gave Gumby wide feet for a practical reason: a clay figure has to stand up on its own between frames.

Pokey, the talking orange pony, was invented by Al Eggleston in the early episodes, and Clokey himself gave Pokey his voice. Dallas McKennon voiced Gumby from 1957, and Norma MacMillan took over in the 1960s episodes. Clokey went on to make Davey and Goliath for the Lutheran Church in America, built his business around Gumby as Premavision and its toy arm, Prema Toy Company, and died on January 8, 2010, in Los Osos, California, at 88.

🧸 Gumby in Your Hand: The Toy Line

The character was made to bend, and toy makers built real bendable figures to match. Lakeside Toys introduced Gumby Super-Flex bendable figures to the public in 1965, filing a trademark on May 20 of that year for "Gumby's Pal Pokey" as a flexible plastic doll. Lakeside paid $102,676.45 for the rights to make Gumby and Pokey dolls, a sum large enough that the deal ended up in a tax dispute that reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In the 1980s Jesco made Gumby minis of its own, and Clokey's Prema Toy Company filed its own trademark for Gumby figurines in February 1986. Trendmasters made them in the mid-1990s.

The company that makes Gumby toys today has a family story of its own. Nick Croce Sr. started selling gift lines in 1953, carrying Hagen-Renaker, Josef Originals and Goebel, the maker of Hummel figurines, and consulted for Disney. His son co-founded N.J. Croce Co. in 1981 to import European brassware. In 1983 Nick Sr. signed the company's very first licensing agreement, for Gumby, with Art Clokey himself, and the brass importer reinvented itself as a character-toy company.

📺 "I'm Gumby, Dammit!"

On March 27, 1982, Eddie Murphy walked onto Saturday Night Live as a cranky, cigar-chomping Gumby, a show-business has-been who was nothing like the gentle original, and "I'm Gumby, dammit!" became one of the show's best-loved catchphrases. That first night he sat down with Joe Piscopo, playing talk-show host Tom Snyder, to plug his tell-all book, I'm Gumby, Dammit. Clokey approved of the parody, and Murphy brought the character back through 1984. The sketches led to a real Gumby revival: merchandise sales rose, the original episodes came out on home video, a new series called Gumby Adventures followed in 1988, and in 1993 TV Guide named Gumby the best cartoon series of the 1950s.

🐴 The Green Pony Who Should Be Orange

On television Pokey is orange and Gumby is green. In this group the colors trade places: every Pokey is teal with a black mane, and every set includes two orange Gumbys. Set 1 adds a teal Gumby, so both of Gumby's colors stand side by side. I love that swap - it's the first thing anybody notices when they pick them up.