Gumby & Pokey

My friend Steve gave me a Gumby and Pokey for Christmas .... we had some fun a few months back at the expense of G&P and when he saw these he just had to "gift" them to me! hehehe ... They are small enough to stick in your pocket so our quest is to take them on trips and share their adventures! OK, OK, I hear you all groaning out there, but there is not a lot to do in the winter cabin fever months in Upstate New York!!

Now if you did not know it, Gumby's father just recently passed away. The creator Art Clokey passed away Jan 8, 2010. They had asked him in an interview why he shaped Gumby in his present form...Art wanted to have a tall, slender shape, but he didn't want it to become a phallic symbol. "We put a little bump of wisdom on his head to give him the bump of wisdom that the Buddhists have. The only difference is that they have it over the center of their head and Gumby's is over to the side.
Actually, the real inspiration for this bump came from my early childhood."
The size and location of the Gumby bump match up with a picture of Art's father (taken when he was eighteen), who had a huge cowlick on the side of his head that he could not stick down. The picture hung in Art's grandfather's farmhouse in Michigan. "If you superimpose an outline of that portrait over Gumby, you will see that the heads coincide perfectly."

Gumby's head and body have had a number of distinctive styles over the years. "We were refining the shape of Gumby as we went along. At first, in the fifties, his head had a little bump. Then we made the bump longer and taller in the late fifties and early sixties. In the late sixties and seventies his head had kind of a swoop to the side, and then in the eighties we went to a shape that was in between all of them."

And then there is Pokey ... Where Gumby is idealistic, Pokey is skeptical. Where Gumby is trusting, Pokey asks questions. When Gumby takes chances, Pokey often gets dragged along against his will, but ends up appreciating the experience. The two save each other with regularity. In every episode Pokey gives advice, and sometimes, Gumby listens to him.

And if your wondering where Pokey and Gumby met it was the third episode, Gumby went into a western town on the desert. There were two sets of railroad tracks, and Pokey had his hoof caught in the switch mechanism where the tracks shifted over, and you don't dare get your foot caught in that mechanism. To save him, Gumby had to throw the switch, and he did so just before the train went by. Pokey was saved and they became buddies from then on.

Here is my Gumby and Pokey ... after the woman let them out of the box!


Here was their first adventure, it was a cold and stormy night, but they ventured out into the elements, I got a quick picture of them as they passed by ...


OK enough for today kiddies! I told you it has been a LONG cold snowy winter all ready upstate!!!