Gumby Returns in First Image From New Animated Series

The Big Picture

• Gumby is making a comeback in new Fox animated series Gumby Kids, featuring a modern art style and a fantastical city of outcasts.
• Created in 1955 by Art Clokey, Gumby is a beloved clay character known for traveling into worlds of fiction and fantasy.
• Gumby has remained a cultural icon, with spoofs on Saturday Night Live and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

Gumby, the classic clay character whose stop-motion shorts have delighted audiences for decades, is making his comeback. The malleable green guy is set to star in Gumby Kids, a new Fox animated series. Deadline has the first image from the series, which updates the character into a new, more contemporary art style.

In Gumby Kids, Gumby will be the chief architect of Gumbasia, a city home to outcasts and dreamers from a variety of fantastical realms. The show will also feature his supporting cast, including equine best friend Pokey, mermaid Goo, dinosaur Prickle, and his nemeses, the Blockheads. The new series is the creation of Deeki Deke, the head writer of Netflix's The Cuphead Show; Deke has experience with classic cartoon characters, having worked on Disney's recent Mickey Mouse shorts. The project will be shopped to potential buyers at next week's Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Gumby Kids isn't the only new Gumby project on the horizon for Fox and their Bento Box Entertainment division; an adult-aimed prime-time animated series is also in the works.

Who is Gumby?

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Created by animator Art Clokey in 1955, Gumby is a high-spirited young boy made out of green clay who uses his malleable form to travel into worlds of fiction and fantasy. Clokey's pilot short Gumby on the Moon became a hit when it was aired on The Howdy Doody Show, and he was soon commissioned to produce more shorts as part of The Gumby Show. The original series continued until 1968, with over 100 shorts produced in total. Via airings in syndication, the characters became icons of Baby Boomer and Generation X nostalgia. When the original series was released on VHS, reigniting interest in the characters, the series was revived with new animated shorts in the 1980s as Gumby Adventures. A feature length film, Gumby: The Movie, was released in 1995. Recently, Clokey's son, Joseph Clokey, sold the rights to the characters to Fox.

Gumby was famously spoofed on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, when Eddie Murphy, in a giant green foam suit, played the cheery clay character as a cigar-chomping showbiz has-been, making "I'm Gumby, dammit!" into a catchphrase. Clokey reportedly found the sketches hilarious. More recently, J.K. Simmons' clay police officer Captain S. Putty in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers was a parody of Gumby.

Gumby Kids will be shopped at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival next week; no release date has yet been set. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

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