Upon his debut in 1953, he immediately became a famous example of stop-motion clay animation and an American cultural icon, spawning tributes, parodies, and merchandising.

[4][5] Other characters include Prickle, a yellow fire-breathing dinosaur who sometimes styles himself as a detective with pipe and deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes; Goo, a flying blue shapeshifting mermaid who spits blue goo balls;[6] Gumbo and Gumba, Gumby's parents;[7] and Nopey, Gumby's dog whose entire vocabulary is the word "nope".

[8][9] Gumby was created by Art Clokey in the early 1950s after he finished film school at the University of Southern California (USC).

[10] Gumbasia was created in the "kinesthetic" style taught by Clokey's USC professor Slavko Vorkapić, described as "massaging of the eye cells".

In 1955, Clokey showed Gumbasia to film producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by animating figures into children's stories.

[14] Gumby's legs and feet were made wide to pragmatically ensure that the figure would stand up during stop-motion filming.

Gumby's slanted head was based on the hairstyle of Clokey's father, Charles Farrington, in an old photograph.

[19][20] Al Eggleston also invented Pokey, the little orange pony who was Gumby's best friend and was introduced during the earliest episodes.

[28] In it, when the cameras are off, the sweet Gumby reverts to his true self of an irascible, cigar-chomping celebrity who is highly demanding of the production executives.

[32] This renewed interest led to a new Gumby Adventures series of 99 seven-minute episodes, produced for television syndication in association with Lorimar-Telepictures in 1988.

[34] Legal issues prevented Clokey from renewing rights to the original Capitol Records production tracks.

In 1995, Clokey's production company produced an independently released theatrical film, Gumby: The Movie, as the character's first feature-length adventure, with John R. Dilworth, creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, as animation consultant.

[36] 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.

In February 2022, Fox Entertainment, the TV production division of the Murdoch family's Fox Corporation, announced it had acquired the Gumby intellectual property from the estate of Art's son, Joseph Clokey, encompassing all rights including "film, TV and streaming, consumer products, licensing, publishing, and all other categories", with plans to launch new series across linear and digital platforms, while adding to the classic Gumby material available on its free streaming platform Tubi.

[44][45] Before Fox took ownership of the series, Gumby made a cameo in the 17th season of The Simpsons in the episode "The Girl Who Slept Too Little".

Animation and Joe Clokey of Premavision, and was one of several exhibits that opened around the country, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Gumby Show.

The book was originally created in the 1980s by Clokey's daughter, Holly Harman (who voiced Gumby's sister, Minga, in the 1988 series).

[55] On December 21, 2019, Eddie Murphy reprised his role while hosting Saturday Night Live during a sketch on "Weekend Update".

The plot follows the Blockheads and their cohorts, the Astrobots capturing Pokey, Prickle, Goo, Gumbo, and Gumba and placing them in books.