Gumby was kind of weird for me, in that he did none of the things that normally would have attracted me to a cartoon yet I watched it whenever it was on. No action, no violence, no science fiction, yet I still loved it. Weird.
Incidentally, Art Clokey, the animator who created Gumby, died at 88 in January of this year. That's sad. He created Gumby, which I loved. He also created Davey and Goliath, which I hated and brought me a lot of pain (as it did for anyone with the name of David growing up in the 70's. My New Year's resolution from 1989 was to beat the crap out of anyone who said "Heeeyyy, Davey" in that dopey dog voice). Anyway, I would love to enter books, take on any shape, and have cool enemies like the Blockheads. Anyway, here is his obituary if you are interested
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/arts/television/11clokey.html .
It seemed obvious to me that an American icon as easy to draw as Gumby would have some amazing videos online that I could link, but the closest thing I could find was Jason Vrs Gumby. As cool as it sounded, it turned out to be 18 minutes of high school kids running around in costumes trying to look cool and failing miserably. While I applaud the effort from a nerd standpoint, when the first 3 of the 17 minutes were filled with credits I knew it was going nowhere. Instead I had to pull up one of the more surreal Gumby episodes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5itZW6ln4eUSpeaking of surreal, here is a picture of Jethro Cave (Austrailia's next top male model, apparently) with a freaking huge Gumby earring. Emoriffic.
http://frockwriter.blogspot.com/2009/06/jethro-caves-gumby-earring-is.html