Vintage Gumby & Pokey Figurine Set 1970s–80s 🐴 Teal & Brown Bendable Toy Characters 🟢 Classic Claymation Collectibles

🟢 Vintage Gumby & Pokey Figurine Sets — 1970s–1980s Molded Plastic Mini Characters

Vintage Gumby and Pokey molded plastic mini figurines are small-scale character collectibles produced during the 1970s and 1980s, when Lakeside Toys and later Jesco held the manufacturing licenses for Art Clokey's beloved claymation characters. Each figure stands approximately 2 inches tall and is cast in solid-colored molded plastic, with painted facial details — the green Gumby with his signature block-shaped head, the orange Pokey with expressive eyes and raised arm, and the teal horse figures representing Pokey in his four-legged form. These pieces are New Old Stock (NOS) from that golden window of Gumby merchandising, spanning the tail end of the Lakeside era into the Jesco revival years, and they represent some of the most recognizable and widely collected character figures from American Saturday-morning television history.

There is a specific kind of happiness that comes with holding one of these. It is not just nostalgia — though there is plenty of that — it is the tactile confirmation that a thing you watched flicker across a black-and-white or early-color television screen was real enough to hold in your hand. 🎬 Gumby and Pokey were not just cartoon characters. They were Art Clokey's life's work, a stop-motion universe he built frame by painstaking frame beginning with his 1953 short Gumbasia — a piece he made as a graduate student at USC that caught the eye of NBC and launched one of the most durable characters in American animation history.

🎨 The Man Behind the Green Clay

Art Clokey's origin story for Gumby is one of those beautiful accidents of art history. His father had a distinctive hairstyle — a tall, lopsided pompadour — and when Clokey was building his squash-and-stretch clay figure for Gumbasia, that lopsided silhouette worked its way into the character's head. The name "Gumby" is thought to be a nod to the gumbo clay soil of Michigan farm country, where Clokey spent part of his childhood. And then there is Pokey — the little orange horse who became Gumby's constant companion — whose name carries its own homespun plainness, the kind of name a kid would give a backyard pony.

NBC aired the first season of The Gumby Show in 1956–1957, and almost immediately the toys followed. 🐴 Minneapolis-based Lakeside Toys won the contract to produce bendable versions of the characters, with the flexible Super-Flex figures officially introduced to the public in 1965. Lakeside filed the trademark for "Gumby's Pal Pokey" as a flexible plastic doll on May 20, 1965 — a date that marks the formal beginning of what would become decades of character merchandise. But alongside the famous bendables, smaller solid-cast molded plastic versions circulated as well, the kind you could find in dime stores, variety shops, and flat-bottom bins at the five-and-ten. These approximately 2-inch figures — the ones in this listing — are those smaller-scale pieces, cast in teal green and burnt orange with painted detail work that captures each character's personality in miniature.

Lakeside held those rights through the 1970s. When the decade turned, Jesco acquired the manufacturing license from Lakeside and continued production, dovetailing neatly into the Gumby revival of the late 1980s — when Art and Gloria Clokey produced 99 new episodes out of their Premavision studio in Sausalito, California. 🌉 The collector record shows Prema Toy Company formally filing for the Gumby toy trademark in February 1986, just ahead of that revival wave. Hallmark, Playskool, Trendmasters, and Jesco all made Gumby product during this period, which is why the 1970s–1980s range is so well-documented and so well-populated with authentic pieces.

📺 The Lore Collectors Pass Around

In collector circles, a certain piece of lore circulates about Art Clokey and the early days of Gumby licensing. The story goes that for roughly seven years after NBC first aired The Gumby Show, Clokey personally resisted the push to merchandise his characters — that he held out, not for money, but out of a protective artist's instinct, a reluctance to see what he had built in clay reduced to a plastic giveaway. Whether that is entirely true or somewhat embellished by the retelling, the spirit of it rings true to what people who knew Clokey say about him. He was not a man who thought first about the market. He thought first about the work.

There is also the matter of the name "Prema." When Clokey established the Prema Toy Company — which filed its first trademark in June 1977 and its Gumby figurine trademark in 1986 — he chose that name deliberately. ✨ The word prema is Sanskrit for a concept of unconditional, spiritual love, and fans of Clokey have long connected it to his Buddhist and Vedantic interests, which shaped both his personal life and his creative philosophy. The idea that a toy company built on a children's cartoon character would be named after a Sanskrit spiritual principle is exactly the kind of detail that makes Clokey's story so singular in American pop culture history. It is widely repeated in collector communities, though never officially sourced — call it documented lore.

A rumor from the era also held that a small number of hand-crafted prototype Gumby bendables were made in Clokey's own studio before Lakeside ever came into the picture — a few hundred pieces, the story goes, shaped by the same hands that built the stop-motion puppets themselves. This is framed as collector lore by the sources that pass it around, and it is disputed in the same threads where it appears. But it speaks to something real: the earliest Gumby figures carry a weight that later production runs do not, because they exist at the intersection of art history and toy history, a crossing that does not happen very often.

🔍 What You Are Looking At — Physical Description

These are small solid-cast molded plastic figures, each approximately 2 inches tall. The Gumby figures are cast in teal green with a painted face — white eyes with dark pupils, and the classic block-shaped asymmetrical head that makes him instantly identifiable. One Gumby figure stands with one arm raised in a wave, the other arm relaxed at his side, wide flat legs in his characteristic stance. The Pokey humanoid figures are cast in a warm burnt orange, with painted eyes and the same raised-arm pose mirroring Gumby's. The horse figures — two teal green molded horses — feature painted black mane and tail details, white eye accents, and the characteristic wide-legged, slightly cartoonish Pokey horse stance with the open-mouthed expression. The coin scale photo in the images shows the figures beside a U.S. quarter, confirming the approximately 2-inch scale consistently documented in competing listings of the same item.

🟢 The molded plastic surface on these figures is hard and smooth — not the soft vinyl or flexible rubber of the larger bendable Super-Flex versions. These are a distinct product type: the smaller solid-cast mini figures, the kind made for bubble packs, variety store bins, and small accessory sets. The paint on the facial details varies slightly across individual figures, which is consistent with hand-applied detail work on production-era miniatures of this type.

🎯 Variant Guide — Set 1 and Set 2

🟢 Set 1 is the complete five-piece grouping: one green Gumby humanoid figure, two teal green Pokey horse figures, and two orange Pokey humanoid figures. This is the full ensemble set — the one that gives you every character in the cast at once and makes for the most complete display. Shoppers searching for a Gumby and Pokey complete mini figure set, a vintage Gumby 5-piece playset, or a 1970s 1980s Gumby cast figurine collection will find exactly that in Set 1. It is the set for the collector who wants the whole scene on the shelf.

🐴 Set 2 is the focused two-piece pairing: one orange Pokey humanoid figure and one teal green Pokey horse figure — the core duo, Gumby's sidekick in both his bipedal and four-legged forms. This is the set for the collector who already has a Gumby and needs the companion, or who wants the classic Pokey character specifically in both his character representations. Shoppers searching for a vintage Pokey figure set, Gumby's pal Pokey mini figurine, orange Pokey bendable style figure, or teal Pokey horse plastic collectible will find their answer in Set 2. The two-piece format also makes it the natural choice for a small display vignette or a gift pairing.

🏆 Why Collectors Want These

The Gumby collecting community is one of the more devoted in the American vintage toy space, and for good reason. The character spans seven decades of American popular culture — from a 1953 film school project to a 1956 NBC debut to a 1980s Eddie Murphy impression that introduced Gumby to an entirely new generation who had never seen the original show. 📺 When NBC aired those first episodes, Gumby was one of the very first stop-motion animation characters to anchor a children's television series, and the figures that came out of that licensing pipeline are physical artifacts of that history.

The small solid-cast molded plastic mini figures occupy a specific and well-defined niche within Gumby collecting. They are distinct from the large bendable Super-Flex figures, distinct from the Prema Toy soft rubber versions, and distinct from the later Trendmasters and N.J. Croce production runs. The 1970s–1980s window — Lakeside's final years and Jesco's acquisition era — produced a range of these small figures that are well-documented in the collector market, with active competition on eBay and Etsy and consistent sold pricing that reflects sustained demand. ⭐ These are New Old Stock (NOS) pieces from that era, with the molded detail, paint quality, and character accuracy that collectors specifically seek out.

Display them on a bookshelf, in a shadow box, alongside a vintage Gumby lunchbox or a Super-Flex bendable, or grouped with other 1970s–1980s character miniatures. They are small enough to fit anywhere and recognizable enough to stop anyone who grew up with Saturday morning cartoons in their tracks.

❓ Questions Collectors Ask

What exactly are these Gumby and Pokey mini figures, and who made them?

These are small solid-cast molded plastic figurines of Gumby, Pokey (in his horse form), and Pokey (in his humanoid companion form), each standing approximately 2 inches tall. They were produced during the 1970s–1980s manufacturing era when Lakeside Toys and later Jesco held the production licenses for Art Clokey's claymation characters. They are distinct from the larger soft-vinyl bendable Super-Flex figures and represent the smaller-scale solid mini figure production line from that same period.

How do I date these figures to the 1970s or 1980s?

The primary dating markers are the manufacturing license history and the physical form of the figures. Lakeside Toys held the Gumby manufacturing rights through the 1970s; Jesco acquired those rights in the 1980s and continued production through the revival period. The small solid-cast format — hard molded plastic, approximately 2 inches tall, with hand-applied paint detail — is consistent with production methods documented across both the Lakeside and Jesco eras. Prema Toy Company filed for the Gumby figurine trademark in February 1986, which provides a formal anchor for the 1980s production context.

How can I tell if a Gumby mini figure is from the 1970s–1980s versus a later reproduction?

Authentic figures from the Lakeside and Jesco era show the characteristic hard molded plastic construction, slightly irregular hand-painted facial details, and the specific color palette — the deep teal green for Gumby and the warm burnt orange for Pokey — that differs from the brighter or more saturated colors used in later Trendmasters and N.J. Croce production runs. The approximately 2-inch scale is consistent across documented authentic examples of this specific type. Later production runs by N.J. Croce, which began in the 2000s, use different materials and manufacturing standards that are visually and tactilely distinct from the vintage plastic pieces.

What is the difference between these solid molded figures and the bendable Gumby toys?

The bendable Super-Flex Gumby and Pokey figures — introduced by Lakeside in 1965 — are made from flexible rubber or soft vinyl over a poseable wire armature and stand considerably taller, with documented sizes of approximately 6.5 inches for Gumby and 4 inches for Pokey in the larger versions. The solid molded plastic mini figures in this listing are a separate product type: approximately 2 inches tall, hard non-poseable plastic, made for smaller-format display, accessory sets, or variety store packaging. Both types circulated simultaneously during the 1970s–1980s production era.

Why does Pokey appear in two different forms — as a horse and as a humanoid figure?

In the Gumby animated series, Pokey is Gumby's loyal horse companion and appears in his four-legged horse form throughout the show. The orange humanoid "Pokey" figures in this listing share Pokey's burnt-orange color and the same basic character design language as the Gumby figure, and are documented in the production record as part of multi-character sets from this era. Both forms — the horse and the companion humanoid — are represented in these sets, giving collectors the full character range.

What is the significance of the name "Prema" in connection with these toys?

Art Clokey established the Prema Toy Company, which filed its first trademark in June 1977 and its Gumby figurine trademark in February 1986. The name prema is Sanskrit for a form of unconditional spiritual love, and longtime fans and collectors have widely connected it to Clokey's known interest in Buddhist and Vedantic philosophy — a connection that shaped both his personal worldview and the gentle, moral tone of the Gumby stories themselves. This connection is widely repeated in collector communities and documented in fan and animation history sources, though it has not been formally confirmed in an official Clokey statement.

How should I display and care for these vintage molded plastic figures?

The hard molded plastic used in these figures is stable and does not require specialized environmental controls beyond keeping them out of prolonged direct sunlight, which can fade the teal and orange pigmentation over time. Display them upright on a flat shelf, in a shadow box, or grouped with other vintage character collectibles from the same era. If light dusting is needed, a soft dry cloth or a soft-bristle brush works without risk to the painted facial details. Avoid solvents or liquid cleaners on the painted areas.

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