The Gumby comeback is a great story that I read a while ago:

http://ezone.org/ez/e3/articles/mingo/gumby.html

Gumby started generating a lot of money. The problem was, Clokey wasn't getting much of it. He was paid a straight salary of $200 a week to write and produce the Gumby episodes. (That went up to $350 a week shortly before the Gumby Show was canceled in 1957.)

For eight years, he refused to license the Gumby image for merchandising. "I was a very idealistic person," he says, "and I didn't want to exploit children." That changed after Gumby's show left NBC and Clokey bought all rights back from the network. His Prema (Sanskrit for "universal love") Toy Corporation started manufacturing Gumby dolls and toys in 1964, the year that Gumby found new life in syndication and Clokey started getting rich.

Not long after, however, his personal life fell apart, and so did his fortune. He went through painful and expensive divorce proceedings with his wife of 18 years in 1966, about the time that TV stations began dropping Gumby in favor of newer and slicker kid shows. Clokey invested his last dollars in a new venture--a flexy-faced doll called Moody Rudy-- that bombed. His house went into foreclosure. In 1974, his daughter died in a car crash. Clokey went into heavy therapy and began "looking at various gurus" before adopting the teachings of Indian Swami Muktananda.

Clokey remarried in 1976 and three years later, he and his new wife Gloria traveled to Bangalore, India to visit a guru named Sathya Sai Baba who supposedly had amazingly magical powers. For some reason, Clokey brought a Gumby doll along to their audience with the guru. "I stood there with Gumby and he did this circular motion with his arms," Clokey says. "Out of nowhere he materialized this sacred ash. He plopped it right on top of Gumby. When we came home again, things started to happen." Gumby toy sales began to pick up, and then Eddie Murphy started doing a continuing Gumby skit on Saturday Night Live.. Suddenly, the phone started ringing and Gumby was hip again. Clokey went on a lecture tour and received an $8 million contract with Lorimar for a new Gumby series. He started work on Gumby--the Movie.

His style of comedy is usually pretty low brow which he plays on considering most people only know him from his kid shows. He's usually pretty amusing on loveline, and he had a good set in the aristocrats.

Boo this man? No, boo early 90's family television.

The concept and execution is geeky, also liking kids' shows at our age.

Upvote for the Gods of the UK kiddie show invention- best bar none ever, category.

The very fact that these guys illicit such mixed reaction, such laud from some, and hatred and denial from others, makes them Godlike-What IS their allure???, for chog. its the language intelligible to only another TT, and the psychedelic sun-baby head...This is not a kids show-

"America!" " Fuck yeah!"!!
Super Mario Nation! -

Makes 4 a great hallucinogenic snapshot of the future of altered kid shows-Telletubbies, Ultra-Man, Space Angel, Jhonny Quest, The Tick, H.R. Puffinstuff-a common thread-Drug Use

this is for a kids show, probably. he's a tv comedian on many different shows. the words he's singing are a well-known kids song, "inu no omawari-san" (mr doggy cop). it's about a lost kitten being helped by the dog policeman.

so it's a little bit like the sesame street rock song parodies, like "letter B"...

is pingu on tv in north america?

maybe people don't know how funny this is, or they think it's just a kids show...

"framy" is a dog drawn with only squares, on "pythagoras switch" (japanese kids show).

"framy" is one of three brothers. this is a story about "spotty".

eh, Carmen will always have a small part of my heart. *sigh* Well, this particular show wasn't the best but what are you gonna do with kids shows.

All the kids shows back then were "trippy". Make one imagine all the experimental drugs artists and writers were using then and where their inspiration came from.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

LOL - somehow I don't think the lyrics really fit with a kids show.

rofl... kids show kids show... love it!