“If you have a heart, then Gumby’s a pal for you.”

Today’s Google Doodle is an animated delight, and it lives up to the high mark set by past animated Google Doodles that have graced our homepages in the last few months.

This Google Doodle honors Art Clokey, legendary animator and pioneer of stop motion claymation. His most famous creation is Gumby, whose impact on popular culture has been felt for over a half century.

Clokey’s first student film Gumbasia became the basis for the long-running Gumby Show, a series that ran 233 episodes over a span of 34 years. Gumby and his friends have permeated the culture, spawning films, video games, toys and even parody (we all remember Eddie Murphy’s Gumby on SNL).

The Google Doodle features five clay balls that when clicked, animate into characters from The Gumby Show. The first “G” is a block, and the first “O” morphs into Gumby’s nemeses, the Blockheads. The second “O” turns into Prickle, the yellow dinosaur. The second “G” is Goo, a flying blue mermaid. The “L” is Gumby himself and the final “E” is his sidekick Pokey the pony.

Check out an animation of the Doodle below –

The Doodle honors Clokey’s birthday, which is October 12th, 1921. He died last year at the age of 88.

Here’s Gumby’s first episode, “Gumby on the Moon.”

And here is “A Hair Raising Adventure” from 1964 –

What are your memories of Gumby and his pals? Let us know in the comments.