Gumby got honored by Google

Gumby tries to rob convenience store; wardrobe malfunctions Google celebrates 13th birthday Don't forget the Wallace and Gromit Google doodle!

Entertainment Cartoons and Animation Arts, Entertainment, and Media Media The home page banner shows Mr. Clokey's most famous animated hero, Gumby, urging users to abandon their Google searches for the moment and poke at four colorful clay balls. If Gumby successfully coaxes you away from productivity, you're rewarded with a bouncing, shape-shifting surprise. The clay blobs morph into some familiar faces: Blockheads, Prickle, Goo, Gumby, and Pokey – all characters from the Gumby TV show.

Art Clokey was born Arthur Farrington. He had a rocky childhood. After his parents divorced, nine-year-old Art lived with his father. But when his dad died in a car crash, Art's mother and stepfather abandoned the boy and placed him in a orphanage. A classical music composer named Joseph Clokey later adopted Art and gave the 12-year-old his last name.

As Clokey got older and grew interested in animation, he often thought back to his childhood. Despite the rough upbringing, or perhaps because of it, his "stop motion animation characters reflect the message of love that Art and his wife Ruth wanted to give the world," according to the official GumbyWorld website.

He named the jolly green humanoid after thoughts of his grandparents' farm in the Midwest. According to GumbyWorld, little Art used to play in the farm's muddy clay, a mixture they called "gumbo."

The name stuck – and not just to Gumby. Clokey called his very first clay animation "Gumbasia," a play on Disney's "Fantasia." "A clay-animated art film done to the beat of jazz music, Gumbasia was made on a ping-pong table in Clokey's dad's garage and demonstrates the moving power of Kinesthetic film principles," writes KQED in its introduction to the film. You can watch the three-minute piece below.

Google has honored several animators before Wednesday. Two of the best were its Doodle to Popeye creator E.C. Segar and to Wallace and Gromit, which actually didn't make it to Google's home page in the US. You can still check it out online in case you missed it the first time.