It's a sad day in Gumbopolis. Art Clokey, the creator of claymation icon, Gumby, has died at his Los Osos, California home at 88, according to the LA Times. Starting in the '50s, Clokey's slanty-headed little green guy and his horse pal Pokey paved the way for a new world of mainstream psychedelic transformations using only colored clay and stop-motion animation.

After creating the Fantasia spoof, Gumbasia, while at USC, Clokey got a chance to do his own children's show and the result was Gumby, the six-inch-tall boy who could melt hearts, not to mention melting himself down at will and reforming into anything he wanted. Gumby and Pokey became popular, bendy action figures in the '60s, and went on to star in more than 200 cartoon episodes, sometimes battling their arch enemies, the Blockheads, but all the while inspiring future generations of trippy childhood imaginations. Well done, Gumby...and Art Clokey.