Prickle and Goo: The Prickly and the Gooey

Here is what Art had to say about how he came up with Prickle & Goo, another memorable pair of friends within the Gumby group of characters:

“I was a friend of a psychologist in Hollywood. He invited me to go with him up to San Jose to a convention of psychologists. I was interested in psychology at the time. We were in the lecture hall at San Jose State, and one psychologist would get up and make a speech. It was pretty boring for me. But the MC happened to be Alan Watts, the Zen Philosopher of Sausalito. He would crack us up and tell funny stories and get our blood circulating again. And they would put on another psychologist to bore us again.”

Pricke and Goo on icebergs

“At one of these little humorous intermissions, he said there were two kinds of people in the world, the prickly and the gooey. The prickly are rigid and uptight, analytical, and critical. The gooey are easygoing, flowing in the here and now, friendly and jolly.”

“I said I have got to make two characters to symbolize those two types of people. Then people all over the world will be able to identify with them. So we created the little yellow dinosaur/dragon with his spines, and named him Prickle. Goo is a very gooey, blue, flying mermaid.”

Prickle’s Baby Brudder

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Goo is helpful and protective of Prickle, but never lets him know it. Prickle is concerned about Goo’s behavior, and always lets her know it as pointedly as possible. Goo can spread her wings and fly, and she spits goo balls at people who deserve it. She is a little embryonic, a part of the sea, and a part of all other living things.

In “The Blue Goo,” Prickle is flying a biplane and is after the Red Baron. Goo jumps on the wing of the plane, and Prickle asks her what she’s doing, and warns her to be careful. The Baron tries to shoot down Prickle’s plane, and Goo spits goo balls at him from her place on the wing and blinds him, forcing him to crash land. Prickle takes the credit for defeating the Baron, and Goo lets him have it with a wink and a smile.

That’s Prickle, and that’s Goo.