What do you think of Popeye the Sailor?
Yes, he is vulgar and sexist, ["Oh Popeye, help!" Olive Oyl]. And always fighting with Blutto. Even his English is quite awful with "me eat me spinich " instead of "I eat my spinach". I grew up watching his adventures as a kid. I'll give him a small credit: you don't mess around with him. And ready to defend the most unfortunate, not those in power. "I yam wat I yam". I can see that. Feedback, please.
Popeye is a great character; he is Everyman, the essential American man in the street.
After Batman, everybody who was ever bullied by big kids in a dark alley wanted Popeye to come and protect him and beat up the bad guys. And you know he would do it, too!
Some of my most enjoyable comic-reading days (weeks?)were spent in reading reprints of the Popeye newspaper serial comics from the 1920’s and 1930’s. It’s classic, iconic humor, like the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers.
He was generous to a fault. Several time Popeye became a millionaire, but gave it away to some gold-digging dame who claimed her mother had the Chinese reheumatism.
Incidentally, most people don’t know this, but it wasn’t spinach that made Popeye super. When Olive Oyl and her brother Castor got a rare African Whiffle Hen (named Bernice) from their uncle Lubry Kent they bid farewell to their parents Cole and Nana Oyl, and set sail for Dice Island to break the bank at the casinos. You see, rubbing the head of the Whiffle Hen brought luck.
They went down to the dock to hire a ship to sail on and saw a half-drowned looking dock rat and asked him, "Are you a sailor?" He answered, "Whadja think I was, a cowboy?" and that was Popeye’s first appearance!
When Castor broke the bank at Dice Island, the casino owner sent his hood to swim out to the ship, kill Castor and steal the money back. He shot Popeye fifteen times in the chest at point blank range! Popeye fell over backward into the ship’s hold and Cator and Olive thought they were goners.
But Bernice came to Popeye, and he rubbed enough luck out of her head to not only survive, but to come back stronger than before! (this means his strength and endurance and invulnerability are ‘magical’, supernatural, not scientific. Kind of like Achilles inthe old Greek myths.)
Popeye came up out of the hold and challenged the gunman. Castor said, "Popeye, I thought you were shot!" And Popeye pointed to the the holes in his chest and said, "Whadja think these are, buttonholes?" Castor later said it looked like a clam-digger went to work on Popeye’s chest.
Popeye took the bad guy down and from then on Olive was in love with him. Funy how that works.
Thanks for the memories!
6 FEB 08, 0326 hrs, GMT.
Good old Popeye. Thanks for the memories!
I think he´s the best heroe of the 70s and 80s, if you want more information go to wikipedia
"Oh, Popeye! Oi’m claiahvoyant!!!"
"No yer not! Yer Olive Oil."
Great guy. The Sinbad cartoon is a classic. Probably movie cartoon’s first hero. Still one of the best.
Classic cartoon. It made me want to eat my vegetable.
It was a classic cartoon where a small and weak looking
person (Popeye) might go up against a big bully (Blutto)
and beat him by if you ate the right type of foods that will
make you stronger.
Popeye is quite possibly the GREATEST cartoon character from the 1930s. Way better than Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop. He was the greatest cartoon character from 1933 until 1940 with the creation of Bugs Bunny.