Popeye the Sailor Man turns 90

I highly doubt that young people today even know who Popeye was since I believe he is now considered politically incorrect, especially those cartoons prior to the 1960’s.  Popeye was considered to be one of the 50 greatest cartoon characters by TV Guide and lots of folks would agree to that.  He debuted in 1929 in the King Features daily comic strip called Thimble Theatre. He was created by Elzie Segar and continued by other artists after Segar’s death in 1938.

In 1933 Max Fleischer created a series of shorts for Paramount Pictures and Popeye became wildly popular with kids and adults alike.  Popeye was in all the major papers comic strips of the time and also appeared in his own comic books.  The original Thimble Theater strip starred Olive Oyl, her family and boyfriend but when Popeye appeared, he became the main focus of the strip.

You may remember some of the other characters such as Bluto, Olive Oyl, Wimpy the original moocher that always promised to gladly repay his friend Popeye tomorrow for a burger today.  Popeye received a baby in the mail he adopted and called his “nephew” Swee Pea.  Then of course there was the fictional character called Jeep.   This character appeared long before the Willy’s vehicle that is rumored to have been named after Popeye’s friend.

Popeye had super human strength when he opened a can of spinach and gobbled it down.  He was always mumbling under his breath, squinted, had a pipe in his mouth and his mantra was I yam what I yam.  He was always trying to win the affection of the gangly, homely Olive Oyl.  During the Depression the popularity of Popeye contributed to sales of Spinach increasing by over a third!  At least children were eating their vegetables.

There are tons of vintage Popeye items out there for such a long run that this character had,  everything from advertising to toys.  Popeye had a lot of flaws and there was a lot of stereotypes that were offensive in the old comics and cartoons but he was a champion of the bullied and underdogs everywhere.  Perhaps he was like Jessica Rabbit who said, “I’m not really bad, I’m just drawn that way”.

Happy Collecting!