![]() ![]() ![]() In a few cartoons, Popeye eats no spinach at all, but these are rare. His love for spinach first showed up after he gets beat up and thrown into a spinach field. “Popeye” spinach is still the second largest-selling brand of spinach in America. The Popeye cartoons were so popular during the Depression, sales of spinach in America increased by 33%, and it briefly slotted in as the third most popular kids food after ice cream and turkey. Spinach not only gave Popeye superhuman strength, but also endowed the sailor with abilities like virtuoso dancing or playing piano. This gimmick, of course, was soon changed to spinach (by 1932). The Popeye “asides and ad-libs” soon became Popeye’s trademark and most beloved feature.ĥ) In the comics, Popeye originally derived his great strength from rubbing the head of the Whiffle Hen. Talking submarine cartoon movie#They soon realized the movie audiences didn’t care about the lip-syncing they just loved the hilarious remarks. At first, the studio was worried because Mercer’s ad-libs were not seen in the cartoon to be spoken by Popeye (his mouth didn’t move) they just seemed to be spoken out of thin air. These hilarious asides regularly got the cartoon’s biggest laughs. Mercer, an inherently funny man, started ad-libbing “off-the-cuff” comments and asides during the Popeye recording sessions. ![]() It wasn’t the actual Popeye “written, scripted dialogue” that got the cartoon’s biggest laughs. (All three of the series’ main characters, Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl were voiced by several different actors and actresses during the series’ run). He was replaced by Jack Mercer, and it is generally agreed that Mercer gave Popeye’s greatest performances. Reputedly, Red Pepper Sam’s erratic behavior forced Paramount to fire him. The Paramount Popeye cartoons were so popular that in 1937, the city of Crystal City, Texas, erected an official “Popeye” statue, marking the first time in world history a city had erected a statue in honor of a cartoon character.Ĥ) The cartoon Popeye was originally voiced (1933-1935) by “Red Pepper Sam” (a.k.a. ![]() Popeye’s first appearance on film was in a 1933 Betty Boop Paramount cartoon called Popeye the Sailor. Dufus (listed in some sources as Popeye’s nephew and in others as the nephew of a friend) soon (starting around the 1960s) took a place in the American vernacular as a “silly fool, a dimwit, or a stupid person”, often later spelled “doofus”.ģ) Although Popeye became a very popular comic strip character in his own right, it is as a movie cartoon star that most people know and remember him from. The later Popeye comic strip (not the movie cartoon) introduced a character named “Dufus”.This gave “goon” its other meaning of “weird or strange-looking”. Popeye cartoons, however, did bring to life a “Goon family”, a group of strange, odd-looking creatures (featuring Alice the Goon). The word “goon”, slang for a criminal or thug, did not originate with Popeye.It’s thought that a big part of why “General Purpose” (often called “GP”) later gave rise to “Jeep” (from the “GP”) was because of this dog, with the cartoons often shown to soldiers during WWII to help boost morale. Four years after this popular dog made its debut, the army’s “General Purpose” vehicle, later known as “Jeep” was first manufactured. Eugene only speaks one word “jeep” and has magical, indestructible powers, including the power to evaporate through walls. In later Popeye cartoons (starting in 1936), Popeye acquires a pinkish, dog-like creature named “Eugene the Jeep”.“Wimpy’s” is also a hugely popular hamburger chain of fast food restaurants in England. Wellington Wimpy, an apathetic, overweight, hamburger-loving friend of Popeye’s is reputed to be the source of the term “wimp” (meaning timid or cowardly). The Popeye character quickly became so popular, the strip was re-christened Thimble Theater Starring Popeye and then later just called Popeye, the same title it carries to this day.Ģ) The Popeye cartoon has given a few terms and words to the English language: Popeye was a one-eyed, 34-year-old (born in a typhoon in Santa Monica, California), semi-deformed-looking sailor with a severe speech impediment. Talking submarine cartoon series#Popeye was originally just one of the many characters in a comic series drawn by Elzie Segar called Thimble Theater, which had been around for about 10 years before Popeye showed up. 1) Popeye the sailor made his comic strip debut in January of 1929. ![]()
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