Popeye
Popeye the sailor man is a cartoon figure and comic strip created by Elzie Crisler Segar in 1929 and syndicated by the Hearst newspaper's King Features syndicate. He is a sailor who, when in trouble, eats spinach which gives him superhuman strength, usually to save his sweetheart Olive Oyl from his nemesis Bluto/Brutus.
Popeye first appeared on January 17, 1929 as a minor character in Segar's newspaper cartoon strip Thimble Theater, which had been running for years with protagonists Olive Oyl and her brother Castor Oyl. The Popeye character became so popular that he was given a larger and larger part in the strip; then the strip was renamed after him.
Segar's strip was quite different from the cartoons that followed. The stories were more complex, with many characters that never appeared in the cartoons (King Blozo for example). Spinach usage was rare and Bluto only made one appearance. The original newspaper strips were published in multivolume book form by Fantagraphics.
Popeye and other characters from the strip appeared in many Tijuana Bibles, unauthorized of course.
After Segar's death in 1938, many different artists were hired to draw the strip, the most notable being Bud Sagendorf beginning in 1958.
Popeye was turned into an animated cartoon character. The long-running series was started by Max Fleischer Studios in 1933 (with a Betty Boop cartoon named Popeye the Sailor), and continued by Paramount Studios. Over 600 cartoons were produced in the next \nfour decades. A former in-betweener named Jack Mercer provided the voice beginning in 1935 and continuing into the television era--interrupted by a brief stint in WWII, in which other actors filled in. Olive Oyl was voiced by Mae Questel, who previously had voiced Betty Boop.
In the cartoons, Popeye's nemesis was sometimes named\nBluto and other times Brutus; no explanation is apparent in the cartoons for these vagaries (the results of a copyright dispute over the character's name). Several actors voiced Bluto/Brutus, Billy Bletcher and Pinto Colvig among them. On occasion Popeye fights an enemy that isn't Bluto, although there is a resemblance (cf. "Beach Peach", 1950) and "A Wolf In Sheik's Clothing" (1948). Other times Bluto simply goes by other names, as in "Sinbad the Sailor".
A Popeye TV cartoon was made in the USA during the 1960s. The characters were substantially simplified (as is all too common in TV cartooning) and altered further from Segar's original designs. The voice of Popeye was provided by Poley McClintock, whose show-business credits date back to the 1920s, when he was a member of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, a popular jazz band of that decade. It is widely believed that the part sung by Tony Burrows in The Pipkins' 1970 novelty record Gimme Dat Ding was intended as a tribute to McClintock.
Director Robert Altman used the character in a 1980 live-action musical feature film starring Robin Williams (as Popeye) and Shelley Duvall (as Olive Oyl), with songs penned by Harry Nilsson. It was mainly influenced by the cartoon, but drew on some of the style of the original strips. Many of the characters from the original Segar strip appeared in the film.
Nintendo created a video game based on the Popeye characters in 1982. The game was originally released as an arcade game and was fairly popular. The game was later ported to the Commodore 64 home computer as well as various home game consoles (Intellivision, NES, Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and Odyssey2).
The reference to spinach comes from the publication of a study which, because of a misprint, attributed to spinach ten times its actual iron content.
Another regular character in the strip was Wimpy, who, despite the name, may have played a significant role in popularizing the hamburger in the United States. The Wimpy chain of hamburger restaurants was not the first (White Castle is generally recognized as that), but was the first to go overseas.
Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits, a U.S. fast food restaurant chain, is not named after Popeye the sailor, but rather after the character "Popeye" Doyle from the 1971 film The French Connection – who was in turn named after a real police detective. However, the chain would later license the cartoon characters for use as a promotional tool, causing some confusion as to the source of the name. Recently, Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits has omitted the use of "Popeye the Sailor" in promotions; one reason given was the inability to effectively market their food with a sailor character.
The U.S. Postal Service featured Popeye in its "American Comic Classics" collection of postage stamps issued to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the comic strip.
From early on, Popeye was heavily merchandised--everything from soap to razor blades was available with Popeye on it. Most of these items are rare and sought-after by collectors, but some merchandise is still being produced - for example Mezco Toys makes classic-style popeye figures and KellyToys produces plush stuffed Popeye characters.
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