Popeye - The Sailor Man

The name of the famous cartoon figure and comic character created by Elzie Segar in the year 1929 is Popeye, who is generally known as ‘Popeye,the sailor man’. Popeye is actually sailor with pipe in his mouth and highly toned muscular arms. He munches spinach to get incredible strength so that he can fight out the villainous Bluto to save his fiancée Olive Oyl from the villain.

Popeye was first appeared and existed many days as a side character in Segar’s comic strip ‘Thimble Theater’, which continues with the adventures of Olive Oyl and her brother Castor Oyl. Popeye was just a sailor then without any heroic shade. Later the character of Popeye became so popular that the entire comic strip started to revolve around this sailor-man. Then ‘Thimble Theater’ changed into the comics of Popeye where Olive Oyl became Popeye‘s sweetheart. After Segar’s death in 1938, a number of writers continued the comic strips of Popeye, some of them also became much popular.

The next big venture of Popeye was to foot step in the television world as an ainimated character.The Popeye cartoon series was initiated by Max Fleischer Studios in 1933 and later continued by Paramount Studios. In the next 40 years, the viewers could have tasted over 600 shows of Popeye. In the cartoons, the main enemy of Popeye was Bluto, sometimes who is also called as ‘Brutus’. Wimpy and the sweet pie child were added as characters in the Popeye cartoon.

A feature film on the character of Popeye was made by Robert Altman in the year 1980 starring, Robin Williams and Shelly Duvall. The film was literally influenced by the Popeye cartoon series but it also added some different dimensions in the character of Popeye. Nintendo made a video game based on the adventures of Popeye and this game was released in the year of 1982. This Popeye game gathered popularity very quickly and its home versions were also began to be used in the common household video games.

The controversy of Spinach remained for decades. The most popular concept is it was actually the forbidden wide ‘marijuana’. However, recent research also reveals that Spinach may be an herb with somewhat muscle boosting qualities, obviously not like the incredible strength  of Popeye. The Hamburger eaten by another important character Wimpy is actually comes from the common American fast food  ‘Hamburger’. However, whatever be the spinach is, the concept of eating spinach and then beating the villains away has managed to retain its popularity for over 80 years.