Who likes Popeye?

[lowercasegods]

Hasn't it been released over there yet? I'm sorry to hear that. But couldn't you order it off amazon.com? Even with whatever shipping and handling overseas might cost, the dvd (which was released a couple years back) should be VERY affordable. I'd check it out if I were you!

 

[MartyMuppets]

What are some of your favourite Popeye characters other than Popeye himself?
Mine is probably Wimpy. He was a bit of a pest to Popeye always mooching for money to buy a hamburger. But despite this I believe Popeye and Wimpy were probably best friends as much as our favourite frog and our favourite bear well after season one of TMS anyway.

Popeye and Wimpy had that sort of chemistry between them.

 

[Animal Jam]

Popeye is one of my favorites! I have a few eps. of his. My favorite character besides Popeye, is Olive Oyl. She's skinny as a stick. No fat at all, and she had these super long legs! She looked pretty funny to me.

 

[lowercasegods]

What are some of your favourite Popeye characters other than Popeye himself?
Mine is probably Wimpy. He was a bit of a pest to Popeye always mooching for money to buy a hamburger. But despite this I believe Popeye and Wimpy were probably best friends as much as our favourite frog and our favourite bear well after season one of TMS anyway.

Popeye and Wimpy had that sort of chemistry between them.

No doubt, Wimpy is a wonderful character. He's very much like me, for better or worse. So he's one of my favorites. And I agree completely, he is Popeye's best friend, and I love their relationship.

But I also love some of the more obscure characters that you don't see as much anymore, like Ham Gravy, Olive Oyl's previous boyfriend before Popeye came along. He used to co-star with her in the Thimble Theatre strip two or three years before Popeye was introduced. Though he's not named in the movie, he's the guy who's kicking his hat along the street in the beginning of the film (played perfectly by the brilliant clown Bill Irwin). If you listen during the engagement party scene, you can hear Ham mentioning, "This is a very sad day for me...probably the saddest day of my life..." I thought that was a nice bit of recollection for he and Olive's old relationship.

I think Alice the Goon is a wonderful character as well. Looking at her now in comparison to a really scary character like, say, Freddy Krueger, you may not think she's very frightening. But back in the 30's when she was introduced in the comics, tons of parents wrote to King Features complaining that the character gave their kid's nightmares! And to think that such a monsterous character became the loveable babysitter of Swee'Pea is just a great bit of characterization.

I also think that The Sea Hag is one of the best villains ever, and should be used more today that she is. True, Bluto is Popeye's arch nemesis (and a great one at that), but he had more than one adversary, and I'd dare say The Sea Hag was his most dangerous, and certainly the most interesting.

So, who do you think is cooler: Eugene the Jeep or Bernice the Whiffle Hen?

 

[MartyMuppets]

I would have to say Eugene the Jeep but then I don't really know anything about Bernice the Whiffle Hen

 

[lowercasegods]

Bernice the Whiffle Hen was kind of the precursor to Eugene the Jeep. She was actually introduced into the strip before Popeye even. If you rubbed the feathers on top of her head she granted you good luck. Plus she was impossible to kill. So in Popeye's very first adventure, where he was trying to save Olive Oyl from the violent advances of a bad guy, Popeye gets riddled with bullets. He crawls down to the bottom of the ship where it looks like he might die. But then Bernice comes to his aid, he rubs her feathers, and suddenly he's healed and stronger than ever. He defeats the villain and saves the day. In fact, in the earliest strips, it's more than implied that Popeye got his super-strength from Bernice, rather than spinach, which wasn't even introduced into the comic until awhile later. Obviously they changed the history and made the source of his strength spinach later on. But in the beginning, Bernice seems to be his source.

 

[Xela]

I always enjoyed watching Popeye cartoons, as well as Looney Tunes. I got a DVD collection with a bunch of Looney Tunes on it. Pepe le Pew is my favorite.

 

[MartyMuppets]

That's okay Xela but let's please keep this thread on the subject Popeye.

If you would like to start another thread we will be quite happy to discuss Looney Tunes I'm sure. No offense meant it's just easier to keep topics strictly separate in my opinion

 

[Erine81981]

I rented the new CGI Popeye DVD a year ago and enjoyed it all of it. The one thing I enjoyed was that they brung back The Sea Hag for the villain. I've always liked her as one of Popeye's arch nemesis. I would love to see a new movie or a squeal to the old one. I used to watch it everytime I could. Popeye is one of my top favorite characters from my past of childhood. I would watch every cartoon of his after school or summer break. Couldn't get enough of Popeye and his darling love life Olive Oyl. I hope to see some new stuff pop out of Popeye soon.

 

[lowercasegods]

The CGI cartoon intrigues me, but I'm so enamored with the classic hand drawn Popeye cartoons that I just don't think I could bring myself to watch it. CGI is getting a little out of control, and Popeye's such an old-school character that it just seems wrong to me to make him digital. However, if the story is good, then I can certainly appreciate it on that level.

Did you guys know that Popeye and Wimpy are based on real people that E.C. Segar (popeye's creator) knew in his childhood? There's a lot of websites that will tell you about this in detail, but I just thought it'd be a cool fact to share with you.