Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon character that first appeared in1929. He wasn’t the star of a comic strip at first; he was just a minor character in Thimble Theatre, a syndicated comic that had already been published daily for ten years. The main characters in Thimble Theatre at the time were Olive Oyl and her brother Castor. Olive’s parents Cole (“Coal Oyl”) and Nana showed up frequently, as did her boyfriend Harold Hamgravy.
In 1929, Castor Oyl and Harold Hamgravy needed to sail a ship to Dice Island, where they were going to win at gambling thanks to getting good luck by rubbing the head of Bernice the Whiffle Hen (look, it’s a comic; don’t think about it too hard). They hired Popeye to help sail the ship.
After everybody got back, Popeye disappeared from Thimble Theatre until so many readers wrote in asking to see the character again that he was brought back. He soon became the main character, and Olive Oyl ditched Harold Hamgravy to become Popeye’s girlfriend — but not too steady a girlfriend; she often temporarily prefers Bluto (whose name is sometimes “Brutus” for some reason), at least until Bluto once again reveals that he’s a bad guy.
In later years Popeye began to get super strength from eating spinach (out of a can, for the most part), but originally he rubbed the head of the Whiffle Hen to get luck instead. He also smokes a pipe, but uses it in ways you might not expect; it can be a periscope, a whistle, a propeller, and a handy straw for ingesting spinach. Supposedly Popeye really did boost sales of canned spinach. At the time spinach was believed to be particularly healthy because they thought it was high in iron. It isn’t; somebody made a mistake in the analysis. But it led to a brand of canned spinach called Popeye’s, and a chain of grocery stores called Popeye’s Fresh Foods. This wasn’t the only time Popeye and his pals showed up in real-life products.
During the 1930s, Popeye was second only to Little Orphan Annie in popularity among comics characters — but even though he was the main character in Thimble Theatre, it took another 40 years for the strip to be renamed Popeye.
Popeye comic strips are still being produced, and some of the original Thimble Theatre characters occasionally appear. Castor Oyl became a detective, then later bought a ranch somewhere in the west, and shows up now and then. Harold Hamgravy hasn’t come back for Olive, but J. Wellington Wimpy (a mild-mannered fellow who asks everyone to buy him a hamburger) not only appears, but is the namesake of Wimpy’s, a fast-food franchise. There’s another one called Popeye’s but it doesn’t sell spinach. Wimpy isn’t the only Popeye character to provide a product name; Eugene the Jeep is some sort of magical animal (from Africa), and is the source of “Jeep,” the WWII military vehicle and, now, brand of car.
As to just what a “Jeep” is, Professor Brainstine explained to Popeye in 1936 that “A Jeep is an animal living in a three dimensional world—in this case our world—but really belonging to a fourth dimensional world. Here’s what happened. A number of Jeep life cells were somehow forced through the dimensional barrier into our world. They combined at a favorable time with free life cells of the African Hooey Hound. The electrical vibrations of the Hooey Hound cell and the foreign cell were the same. They were kindred cells. In fact, all things are, to some extent, relative, whether they be of this or some other world, now you see. The extremely favorable conditions of germination in Africa caused a fusion of these life cells. So the uniting of kindred cells caused a transmutation. The result, a mysterious strange animal.” And yes, all that appeared in a comic strip!
Popeye didn’t really internalize this explanation, though, and when he showed Eugene to Olive, all he said was “The Jeep’s a magical dog and can disappear and things.” Then in WWII the Willys MB Light Utility Vehicle was nicknamed a “Jeep” because it was so good at getting past obstacles.
Popeye was based on a real person: Frank Fiegel, who was born in 1868 in Chester, Illinois. At some point E.C. Segar, the original Popeye cartoonist, met Fiegel, came up with Popeye (who looked a little like Fiegel), and regularly sent him money during the 1930s to thank him. During the depression of the 1930s, Segar was making over $100,000 per year thanks to Popeye.
