# Question about Popeye
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 29, 2007, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475 "2007-10-29T18:19:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/1 "2007-10-29T18:19:20Z")
If Popeye gets his strength from eating spinach how is he able to squeeze the can to get the spinach out?
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### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/2 "2007-10-29T18:21:29Z")
He smokes just enough spinach in his pipe to give him the strength to tear open a spinach can when he has to.
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### Author:  [@dwc1970](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwc1970)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/3 "2007-10-29T18:51:30Z")
What I’d like to know is why Popeye lets Bluto/Brutus beat the holy crap out of him within an inch of his life before he resorts to the spinach. Why doesn’t he just stay pumped up on spinach all the time and kick Bluto/Brutus’ ass every time he starts some shit? Certainly Popeye doesn’t have to ration his spinach supply, does he?
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### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/4 "2007-10-29T18:54:02Z")
Or, why doesn’t Bluto eat spinach himself and beat the crap out of Popeye? Or why are they fighting over Olive in the first place?
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/5 "2007-10-29T18:56:55Z")
He am what he am.
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/6 "2007-10-29T19:00:44Z")
Popeye is damn strong normally. Just look at the development of those forearms.
The spinach just gives him ludicrous strength…
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### Author:  [@Malvert\_P.Redd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malvert_P.Redd)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/7 "2007-10-29T19:02:27Z")
How did he finally learn to enunciate?
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### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/8 "2007-10-29T19:02:57Z")
[QUOTE=Malvert P. Redd]
How did he finally learn to enunciate?
[/QUOTE]
What makes you think he did?
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/9 "2007-10-29T19:03:45Z")
You people dare to question the basic tenets of the Fleischerverse?
What’s wrong with you? Life is simple. Popeye goes about his inoffensive business. Bluto/Brutus deliberately tries to mess it up, or else horns in on Popeye’s turf, or just makes a nuisance of himself, so he and Popeye fight. When Popeye finds himself in dire straits, he pops open a can of spinach (better and less clumsy than hauling out a can opener, and these were the pre-pull-tab days) and beats the tar out of Bluto. And it all fits in a typical-length cartoon. What more doyawant?
In Seegar’s comic strip that started it all:
1.) Popeye didn’t get his strength from spinach. He was naturally tough and ornery. Later they made some big deal about a “magic Whiffle Hen”, and even later they made the strip conform to the cartoon’s universe. But beliebve it – Popeye didn’t need no help.
2.) Bluto/Brutus wasn’t always, or even usually, {Popeye’s nemesis. This changed later on, even before Bud Sagendorf took over the strip.
3.) Popeye was regularly shown beating up whole rooms full of guys with better physiques than Bluto/Brutus.
4.) I think Bluto was the original name, and Brutus and abhorrent later attempt to make him seem more respectable.
5.) Any wizened old one-eyed sailor with a huge chin, forearms, and shins can see the clear attraction of a woman built like a rail with her hair in a bun. What’s YOUR problem?
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### Author:  [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/10 "2007-10-29T19:05:29Z")
He gets a trans-cutaneous transmission of iron suplement from the can itself when he squeezes it. All part of a balanced diet, don’t 'cha know.
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### Author:  [@Malvert\_P.Redd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malvert_P.Redd)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/11 "2007-10-29T19:44:33Z")
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
What makes you think he did?
[/QUOTE]
Well, he went from pretty much nonstop mumbling in the early days to actually having somewhat intelligible lines later on.
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### Author:  [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/12 "2007-10-29T19:57:13Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
. . .
4.) I think Bluto was the original name, and Brutus and abhorrent later attempt to make him seem more respectable.
[/QUOTE]
ISTR that Disney took exception to the name “Bluto” because it was too much like “Pluto” and raised a stink, and this is why the name was changed. I’m just going on spotty memory, though.
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### Author:  [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/13 "2007-10-29T19:58:33Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
4.) I think Bluto was the original name, and Brutus and abhorrent later attempt to make him seem more respectable.
[/QUOTE]
Bluto’s name was [changed](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpopeye.html) to Brutus because King Features, when they produced their own cartoons, erroneously believed that Paramount owned the rights to the character.
> [@Malvert P. Redd](#):
>
> Well, he went from pretty much nonstop mumbling in the early days to actually having somewhat intelligible lines later on.
This may be due to the change of voice from Bill Costello to Jack Mercer in 1935, although it seems to me that Mercer actually mumbled _more_ that Costello did. Mercer provided the voice for Popeye until his death in 1984.
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### Author:  [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2007, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/14 "2007-10-29T23:55:26Z")
[QUOTE=DrFidelius]
Popeye is damn strong normally. Just look at the development of those forearms.
The spinach just gives him ludicrous strength…
[/QUOTE]
There’s an interesting story there, Doctor. In his book “The Brass Ring” Bill Mauldin writes about attending the Chaicgo Academy of Fine Arts a few years after Segar.
There was one professor there who told Segar he’d never make it professionally and (I believe–it’s been a long time from the book) gave him a failing grade.
Popeye was drawn out of proportion on purpose. And in case anybody back at the school wondered about it, Segar drew a charicature of that dumpy professor and named him J. Wellington Wimpy–who’ll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
Mauldin said the students recognized what Segar was doing (only students at the academy would, of course) and they didn’t dare ever bring up the subject of Segar in the presence of that professor.
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### Author:  [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2007, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/15 "2007-10-30T04:00:58Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
In Seegar’s comic strip that started it all:
1.) Popeye didn’t get his strength from spinach. He was naturally tough and ornery. Later they made some big deal about a “magic Whiffle Hen”, and even later they made the strip conform to the cartoon’s universe. But beliebve it – Popeye didn’t need no help.
[/QUOTE]
On the radio Popeye got his strength from Wheatena, which solves the can problem but raises the issue of whether he had to go home to fix a bowl whenever he wanted to beat up Bluto.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2007, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/16 "2007-10-30T04:30:03Z")
Popeye maintains an elevated level of strength from constantly eating spinach. It’s just that immediately after eating some spinach he goes from Spiderman-level strength to Hulk-level strength for a minute or two. That can of spinach he keeps on him is his emergency supply.
Children for generations were served spinach in the (actually erroneous) belief that spinach was high in iron and otherwise good for you. Very few if any children actually like spinach however. Symbolically, “eating your spinach” can be considered a metaphor for doing the right,virtuous thing. If you really want to get into symbolism, you can even consider the whole formalaic story to be a sort of parable: Popeye may be a ugly runt, but because he eats his spinach he’s vastly stronger than someone his size ought to be. His enemy is Bluto, a bully who’s not only overbearingly huge but knows every dirty underhanded trick to boot. Popeye fights the good fight but he’s up against the wicked sinful world where brute force and cheating rule supreme; in the end, only a dose of grace from on high can even the scales and make things right.
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### Author:  [@T\_SQUARE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/T_SQUARE)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2007, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/17 "2007-10-30T04:43:06Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
2.) Bluto/Brutus wasn’t always, or even usually, {Popeye’s nemesis. This changed later on, even before Bud Sagendorf took over the strip.
[/QUOTE]
Did he have any other “regular” enemies that he would beat up more than once? Or is Bluto/Brutus the only one not to learn his lesson?
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2007, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/18 "2007-10-30T05:05:19Z")
There was the Sea Hag.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2007, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/19 "2007-10-30T05:09:03Z")
And some guy named Tor.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2007, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-popeye/424475/20 "2007-10-30T05:41:21Z")
[QUOTE=T\_SQUARE]
Did he have any other “regular” enemies that he would beat up more than once? Or is Bluto/Brutus the only one not to learn his lesson?
[/QUOTE]
The Goons. The SeaHag. Bernard the Vulture.
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