Hey kids (of all ages), it's Saturday Morning Cartoon time again!
The THIMBLE THEATRE comedic adventure comic strip was already a decade old in 1929 when a grizzled sailor was introduced for use in a single story arc. But he caught-on so well with audiences that he was kept around and became the star.
POPEYE became a much bigger star when he was featured when he was featured in theatrical cartoons released by Paramount, produced first by Fleischer Studios, then in-house under the Famous Studios brand from the '30s through the '50s. After distributing 231 shorts, Paramount concluded that the series had run its course and discontinued their license on the character.
Meanwhile, the pictures were released to TV, where they were a terrific success. King Features, who actually owned the Popeye character, weren't making any money from the Paramount cartoons on TV, so they decided to get a piece of the action by making their own cartoons. They wisely decided to go with six-minute installment format, making the new TV shorts time-slot compatible with the old theatricals. By using "limited animation" and farming the production out to several companies, they were able to produce the 'toons at about ten times the speed. Almost matching the old series' quarter century of production in just a couple years.
On the downside, the quality of the King Features cartoons ranged from 'okay' to 'awful'... On the upside, they featured the familiar voice actors, and included a lot more Thimble Theatre characters. (Especially the Sea Hag, giving us a good alternate villain that Popeye couldn't just beat the hell out of.)
This was the first proper installment of the TV series. It hit air simultaneously with the pilot HITS AND MISSLES, which was actually made by Paramount Animation (formerly Famous Studios) and used some elements from the theatrical series that would not be part of the TV version.
I chose this over the pilot because it introduces "Brutus" as Popeye's primary antagonist. Bluto, who had filled that role in the theatricals, was not a regular character in the comic strip. So King Features assumed he'd been created by Paramount, and was thus their property. It turns out that Paramount had simply used one of Popeye's many villains from the strip as his regular opponent in the films, so King Features had the rights to Bluto after-all. But they didn't figure that out until production was too far along to bother switching.
Inferior as they were to the earlier cartoons, King Features' POPEYE THE SAILOR were a big success. They were a staple on TV (often right alongside the theatricals) through the late 1970s, countering the hippies' attempts to wussify kids. Teaching the essential lesson that violence often IS the solution to MANY of life's problems! So here's the first episode from September of 1960.
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