ReFrederator Blog

We’ve jumped all around Popeye’s film career this week while ReFrederator has been featuring its Popeye-a-thon. Which brings up the issue of the sailor man’s later, post-Max Fleischer cartoons. Okay, okay, okay — everyone agrees the early weird-ass Fleischer entries are, on the whole, better — BUT — I kinda like the slick Paramount Famous Cartoon Studio installments too. Don’t hate me.

For good or bad, Popeye is more of an everyman in these later films. He has an astounding array of occupations. He has many ordinary homeowner-type concerns. He has a nice suburban house.

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Our ReFrederator Popeye-a-thon rocks on with “Patriotic Popeye” one of the very last theatrical shorts in the long running series. And it’s actually not bad, although Popeye seems to be on the receiving end of an awful lot of uncle abuse at the tiny hands of his nephews — his TWO nephews. The 1940’s started out with four identical nephews for the sailor man, then we saw their number reduced to three by the early fifties. Now we’re down to a dangerous duo.

I’ve harped on the subject of animated relatives before, but there are still some nagging questions here. What happens to downsized cartoon nephews? Were they offered a money-up-front retirement package, or were they unceremoniously kicked out the studio gates? What kind of employment opportunities are there for pint sized characters bearing an uncanny resemblance to world famous cartoon stars? And who’s missing — Poopeye? Pipeye? Pupeye? Peepeye? [Read more…]