Popeye The Sailor

This is Billy Costello singing "Blow The Man Down" from the 30's. He used to do the voice of Popeye on those great old animated catoons by the Fliescher Brothers. I have fond memeories of those being constantly shown on our old black and white TV back in the 50's and 60's. Now you can get them on DVD. I had a few on video and showed them and other vintage animations to Archie when he was growing up as an alternative to those awful cheap and nasty cartoons that were being shown on the TV in the 90's. This obviously had an effect and influenced his love of animation and the moving image.

"Popeye the Sailor is a fictional hero famous for appearing in comic strips and animated films as well as numerous TV shows. He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar, and first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. As of January 1, 2009, Segar's character of Popeye (though not the various films, TV shows, theme music, and other media based on him) has entered the public domain in most countries.

Although Segar's Thimble Theatre strip, first published on December 19, 1919, was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, the sailor quickly became the main focus of the strip and Thimble Theatre became one of King Features' most popular strips during the 1930s. Thimble Theatre was carried on after Segar's death in 1938 by several writers and artists, including Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip, now titled Popeye, continues to appear in first-run installments in Sunday papers, written and drawn by Hy Eisman. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories.

In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and the Fleischers—and later Paramount's own Famous Studios—continued production through 1957.

Since then, Popeye has appeared in comic books, television cartoons, arcade and video games, hundreds of advertisements and peripheral products, and including a 1980 live-action film directed by Robert Altman starring comedian Robin Williams as Popeye."