Popeye (cartoon)/YMMV


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Regarding the KFS shorts, the presence of more Thimble Theatre characters may offset the poor animation and timing.
  • Awesome Music: After 90 years, the theme music still hasn't gotten old!
  • Foe Yay: The infamous Minute Maid television ad. Poor Olive.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In one cartoon (that will likely never be shown again) Popeye has a water pistol that he plans to give to Swee Pea that looks like a real gun (even he says so) and threatens Bluto with it as a joke. (Modern viewers probably know how unfunny such a joke is nowadays.) Even worse, two scenes later, Olive threatens Bluto with a real gun when he tries to hit on her, and a prophetic demonstration of why Popeye's joke wasn't funny, Bluto thinks she's pulling the same joke he did. She isn't. Fortunately for him in this case, Cartoon Physics still apply.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Near the end of "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp", the Big Bad gets turned into a fish by the lamp and shouts, "Help! I'm a Fish!"
  • Moral Event Horizon: Possibly the worst thing Bluto has ever done was in "How Green Is My Spinach" where he creates a chemical weapon that wipes out all the spinach in the world; Popeye only survives when he gets help From Beyond the Fourth Wall. Clearly, intentionally trying to cause the extinction of a species of plant to get revenge on your foe requires a special sort of pettiness.
  • Seasonal Rot: Both the Fleischer and Famous Studios era were impacted by this, more so on the latter.
    • The relocation of Fleischer Studios to Miami, Florida in 1938 is often viewed as a detrimental turning point. The voices of Olive and Bluto had to be recast after Mae Questel and Gus Wickie declined to move to Miami. Additionally, the use of 3-D backgrounds was discontinued, Wimpy and Swee'Pea were gradually phased out and the studio's efforts to mimic Disney led to a shift towards a Lighter and Softer direction in the series.
    • By the late 1940s, Famous Studios' shorts had become formulaic and lacked originality, often repeating the love triangle plot with Popeye, Olive, and Bluto. In the 1950s, budget cuts led to an increase in clip shows and colorized remakes of earlier Fleischer shorts, adversely affecting the animation's timing and overall quality.
  • Ugly Cute: Popeye as an infant, of which we get a glimpse in Goonland.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Much like other famous cartoon characters who were around during World War II, Popeye appeared in a few propaganda pieces, including one of the most notorious, "You're a Sap, Mr. Jap". For obvious reasons, this will likely never be publicly shown again.
  • Values Dissonance: The short "I Yam What I Yam" portrays Native Americans in a very racist light. Popeye and Bluto are also frequently quite sexist in their treatment of Olive Oyl, who usually doesn't seem to mind.
  • Willfully Weak: One theory suggests that Popeye doesn't even need spinach to use his full power, and only acts like he needs it to mess with people.
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