ReFrederator Blog

We proudly initiate our week long tribute to one of America’s beloved comic icons with, umm, a cheater. Paramount immediately rushed “Let’s Sing with Popeye” into theaters when the first animated appearance of the one eyed mariner kicked off a craze that swept the country faster than small pox. This curious little novelty offers us footage from the very first Popeye cartoon, and saves you the trouble of googling all the lyrics to our hero’s deathless theme music.

All of which raises two extremely important questions. First — how did the Max Fleischer Studio get so much so right so early in the game? I mean the song, the voice, the spinach to the rescue dynamic (largely an invention of the animated films, not Elzie Segar’s comic strip original) — everything was there from the start! Few classic cartoon stars were so fully developed for their movie debuts.

Oh, and secondly — what the heck is a Gazookus?

More spinach packing tomorrow here at ReFrederator.

For your free subscription to ReFrederator, click
here, or visit iTunes!

Dave Kirwan