Popeye the Sailor (1960-63 TV Series)

[Pooky]

Good news everyone; there's an official King Features Syndicate Popeye YouTube page

Less good news; they don't have the rights to any of the Famous or Fleischer Cartoons, so the channel is full of episodes from The All New Popeye Hour, Popeye & Son, and everyone's favorite Popeye show, Beetle Bailey

Medium news; it also has most or all episodes of the 1960-63 Popeye show


This has never had the best reputation, and it's not hard to see why. The Animation is a considerable cut back from even the later Famous Shorts, and it only occasionally finds a clever way to work within the restriction of the new medium. It has had some reappraisal in recent years though. Fred Grandinetti, who has written quite a few Popeye tomes over the years, wrote and released a book focusing on their unusual history (he discusses his book in this podcast interview). They are certainly an interesting chapter in the history of both the character and animation. For one thing they included a lot of previously unseen-on-screen characters from the Thimble Theatre comics; Alice the Goon, the Sea Hag and King Blozo being among the most notable. And if there's one thing that can be said about the series its that it isn't monotone; shorts were made all over the world, with contributions from notable Golden Age Animation legends like Jack Kinney, Gene Deitch, Rudy Larriva (well, you've heard of him, haven't you?), Halas & Batchelor and Seymour Kneitel (and of course Jack Mercer, Mae Questral and Jackson Beck were retained). The results are as varied as they sound.

(It's also notable for renaming Bluto to Brutus, due to a weird assumption (nothing to do with Disney or Pluto, despite what you might have heard), while only a temporary measure nominally limited to this series and the comic strip, it has confused people, including quite a few licensees, for years.)

I do think it's a more interesting series than I had previously given it credit for. Many of the cartoons are just kind of bland, but others like Matinee Idol Popeye have a snappy, Jay Wardish appeal. There are some, like There's No Space Like Home, that kind of stilted but are odd/creative enough to be entertaining. And then there are those that are so inept, like the infamous Popeye and the Giant, that they have to be seen to be believed.

But if I'm honest, I mostly started this thread as an outlet to express my fascination with one particular short, Timber Toppers

The animation shortcuts here seem so obvious and egregious that it feels like it had to be on purpose as some kind of in-joke...but it almost certainly wasn't

 

[Rick Jones]

I've seen these 60s cartoons on Tubi in recent years. I didn't really know that there were original to TV Popeye cartoons in the 60s but as I was exposing myself to early TV cartoons, I had been giving them a try. I wasn't mad that I never saw them as a kid. Very forgettable cartoons that make the Famous shorts look like the Fleischer shorts.

 

[DocForbin]

I certainly remember watching the 1960s Popeye cartoons on WNEW (now WNYW) when I was growing up on Long Island. They were all right but certainly not as great as the earlier Paramount shorts were. Al Brodax--who was the producer for this series--would later go on to create the Beatles cartoons and was also involved in the later Yellow Submarine movie.

 

[hobbyfan]

I was never fond of the Gene Deitch/Bill Snyder shorts. A little out of sync. Hal Sutherland & Erv Kaplan, later at Filmation, worked with Larry Harmon on his run.

 

[Mejo]

I was never fond of the Gene Deitch/Bill Snyder shorts. A little out of sync.

The Bill Snyder cartoons were the ones that had the most outsourcing done to them. In addition to the Halas and Batchelor outsourced episodes (there were 7 in total), 4 of them were outsourced to Italy (one of those, IIRC, was Spoil Sport) and 2 of them were outsourced to the Zagreb Studio (Have Time Will Travel and Intellectual Interlude).

If you also wanna know, Gene Deitch also said this about the Popeye cartoons on Facebook in Januar: "I'm embarrassed by those Popeyes that have my name on them. They were made at a time of personal desperation, and out of my control; not the Segar Popeye that I love!"

Gene DID however, admit through this and other sources that he was more comfortable with Popeye instead of Tom and Jerry and it really shows on screen. With his Popeye's, you can really tell that he really tried to respect and try to do good to E.C. Segar's creations and at least had admiration for the series that he was working on. This is in stark contrast to his Tom and Jerry's, where it appears to have taken halfway through before he finally stopped being mad at Hanna and Barbera's characters and tried to make less spiteful Tom and Jerry's (I do enjoy some shorts from both series, incidentally)