Nothing's Sacred: Popeye Turns Woke

Above, Popeye by Segar.

In today's insane world, culture, along with a lot of other things, is being perverted by wokeness.

The latest is Popeye the Sailor.

As this morning's post in The Federalist blog reports, Popeye has been around for nearly 100 years. He began as a side character in Segar's "Thimble Theater" comic strip and ended up taking over the strip. Popeye became so popular that he has received several animated cartoon series, most notably (and the best) the Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s.

According to Breitbart (via The Federalist):

After nearly a hundred years in existence, the Popeye comic strip is reportedly getting a woke makeover, with the strip’s latest cartoonist promising more ethnic diversity and “more characters who aren’t heterosexual.”

Cartoonist Randal K. Milholland described the Popeye character as being “gender fluid,” citing old episodes in which the plot required Popeye to dress in drag.

“I [want] to bring in more characters who aren’t heterosexual,” Milholland said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News. “I don’t live in that purely straight white world, and I don’t think a lot of other people do either.”

In one of the strip’s biggest changes, Olive Oyl’s sister-in-law Cylinda Oyl is now Afro-Latina. Cylinda has traditionally been portrayed as a white woman with dark, bobbed hair.

No doubt Segar and the Fleischers are spinning in their graves.

To read more, go here.

Well, Blow Me Down, Olive! COVID-19 Vaccines Through Spinach

For those of you wimps out there who refuse to get an injected vaccination, scientists are working on getting the vaccine into you through spinach, lettuce and other edible plants.

According to a Gateway Pundit article:

Millions of people who have refused to get an experimental mRNA vaccine may soon be forced to consume the gene therapy in their food.

Researchers at the University of California were awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation developing technology that infuses experimental mRNA Covid-19 vaccines into spinach, lettuce and other edible plants.

The team of nanobiotechnology experts is currently working on successfully delivering DNA containing mRNA BioNTech technology into chloroplasts, the part of the plants that instruct its cells’ DNA to replicate the vaccine material.

The researchers are tasked with demonstrating the genetically modified plants can produce enough mRNA to replace Covid jabs and infuse the plants with the right dosage required to eat to replace vaccines.

If this works, not only would you become as strong a Popeye the Sailor, you will get hair on your chest (well, that's what parents used to say) and get vaccinated!

Well, blow me down, Olive!

To read more, go here. 

Tom Hatten, 1926 - 2019

From KTLA's Sam Rubin's Twitter post:

On a warm and beautiful day locally, perhaps it is only fitting that we learn of the passing of a warm and really beautiful man. Local media legend, and an actor with considerable credits, Tom Hatten has died. He was 92 years old. On KTLA he hosted a series of great kid shows, as well as the Family Film Festival. The picture here is Tom with none other than Bette Davis. The stars came out for Tom with good reason - his shows were super popular and he was deeply knowledgeable about Hollywood and about the movie business. Tom and I were radio colleagues too; sharing the KNX radio entertainment reports for many years. I imagine there are so many people who remember Tom Hatten as a vital part of their childhoods if you grew up in Southern California, maybe you watched "Skipper Tom" on "The Pier 5 Club," or when Tom hosted "Popeye and Friends." One of the good ones, smart and nice and very talented - I will really miss Tom Hatten

Although 92 is a very good run, it is indeed sad news that Tom Hatten has passed. He was a big presence during the golden age of local Los Angeles television. KTLA-Channel 5 was a powerhouse in children's programming in the afternoons back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hatten was a big part of it as he hosted the Popeye cartoons. For kids in L.A., one cannot think of Popeye and not also think of Tom Hatten. And vice-versa.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he hosted the Family Film Festival and usually had guests on the program.

I saw Tom Hatten in person once and that was back around 1983. I was a member of the "Way Out West" Tent of the Sons of the Desert (the Laurel and Hardy fan organization) and we had a meeting at the Masquers Club in Los Angeles. In the audience at that meeting was Tom Hatten (I sat a couple of seats away from one of the best villains of the first season of Adventures of Superman, Dan Seymour). Hatten looked youthful, like he always did.

Thanks for the great memories, Tom!

"Popeye's Island Adventures", A Miserable Remake

When I was a young kid, Popeye the Sailor was my favorite cartoon character, especially the cartoon shorts of the 1930s by Max and Dave Fleischer.

While the character has been around over the succeeding decades, and the quality of the cartoons diminished, yet the characters were kept true. Even the Robin Williams Popeye movie was palatable and the Bud Sagendorf newspaper comic strip was good.
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Now, Popeye is being revived as "Popeye's Island Adventures" as a YouTube channel. Just looking at the re-vamped characters (above) tells me to stay away.

Cartoon Brew said it best:

Unfortunately there’s not much positive to say about this miserable misguided attempt at resurrecting the character, though one can’t help but be impressed by how wildly they’ve failed at capturing the spirit of the character. It’s almost as if King Features sat down and wrote a list of everything that makes Popeye fun and entertaining to watch, and then systematically eliminated those elements one by one from this new production. 

Popeye is now younger, though King Features doesn’t seem to be exactly clear on how many years they’ve shaved off, which is not a good sign considering that they’ve commissioned Wildbrain to make 25 two-minute shorts. “He’s younger, but you can’t tell how old he is,” C. J. Kettler, president of King Features, told the New York Times. “He’s not an old guy, he’s not a young guy, he’s somewhere in between.”  

Instead of sporting a pipe in his mouth, Popeye now carries a whistle. (Perhaps he’ll referee a football game in a future episode.) And spinach gives him superpowers, like ear-flying, which is probably intended as a substitute for the physical comedy of the classic cartoons from the 1930s and ’40s.

A freaking whistle?! Egads!

To read more, go here.