Little Swee'pea

I never did understand in what relation was this baby to Popeye. Was he (it is a boy, is it not?), Olive Oyl's illegitimate kid? She seemed to hang around the docks a lot, she dated both Bluto and Popeye, heck, she could have dated (wink, wink) the whole 7th fleet for all we know!! But, I digress. This cartoon is a cute one about Popeye taking Swee Pea to the zoo. Swee Pea decides to climb out of his stroller and get inside various animal cages. Swee Pea gets inside the elephant, alligator, hippo cages and is seen riding the leopard out of the zoo before being caught by Popeye and delivered back to Olive Oyl.

But, this is a funny little cartoon from the Fleischer Studios.

I remember Little See'pea as the debut cartoon for the Segar-created baby Swee'Pea. (Sock-a-Bye Baby was not Swee'pea's debut, though I at first thought that the babe whom Popeye was baby-sitting WAS Swee'pea.) This cartoon showed what Swee'Pea was like; when Popeye took him to the zoo (because Olive Oyl was too busy with housecleaning to go with Popeye), Swee'Pea crawled in and out of mischief, with Popeye in pursuit. With the aid of spinach, he spanked the hippo and threw him into the ground, then twirled a leopard, which lost its spots. The punching of the crocodile into suitcases, seen in several other Popeyes, was absent. At the end, Popeye gave Swee'pea a toy monkey, which led him to SQUALL! Olive Oyl thought that Popeye had FRIGHTENED Swee'pea, hit him with her broom. The REAL nitty-gritty was that Swee'Pea was squalling because he did not have his way. This was seen in later Popeyes featuring Swee'Pea, like Baby Wants a Bottleship and Thrill of Fair. All in all, a fine cartoon debut for Swee'Pea.

Little Swee'pea (1936)

*** (out of 4)

Popeye asks Olive Oyl to go to the zoo with him but she's busy so she says he can take Little Swee'pea. Popeye does so and quickly regrets it as the kid keeps wondering off and getting involved with various animals.

LITTLE SWEE'PEA is another winning short from Fleischer's series where there's once again some good laughs and plenty of nice action. The real highlight here is a sequence where the baby is walking underneath the elephant, which keeps coming close to stepping on him. There's also another funny sequence where the baby keeps walking into the mouth of an alligator. The animation itself is of high quality as you'd expect and the action helps keep the film moving.

This is basically a 'Baby Herman' movie: a baby keeps obliviously wandering into perilous situations, and then just as obliviously wandering out of them again ... while the frantic guardian, all too aware of the danger, keeps getting hurt. But at least this cartoon gives Popeye a change from his usual formula of trading punches with Bluto or some other menace.

Is Swee'Pea meant to be Olive Oyl's nephew, or is he her illegitimate son? Whatever he is, Olive dumps him on Popeye for the day. Popeye dumps Swee'Pea into the pram, and heads for the zoo. There's some nice multiplane animation during the trip to the zoo, and the sequence with the cartoon elephant seems to contain some rotoscoped footage of a live-action elephant.

Most of the gags are quite obvious. At one point, Swee'Pea rides bareback astride a leopard while the soundtrack plays 'Hold that Tiger'. Given that choice of music, why didn't the animators put Swee'Pea on a tiger instead of a leopard? I suspected that there was some gag coming up involving the leopard's spots, which wouldn't work as well with a tiger's stripes. Sure enough.

I dislike movies about babies, and I like cartoon babies even less. Popeye is funnier without Swee'Pea, and it's unfortunate that Olive's role in this toon is so brief that it gives her nothing to do. More for the impressive animation than anything else, I'll rate this 6 out of 10. The Fleischer Studio's cartoons were released through Paramount. After they lost Fleischer, the cartoons produced by Paramount's in-studio animation unit were consistently the worst animation output by any major Hollywood studio. Even the worst Fleischer Popeye cartoon is far better than any of the post-Fleischer Popeyes.

I grew up watching this Popeye and unlike the heroes the kids have to look up to today he was honest, truthful and always did the right thing even when it meant more trouble for his "predicamink". Granted Popeye never took himself to seriously but that's just another factor that endeared him for me. Just simply a great cartoon as all the old Popeye cartoons are. Oh and for those of you asking about Swee'Pea and where he came from, he was an orphan. One legend has it that Popeye found him in the Swee'Pea vines, thus the name. The other legend says he was left on the Oyle family's' doorstep. According to this version when first introduced to Popeye he "socked" him right in the eye and Popeye said he "layed me in the Swee'Peas!" Thus another origin for the name. Olive seemed to have became his adoptive Mother. So take your pick of origin legends but please allow this to put to rest any notion of Swee'Pea being an illegitimate child once and for all. Let us not tarnish the long standing respect for Popeye and his world.