Popeye for President

Popeye is running for the Spinach Party. Bluto is running for the rival Blutocratic Party. They end up tied with only Olive Oyl yet to vote. They both rush out to the country for her vote, but she has chores to do.

This premise makes no sense. I make a lot of leeway for a cartoon, but this really makes no sense. I'm not sure where to begin. If this is a local election, all the quirks can be excused. This apparently is a big city election or maybe the Presidency. Let's hope that the kids didn't watch this to learn about the democratic process. Schoolhouse Rock wouldn't need spinach to beat this.

Popeye and Bluto are running for the same office. Everyone has voted save Olive Oyl, and her vote will decide the election. So they head over to her farm and compete by doing chores.

While I can forgive the folks at Famous Studios their failure to explain the Electoral College in six minutes, I find it harder to ignore the utterly hackneyed way in which they present this cartoon. Popeye and Bluto fight. Bluto cheats. Finally Bluto clouts Popeye and leaves him in a situation from which he cannot escape, but there's some spinach to hand, which he eats, escapes, and clobbers Bluto. Just like all the other times.

Lots of punches with attacks and counterattacks. The vote for president is tied and who should have the deciding vote but our dear Olive Oyl. So Popeye and Opponent, Bluto, duke it out. They each try to impress the farm woman with their abilities to cut wood, plow a field, and store hay. Olive is using them to do the work she usually does. Fortunately for Popeye, Olive has a spinach field. Some of the bits are clever and work quite well. Perhaps one of the better in the series. Of course, since it's 1956, the picture quality is quite good, and the color, like most of these late features, enhances the events.

It's the Presidential election time and Popeye, of the Spinach Party, is running against Bluto, of the Blutocratic Party. Popeye promises free ice cream while Bluto dishes out cigars. Things are not looking good for our hero, according to the crowd size. Popeye has just one little dog sitting there waging is tale while Bluto has a huge group of people listening to him.

While the two candidates get in an argument, they notice a neon ticker-tape sign flashing on a nearby building that says the election is all tied up with just one vote left in Green County: a "Miss Olive Oyl." Naturally, our two rivals are going to do their best to persuade Olive to vote for them so they race out to the country outskirts to woo her.

Popeye's methods of chopping and stack wood, plowing the field and putting hay in the hayloft are creative and very funny. Bluto is stupid and ineffective in every thing he does in this cartoon, an appropriate representative of his party name.

The Popeye/Paramount cartoons were winding down--1957's CRYSTAL BRAWL being the last one. And like The Three Stooges;half of them were using stock footage.

So this is one of the better ones---the Popeye/Bluto rivalry taken t he highest stakes of all--The White House. Hey,this looks downright ssane compared to the state of USA politics today and the Trumpchimpanzees ruining America bit by bit. Well,at least we kept a boor from The White House for a 60-year reprieve.