Workin' For a Livin'

It was raining hard when I got up this morning. Thankfully, by the time I headed to work, the weather had calmed down to fog and mist. I worked at 11, probably the earliest I have in months. Surprisingly, it was on-and-off busy all day, but never as crazy as over the weekend. I guess a lot of people got their groceries when they thought we were going to get a significant snowfall. I had no problems getting in or out; one of the college boys went in for me.

When I got home, I had leftovers for dinner, then made Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies and moved on to the third and last Popeye set. World War II debuted during the time covered in this set, and it proved a breath of fresh air for the series. Prior to the wartime shorts, Popeye was barely even using his spinach anymore. While some later shorts like "Quiet, Please!" (Popeye knocks out every noise in Miami so Pappy can nurse his hangover in silence) were fun, they lacked the excitement of earlier entries. When the war hit, Popeye and Bluto found themselves in the real Navy, with a new cause to fight for along with who gets to take Olive out. (In fact, the Fleischers put Popeye in a Navy short a few months before America even got involved with the war.)

Also debuting around this time were Popeye's four nephews, who are basically around to drive him crazy...and because the Fleischers and Famous Studios were Disney's most formidable rivals in the 30s and early 40s. While some of the cartoons they turned up in were pretty cute (like "Me Musical Nephews,") it's notable that they had never appeared in the comic strips and wouldn't turn up in any other Popeye cartoons after Famous Studios shut down in the late 50s.

But the biggest problems with the shorts from this era have to do with the era itself. Popeye's naval exploits unfortunately lent themselves to cartoons filled with what we now see as some extremely nasty Japanese caricatures, more so than Disney or even some Looney Tunes. A couple of these cartoons are so offensive, they were banned from TV and probably hadn't been seen in decades before this release.