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Popeye the Sailor Television Cartoon from the early 1960s
This was a cartoon that I watched when I was very small from ages 3 to 6 years old. This cartoon series was about two sailors who were always fighting with each other. Usually over a girl named Olive Oil. They were both competing for her affections. Bluto was the very gigantic and muscular sailor who was somewhat dumb. Popeye was the little skinny guy who did not have much in the way of muscle but he tried to compete by being clever. During most of the show Bluto was pounding Popeye into the ground for the most part until Popeye reached the point where was almost too weak to take it anymore. At that point he would grab a can of Spinach pop it open and get a wad of Spinach in his mouth. He would start to chew on it and Va-Voom! Popeye would instantly sprout muscles and become more powerful than a tank and pound Bluto into a pulp and the day was saved.
The reason this cartoon interested me as a gadget guy is because sometimes Popeye and Bluto were competing to make products like ships, or trains. These were the episodes that interested me the most.
Bluto would start out by pumping out products of his own, but then to make sure he stayed ahead he would sabotage Popeye's efforts and Popeye would fall perilously behind on his work.
Towards the end when Popeye could take no more he swallowed his Spinach and bolted into action.
He would whack a pile of steel beams with his fist and they would fly into the sky and then fall to earth and land together to form the frame of a ships hull. Then Popeye would grab a stack of steel plates in his arm and then dole them out like he was dealing cards at high speed and the plates would fly onto and attach themselves to the ships super structure to form the hull. Next he would bend a cannon into the shape of the letter S and fire it at the ships hull and the cannon ball would travel in and out of the ships hull in an S shaped pattern to form the portholes in the hull. These are the episodes that grabbed my attention because they involved innovative ways to form and use gadgets to accomplish a task.