Popeye's Fall Classic

The annual Popeye's Fall Classic bodybuilding championship.

Bodybuilding is the practice, art, and science of using progressive weight training, cardiovascular workouts, and diet to enlarge and strengthen the muscles. Bodybuilding is also a competitive sport in which weight-trained physiques are judged according to criteria pertaining to size, proportion, definition, and overall aesthetics. Bodybuilding has been practiced at least since the time of the ancient Greeks; its modern incarnation grew out of the physical culture movement of the late-19th century and came into prominence in the years following World War II.

In Popeye Cartoons

File:Popeye and Bluto Muscles.jpg

Popeye often needed the help of spinach to overcome his substantial size disadvantage.

In many of the cartoons Bluto and his fellow Famous Studios nemeses of Popeye (e.g. the Champ, the Lifeguard, Bully Boy) can be seen as practitioners of bodybuilding as evidenced by their physical proportions (we also know from the cartoon "A Day at Muscle Beach" and several comic book stories that Bluto is a bodybuilding titlist). These proportions are spelled out in Steve R. Bierly's book Stronger than Spinach: "thick, broad shoulders and exaggerated deltoid muscles; a 2-1 waist-to-chest differential; an inverse-pyramid shape set off by well-developed latissimus dorsii and an expanded ribcage; huge arms with bursting biceps and defined triceps" (page 42). These members of the physical elite lord over the seemingly outclassed Sailor, frequently employing their superior physical stature to place him in life-threatening situations.

Popeye is not a bodybuilder in the conventional sense-- although he is known to train to remain strong, this never alters his body's odd proportions. His muscular development and power over Bluto and other well-built individuals is almost invariably an ad hoc result of his ingestion of spinach. Spinach gives Popeye a momentary inflated bicep and on rare occasions expands his chest; however, his neck, shoulders, legs, and other indicative bodyparts remain in their cartoonishly undeveloped state. It nevertheless empowers him to physically engage his seemingly invincible opponents and "cut them down to size."

Gallery

Champ Muscles.jpg

The Champ

Lifeguard Muscles.jpg

The Lifeguard

Bully Boy Muscles.jpg

Bully Boy

Bluto as 'The Strongman'.gif

"Each and every muscle on his herculean physique VIBRATES!"

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The Lifeguard spoofs the concept of a 'bowling-ball bicep'

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"Hubba hubba!"

Popeye Comic #43, March 1958