Spinach is a leafy vegetable with a high vitamin content, making it a healthy and nutritious food for human consumption. In most media featuring Popeye, spinach's nutritional benefits are depicted as rapidly and significantly enhancing the physical abilities of the consumer, Popeye, in particular (many times, even to a superhuman degree). This renders it more of a powerful artifact than simply a vitamin-rich vegetable. Resultantly, the franchise often employs spinach as a last-minute device in which the titular sailor, threatened either with a directly perilous circumstance or the endangerment of Olive Oyl, pulls out a can of spinach from his shirt or otherwise acquires the vegetable and eats it. This immediately grants his already extraordinary strength a tremendous boost, helping him withstand his enemies' attacks and all kinds of adverse situations.
Despite its prominence within both the wider Popeye franchise and cultural idioms surrounding the character, this usage of spinach generally did not initially exist in Segar's comic Thimble Theatre, the place of Popeye's origin: introduced as a source of Popeye's strength in June 1931, spinach, while increasingly synonymous with the sailor's physical prowess over the following years, was utilized more sporadically than in related media, particularly in its idiomatic animated role as a deus ex machina. Following Segar's death in 1938, however, spinach became exponentially more prominent within the strip, presumably due to the mounting cultural profile of the franchise's animated adaptations. Since the earliest animated cartoons, however, as produced by Fleischer Studios, it was introduced in its strength-boosting capacity and in this form would remain a staple of all of Popeye's screen incarnations.
In Thimble Theatre[]
Prior to Popeye's introduction into the Thimble Theatre comic strip in 1929, spinach was referenced only sporadically and primarily within derisive contexts. The daily strip for March 12, 1926, most notably, features Olive Oyl's then-boyfriend Ham Gravy vehemently declaring her to be 'not even spinach to [him]' (an ironic statement given the number of occasions on which direct or indirect consumption of the vegetable would later prove lifesaving to Olive) following yet another of their acrimonious breakups, indicating spinach to wield a cultural position (given Ham's implicit emphasis on its flavor and appearance, both idiomatically perceived as unappealing or unremarkable) and set of properties more equivalent to its real-world counterpart than within Segar's later work. The induction of spinach as both a supernaturally-endowed artefact or gauntlet and a recurring comedic fixture of the comic's universe would not occur until the daily strip for June 26, 1931 (during the storyline "The Great Rough-House War"), in which Popeye, responding to General Bunzo's incredulity over his inability to be imprisoned or executed conventionally, indicates spinach to be the source of his nigh-invulnerability and superhuman strength. While presumably intended as a minor gag, Popeye's contemporaneously-ascending popularity spurred a wider increase in real-world demand for the vegetable (particularly among children), prompting Segar to increasingly incorporate spinach (and its newfound fantastical qualities) as a permanent fixture of both Popeye's character and the strip's wider mythology, with a July 1932 Sunday strip confirming its profuse quantity of vitamin A to be the chief repository of Popeye's abilities. Despite frequent comedic allusions, however, Segar's utilization of spinach as a direct narrative device (particularly relative to the contemporary animated shorts based on his work) remained comparatively sporadic: while Olive administers a can of the vegetable to Popeye within both the climax of the 1932 daily storyline "Skullyville" (which, in shortly predating early development on the Fleischer shorts, may have served as a direct inspiration for their portrayal of spinach) and the 1936 storyline "The Search for Popeye's Poppa" (during a confrontation between the sailor and a gargantuan octopus) to similar effect to the Fleischer shorts, these examples are primarily exceptions.
While a 1937 Sunday storyline extensively notes "Kid Spinach", one of Popeye's boxing opponents, to be "another spinach-eater" (as if the garnering of supernatural abilities from spinach consumption is notable in its abnormality), a sequence from the 1935-36 daily storyline "You Can't Expect April Showers from War Clouds" arguably contradicts this implication by depicting Popeye administering a hijacked bulk shipment of spinach to the military of his sovereignty Spinachovia, granting his soldiers (and, momentarily, Olive) significantly-increased physical strength and heightened aggression. Resultantly, spinach, within Segar's world, is evidently capable of enhancing the physical capabilities of any consumer as with the strip's animated adaptations, although Popeye and, implicitly, Swee'Pea, remain the sole regular characters depicted as recurring consumers of the vegetable during Segar's tenure.
The hero's empowerment[]
The animated cartoons more notedly adhere to a format in which spinach is Popeye's main means for overcoming the greatest of obstacles. Even if the cartoon acknowledges Popeye's immense strength to begin with (later ones from the Famous era make him much weaker before spinach), consumption of the vegetable augments Popeye's physical might to the extreme, allowing the viewer to enjoy a power fantasy and enabling the sailor to even break the laws of physics at times.
The villain's comeuppance[]
In Popeye's dealings with opponents such as Bluto, spinach is consumed when the sailor's well-being is threatened or Olive Oyl is on the verge of being abused. After eating the vegetable, Popeye strikes at the antagonist with his increased strength, wherein the blows can immediately render the erstwhile competitor unconscious, send him airborne to a distant destination, initiate the use of various props which serve to immobilize and otherwise humble him, etc. Often, this comeuppance comes in the form of a humorous reprieve to what had been a tense and life-threatening situation and serves as a concluding "punchline" for the cartoon episode.
Spinach as eaten by others[]
Popeye is not the only character in the franchise to eat spinach; other characters have consumed it as well. For cases involving female antagonists such as the Sea Hag, since Popeye cannot clobber women, it is Olive Oyl who ingests the vegetable in order to defeat the villainess. In the theatrical shorts Hospitaliky, its color remake For Better or Nurse and Beaus Will Be Beaus, Popeye force-feeds Bluto spinach. At least in the animated cartoons, everybody would gain a surge of power comparable to Popeye's. Interestingly enough, while being so powerful, it is commercially available in Popeye's stories. Literally anyone can buy a can of spinach at the nearby grocery, but Popeye seems the only consumer. Brutus once managed to monopolize the spinach market to depower Popeye, but the villain himself did not consume it. In the television series Popeye and Son, Popeye Junior would eat spinach to increase his strength although he dislikes the vegetable.
Extraordinary uses[]
- Spinach increases the strength and speed of a character.
- It makes Popeye invulnerable, giving him a skin as resilient as steel.
- It can turn Popeye into a rocket, transform his clothes or otherwise change his appearance.
- It has been used to transform a biplane into a F-18 Hornet and perform other such changes.
- Once, Popeye summoned a knight's armor and horse with spinach. (Ancient Fistory)
- Rubbing the can of spinach, Popeye could do deeds to rival Aladdin's lamp (Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp).
- Spinach was used to negate the effects of a fast-aging ray when Popeye was abducted by aliens (Popeye, the Ace of Space).
- Ye King's Spinach, which Popeye found in a haunted ship, could turn him invisible (Spooky Swabs).
- Popeye gathered the necessary materials and built a full, armored house in a few seconds after eating spinach (Insect to Injury).
- Spinach can increase the strength of a common gopher to knock down a bull (Gopher Spinach).
- It could turn an innoffensive pig into a furious boar ("Bad Company").
- Empowered by spinach, Popeye was able to tow a whole fleet of ships ("Popeye Snags the Sea Hag").
- The vegetable could fix a broken sword and give mastery over fencing (Parlez Vous Woo).
- Poopdeck Pappy, after eating spinach, was able to have a massive fight against the Goons, so powerful that he even tore the cartoon's film reel (Goonland).
- Spinach can boost intelligence, artistic ability, etc.
Public views[]
Spinach is widely associated to Popeye by the public. Due to his promoting the vegetable, the sailor hero has received honors from the spinach industry, such as the statue erected in Crystal City, Texas (the "Spinach Capitol [sic] of the World", as described on its Popeye-featuring welcome sign) in 1937.
Popeye-brand spinach (pictured right) continues to be sold by the Allen Canning Company.
Notes[]
- A sped-up, intrumental version of Popeye's theme song normally plays when he eats spinach. Various songs may play afterwards, however, including versions of "Stars and Stripes Forever", "Yankee Doodle", or other, original tunes.
- As animated and comics stories where Popeye eats spinach usually end soon afterwards, it is difficult to know exactly when or how the empowering effect wears off.