Your favourite Popeye the Sailor Man was inspired by a spinach-loving bartender!

Who could have imagined that a comic strip character would one day become so well-known that he would have his brand? This character munched on spinach, puffed on a corncob pipe and proudly showed off his massive biceps! Does someone immediately pop into your mind? Yes, Popeye, the Sailor Man! On 17th January 1929, when people first saw him in American cartoonist E. C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre comic strip, they immediately liked this one-eyed sailor. Popeye soon gained popularity not just in comics but also in cartoons, animated shows and video games. Here are some interesting facts that you didn’t know about your favourite Popeye the Sailor Man.  

A real-life man inspired the character of Popeye 
Many of the characters created by Segar were inspired by the people he saw around his hometown in Chester, Illinois. Popeye the Sailor Man was no exception. His character was modelled on a native bartender named Frank Fiegel. Just like our favourite sailor, Fiegel was a one-eyed man with a corncob pipe in his mouth and strong forearms. Well, he too, was a spinach lover. Most interestingly, he loved to impress kids with his feats of strength.  

Popeye helped boost spinach sales! 
Popeye was a spinach lover, as all of you would know! But did you know that his fondness for spinach helped boost the sales of green vegetable throughout the United States and many other parts of the world? It had a significant impact on children and particularly inspired them to eat well, to the extent that in 1965, Allen Canning Company, one of the most well-known private canners of food in the world, introduced ‘Popeye Spinach’ in the market! A cartoon character that is helping children overcome their dislike for spinach, fascinating indeed! In 2004, to celebrate Popeye’s 75th birthday and to honour the spinach-loving sailor, the entire Empire State Building of New York, a 102-storeyed skyscraper, was lit up in green. 

The first cartoon character to get its statue in Crystal City, Texas  
The first cartoon figure to receive a statue of his own was our sailor man! Where? Crystal City. It is the administrative centre of Zavala County, Texas, in the United States. On 26 March 1937, Crystal City erected a full-colour statue of Popeye as a tribute to the cartoon character and named itself the ‘World Spinach Capital’.   

The cartoon gave rise to many slangs in English  
You’d be surprised to know that Popeye contributed to several terms in the current English language. These terms include ‘wimp’, which means an unadventurous person; ‘goon’, an aggressive person and ‘jeep’, which means something hilarious; ‘dufus’, which means a stupid person! Some of these words are still used in informal communications.  

There is a Popeye Village in Malta  
Yes, you read that right. But how did it happen? In 1980, the release of the film Popeye, featuring actor Robin Williams, was released. After the release, the set of the film in Malta, an island country in the central Mediterranean Sea, was converted into a theme park called Popeye Village. Here, visitors can enjoy boat excursions and picnics. If you are a huge Popeye fan, then you should definitely visit this village!