Popeye The Sailor Cartoons

Popeye made his film debut in Popeye the Sailor, a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon (Betty only makes a brief appearance, repeating her hula dance from Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle). It was for this short that Sammy Lerner's famous "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man" song was written. I Yam What I Yam became the first entry in the regular Popeye the Sailor series.

In most appearances to date (except during the World War II era), Popeye is a middle-aged independent sailor (or "sailor man," as he puts it) with a unique way of speaking, muscular forearms with two (sometimes one) anchor tattoos, thinning red hair, and an ever-present corncob pipe (which he toots like a steamship's whistle at times). Despite some mistaken characterizations over the years, Popeye is generally depicted as having only one blue eye, his left. It has never been revealed specifically how Popeye lost his right eye, though he claims it was in "the mos' arful battle" of his life.

Popeye's strange, comedic, and often supernatural adventures take him all over the world, and place him in conflict with enemies such as the Sea Hag and Bluto. His main base of operations is the fictional town of Sweet Haven. Popeye's father is the degenerate Poopdeck Pappy, who does not share his son's moral righteousness and is represented as having abandoned Popeye in some sources. Popeye's sweetheart (and in some sources, wife) for over seventy-seven years has been Olive Oyl, alhough the two characters often bickered, especially at the beginning of Popeye's appearances. Popeye is the adoptive father of Swee'Pea, an infant foundling left on his doorstep.