Did you know Popeye endorsed more than just good old Spinach?

Brian looks back at an old commercial of Popeye promoting Wheatena cereal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph4SfUPjTr8

Transcription

Popeye and your business.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J Pombo Live.

What does Popeye the sailor man have to do with your business, let's talk about it a little bit, shall we?

Popeye, what's he known for, right?

He's known for being strong to the finish because he eats his spinach. And so his spinach gives him superpowers that allow him to beat up Bluto or whatever bad guy he's up against.

And in a sense, it became a quasi endorsement of spinach even though it was somewhat accidental, and started out in the comic strip.

What's funny is that you look at a little bit of the history of Popeye and I just know a little bit of this weird stuff from other fascinations that I have that I fell into this. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is we were watching Popeye on HBO max with the kids, the old black and white ones, which are fabulous to watch.

But regardless, it reminded me of a lot of this background story and that he didn't start out eating spinach. He actually started out every time he would rub the head of the wiffle hen, which was another character in the comic strip that Popeye started on which was called thimble theatre.

He would give him extreme luck, and that luck ended up becoming more of strength over time. But that's where the concept came from.

Then from there, he would eat spinach once in a while. And they showed that and then they grab that when they started doing cartoons, because Popeye starred in the comic strips, and then he went to the cartoons.

So they started doing that in the cartoons where he would eat spinach. And that would give him his power. And that would allow him and that became the theme in every flippin cartoon every once in a while you see one where they weirdly, don't have it in there. But most, you know, nine times out of 1090, probably 99 times out of 100. Popeye, or sometimes another character will eat spinach and win the day because of that special tie-in.

Now, the fact that this was almost like an endorsement deal was not lost on marketers of the day. And so what they did was they had a radio show that was sponsored by with Wheatena.

Wheatena is a breakfast cereal. You don't see it as much around anymore, at least not not not where I live. But I think the brand is still out there. And what it is it's kind of a whole wheat Cream of Wheat style. Or Farina or Molt-o Meal style thing.

So it's um, it's whole wheat in it, it's got a lot of extra stuff in it. It's a little different, a little more hearty than your typical Farina cereal, and they had a radio show.

And it was Popeye, it was Popeye on the radio. And I don't even think, they had the same people who did the voices and everything but they did the show. They had to change the song because instead of eating spinach, he would eat Wheatena Cereal.

Wheatena is his diet. He asks you to try it with Popeye the sailorman.

And so it's a really funny thing.

So throughout time, Popeye hasn't only eaten spinach, but the same theme came through every time is he get into trouble he's is a good guy who get into a situation he couldn't get out of getting into trouble. Usually, the bad guy was was either picking on or grabbing all of Oilve and taking her against her ...