i am greatly amused by this terrible 1975, supposedly, popeyes fried chicken television advertisement. it was from a bizarre period during which the cartoon character popeye, after whom the restaurant is NOT named, appeared in its advertising anyway.

It is named after Popeye Doyle from the French Connection. (don’t try to read that old 2003 page, just know it is there) Popeye Doyle was based on real police personality Eddie Egan who in life was nicknamed “popeye” presumably after the cartoon character, but nonetheless until it can be determined that cartoon popeye was named after the restaurant, then accidentally time-traveled to and got stuck in the 1920s I will consider there to be no direct connection between them.

I do not know what is the “rice dressing” that olive demands “lots” of but this may be irrelevant since she is not given any, doesn’t seem to notice, and also doesn’t notice that she is singing a different, worse version of the “love that chicken” jingle which already wasn’t good than the servers are.

concerning the visuals, popeye and olive revert to the outfits they wear in comic strips and old fleischer studios cartoons but still have the oversized eyeballs they have had in cartoons since the 1940s, along with olive having conspicuous eyelashes that seem to switch between middle or side oriented depending on how wide her eyes are open. Popeye has re-lost the eye that had also been restored by post-fleischer animators.

He refers to the wares of a popeyes restaurant as “some of me chicken” as if it IS his restaurant, when we know it is not. perhaps he does not know it is not. as a famous cartoon character –animated by a studio called “famous studios,” even– he is probably accustomed to there being many things with “POPEYE” written on them that he never heard of or authorized but accepts that they exist, are in some way related to him and on some level his property even if he never sees residuals from their business and thus has to keep running penny arcades, diners and one-man construction companies and getting into physical altercations with Bluto to try and claim a single customer who never seems to pay for anything despite frequently pledging to do so. It is rough being Popeye.

popeye distinctly asks for a bucket of chicken but the non-cartoon attendant, who knows popeye by name and isn’t surprised to see him despite him being, essentially, a creature from another dimension, promptly fetches a BOX of chicken. popeye doesn’t seem to notice the error.

his single eye seems to be fixed on the ceiling the whole time. I momentarily thought maybe that is where the cue cards are held, but that assumes Popeye can read, and it would also mean a real three dimensional person with no excuse had WRITTEN “bucket” into the script instead of “box.” I am inclined to believe that on the first few takes Popeye said “gives us a can of chicken” and once he diverged to bucket he had at least successfully evoked the idea of fast food fried chicken, if from a competitor. He might have been thinking about how Colonel Sanders signed away his entire business including his own likeness for a single one million dollar payment and consequently had to appear in its ads just to get ANY further benefit related to the situation despite thinking the company ruined the product and inadvertently said bucket when he meant can. during his 30 years as a seaman third class in the US Navy chances are Popeye visited Blackpool, the site of UKland’s first kentucky fried chicken and perhaps was familiar with that. he probably considers the bootleg “Popeye’s Takeaway” restaurant also in blackpool to be no less legitimate than the american joint calling itself “Popeyes” and also not giving him royalties, and as a cartoon character popeye probably sees what he is thinking about floating over his head and very likely is looking at that.

he is also probably trying to respect the chain of command considering that an army or air force colonel is equivalent to a navy captain and honor the colonel’s service without realizing that “kentucky colonel” is only an honorary title and Sanders does not actually outrank him, at least not in the other 47 states that Popeye is aware of.

I also know that this is canonical to Popeye at Popeyes related promotions because an undated photograph from 2008 that I saved in 2019 off of some other webpage that is no longer there shows J Wellington Wimpy also looking, as best he is able, at a thought bauble. presumably in disbelief because he most certainly is NOT thinking about fried chicken.

Curiously in unamerican nations there is to this day a hamburger joint chain named Wimpy, with a signature offering more line with the character associated with the name and equally not authorized by king features syndicate. ironically even Popeye himself strikes me as more likely to go there because prior to his spinach fixation, comic strip popeye ate hamburgers (and huge unseasoned chunks of raw beef), but also never fried chicken. Yet curiouslier, the wimpy hamburger chain actually started in the US, in 1934, despite being much more overtly ripping off King Feature Syndicate’s intellectual property, while the GOOD cartoons were still being made even, and “the chain vanished within the United States after [founder Edward] Gold’s death because no one had purchased the rights and trademark to the Wimpy name from Gold’s estate.[2]” even though Gold himself never purchased the rights to Wimpy in the context of hamburgers. And then in the late 1970s the surviving british Wimpy invented a character for advertising called “Mr. Wimpy” dissimilar in appearance to J. Wellington. But which still seems like it should be a copyright violation, to me because there is no reason to call someone “wimpy,” as a last name, even, exclusively over their fondness for hamburgers EXCEPT when referring to popeye’s old frenemy. curiousest, in 2023 there apparently appeared, in the united states, a Wimpy’s sandwich restaurant full of bootleg-looking artwork of Popeye characters in addition to Wimpy, but is otherwise 1950s themed despite Wimpy specifically dating to 1931, and thus not organic to a 1950s setting and via the mickey mouse rule still under copyright.

ALSO according to the header picture that they uploaded at a size larger than they meant to display, its name is inspired by a totally different 1934 hamburger restaurant named after Wimpy than what became the multinational chain and is overtly religious in its marketing a la Chick Fil-A, which is more a competitor to the restaurant named after Popeye. All this is curious but not enough for me to try and figure out who actually owns or licenses what or deal with adding more pictures because I do not like hamburgers that much. They never get any better yet cost more and more money. There is a dump chain “wayback burgers” that also wants to evoke the 1950s even though it’s cheapest, smallest, most basic hamburger costs $7.19. I also must travel out of my WAY to get there and so choose not to go BACK. ah ha he.