Popeye and the Peacock

A peacock was featured prominently on NBC when I was a kid, so that may be the reason I remember seeing a peacock gag in one of the old Fleischer Popeyes way back then.

The bird appears in the Popeye debut cartoon in 1933. The peacock’s feathers block the entrance to a circus. You put a coin in the peacock’s mouth and it pulls in its feathers like a fan to let someone in.



Bluto comes along and decides to get around paying by blowing the feathers off the bird, leaving it like a denuded Christmas tree.



William Pennell is the voice of Bluto and sings a lyrically-modified version of the hit song from 1900 “Strike Up the Band (Here Comes a Sailor)” by Charles B. Ward and Andrew B. Sterling over the opening credits. You can read the original lyrics HERE.

Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall get the animation credits.

It’s kind of a shame a peacock is in black-and-white but that’s all I could see on my TV when I was a kid anyway. NBC’s “Living Color” peacock ended up being various shades of grey, too.