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Popeye the Sailor is well known for his penchant for spinach, and the popularity of the character led to generations of children being force-fed often-overcooked greens of that variety in the hopes of their growing up strong. Though spinach does not lack in nutritional value, particularly when raw, it is to be questioned how many doting mothers were aware that Popeye’s spinach is actually a joke, and that the vegetable represents cocaine — a drug very popular in the creative milieu that spawned Popeye, and whose effects include immediate increases in strength.
Though this may have begun as a jest at the expense of the benighted rubes of farmland America on the part of weary sophisticates who were well aware of the sailor’s favourite green’s true semiotic signification, cocaine can be said to have greatly aided the spinach industry, as sales of the green tripled during the years of Popeye’s initial fame—and doubled again once frozen spinach became readily available.
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First, must be the spinach!
I was one of those fifties children who ate spinach because of Popeye and truly thought that it would give me the power to beat my dad in a wrestling match. For some reason, it never worked, but I still love spinach to this day.
In regard to the cocaine metaphor, I had never heard of this before – highly (dare I say “damn”) interesting, and I was drawn to check it through Duck, Duck Go. I did indeed find a reference to cocaine but more to marijuana and hemp.
This one, though, I found to be the most humorous: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/12/06/3384516.htm
JarvisLoop – loved the link. So I searched “Why does Popeye eat spinach” and found dozens of hits propagating the error that is described in your link.
JD:
I’m glad that you liked the link – and thanks for letting me know!
Just curious, what is the source for the article’s claim that the real source of Popeye’s strength was cocaine and the spinach was intended as some sort of inside joke by the artists that created Popeye?
No mention of Popeye’s start in a newspaper strip? Created by E. C. Segar, “Thimble Theatre” introduced him many years into the run. First he got strength from a “whiffle hen,” and later spinach. It was exaggerated in the animated shorts, but it wasn’t like Popeye was getting high from it.
When has cocaine never been popular, in one way or another?
This article makes it sound like there was a group of people controlling the Popeye strip, but it was just one guy.
https://www.geekslop.com/features/entertainment/comic-books/2020/before-popeye-gained-superhuman-strength-by-eating-spinach-he-became-strong-by-rubbing-a-whiffle-hen