{"id":7594,"date":"2021-07-01T10:11:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T14:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=7594"},"modified":"2021-07-01T10:11:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T14:11:51","slug":"the-strange-case-of-the-popeye-paddle-wagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=7594","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Case of the Popeye Paddle-Wagon"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I’m hoping this will be just the first part of what will eventually be a longer post once I’ve uncovered more information… but for now, here’s what I know about a peculiar Popeye toy that I’d forgotten about until pretty recently. <\/p>\n

2020 marked the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Robert Altman-directed film adaptation of Popeye and as a tie-in there was (finally!) a blu-ray version of the film released. This movie was a childhood favorite of mine (and the blu-ray is only $10.00<\/a>?) so I picked it up. I don’t have much to compare it to other than vague memories of what it looked like on VHS, but the print looks great. The extra features are pretty anemic, but whatevs, I’ll take what I can get.<\/p>\n

While watching the final (and admittedly, kinda languidly-paced) boat chase scene, I noticed the design of this boat. Note that this is a view of the back of the boat:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Sorry about the picture quality.  My computer’s so old it won’t play blu-rays, so I had to take a picture of the screen!)<\/p>\n

What caught my eye about this is that the vessel has a number of design similarities with a toy I used to have as a child, the Popeye “Paddle-Wagon.” This toy was apparently made by Corgi, and was part of a line of “Corgi Comics” vehicles. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The two most obvious similarities are the paddlewheels themselves and the rear-mounted, suspended life boat. The smokestacks are also pretty similar–although not exact duplicates. <\/p>\n

So, what’s up with these two vehicles? Seems like these are the possibilities:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They’re both based on some pre-existing vehicle from Popeye comics or cartoons<\/li>\n
  2. The design of the boat in the Altman film is influenced by the toy<\/li>\n
  3. Complete coincidence <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I started by seeing what I could turn up about the toy. I found a picture of the toy in the original box and was curious about the “Corgi Comics” badge.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    I dug around to find out what other vehicles were part of this line, but I turned up very little. Curiously this “Noddy<\/a>” vehicle is shown next to the Paddle-Wagon in a 1970-71 Corgi catalog… but Noddy is a children’s book character, not a character from comics. <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    That same catalog has a Batmobile, but it’s apparently not a part of the Corgi Comics line (which makes since, since it’s the Batmobile from the 1966 TV show).<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Despite my well-known love of Popeye, the only stuff I’m really super-familiar with are the E.C. Segar Thimble Theater<\/em> strips and the Fleischer cartoons. I couldn’t recall anything even vaguely resembling the Paddle-Wagon from either of those sources, and the only thing a Twitter call-out yielded was this boat\/car from the later cartoon episode Ace of Space<\/em>:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

    Obviously, there’s no real resemblance here other than the general concept of a car combined with some boat aesthetics.<\/p>\n

    So… a dead end.<\/p>\n

    But, If anyone has any further info on the Paddle-Wagon, please contact me via email (in the nav bar above) or via a comment to this post!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So, I’m hoping this will be just the first part of what will eventually be a longer post once I’ve uncovered more information… but for now, here’s what I know about a peculiar Popeye toy that I’d forgotten about until pretty recently.  2020 marked the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Robert Altman-directed film adaptation of … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-1Yu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7594"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7605,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions\/7605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}