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50 free Popeye trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Popeye was a walk-on. E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre had run for almost a decade with Olive Oyl and her boyfriend Ham Gravy before a one-eyed sailor was hired to crew a boat in January 1929, got shot sixteen times, left the strip and was brought back five weeks later by reader demand. By 1938 the strip was in 500 newspapers and the cartoons had out-polled Mickey Mouse. These 50 questions cover the comic strip and its cast (Wimpy, Swee'Pea, the Sea Hag, Eugene the Jeep, Poopdeck Pappy), the Fleischer and Famous Studios shorts, the voices behind Popeye and Olive, the theme song, the spinach legend, Robert Altman's 1980 musical with Robin Williams, Popeye Village in Malta, the Chester, Illinois statues and the 2025 public-domain milestone. Every answer is cited to a page we checked. Play in sets of ten or print the list.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created Popeye?
E. C. Segar
Elzie Crisler Segar introduced him in Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. Fleischer animated him; Sagendorf, Segar's assistant, later took over the strip.
Q 02Popeye first appeared as a minor character in which strip, then in its tenth year?
Thimble Theatre
The strip was already in its tenth year. It was later renamed Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye and eventually just Popeye.
Q 03In what year did Popeye make his comic-strip debut?
1929
The strip itself had begun on December 19, 1919, with Olive Oyl and Ham Gravy as its stars. The Fleischer cartoons followed in 1933.
Q 04Who is believed to have inspired Popeye?
A Chester, Illinois laborer
Frank "Rocky" Fiegel was a one-eyed, pipe-smoking brawler who nonetheless handed out candy to local children, including young Segar.
Q 05How many times was Popeye shot by the villain in his debut storyline?
Sixteen
He survived thanks to luck rubbed off Bernice the Whiffle Hen. Superhuman strength became permanent by the end of 1929 and was tied to spinach in 1931.
Q 06Bernice, whose head feathers gave Popeye luck in his first story, was what kind of bird?
A whiffle hen
Castor Oyl planned to use her luck to break the bank at a casino on Dice Island, which is why he hired Popeye to crew the boat.
Q 07After his first adventure ended, how long was Popeye gone before readers got him brought back?
Five weeks
He had been hired only to crew a ship. Reader reaction forced his return, and by 1930 he had taken over the strip.
Q 08Who was Olive Oyl's original boyfriend before she left him for Popeye in 1930?
Ham Gravy
Harold Hamgravy was a lounge-lizard slacker who starred in Thimble Theatre from 1919. He exited the strip weeks after Olive switched.
Q 09What is the name of Olive Oyl's brother, an early protagonist of the strip?
Castor Oyl
Castor's get-rich-quick schemes drove the early stories; he later settled down as a detective. Cole is their father, Nana their mother.
Q 10How did Popeye come to adopt Swee'Pea in July 1933?
The baby arrived in the mail
Swee'Pea is Popeye's ward in the strip, but the cartoons were inconsistent and sometimes made him Olive's cousin.
Q 11J. Wellington Wimpy is famous for promising to pay on which day for a hamburger today?
Tuesday
The line settled into its famous form in March 1932. Diner owner Rough-House once explained that Wimpy simply never comes around on Tuesdays.
Q 12Eugene, the yellow doglike animal from Africa with magical powers, is what kind of creature?
A Jeep
Eugene the Jeep debuted March 17, 1936. The name later attached to the military vehicle and was trademarked by Willys-Overland.
Q 13Which monster began as the Sea Hag's henchwoman and ended up as Swee'Pea's babysitter?
Alice the Goon
The Sea Hag herself, a pirate described as the last witch on Earth, debuted in January 1930 and keeps a favorite vulture named Bernard.
Q 21Which cartoonist was fired from the daily strip in 1992 over a story seen as satirizing abortion?
Bobby London
London had modernized the strip since 1986. The daily has run Sagendorf reprints ever since; Eisman drew the Sunday page from 1994 to 2022.
Q 22On January 1, 2025, what happened to the 1929 strip that introduced Popeye?
It entered the public domain
King Features never renewed most early strips, so everything before May 4, 1933, is public domain too, though the Popeye trademark remains.
Q 23Popeye made his film debut in 1933 in a cartoon officially starring which Fleischer character?
Betty Boop
Q 14Popeye's long-lost father, a 99-year-old sailor, goes by what name?
Poopdeck Pappy
He arrived in the strip on September 26, 1936, and later showed up in the Paramount cartoons too.
Q 15In Segar's original strip, how often did Bluto actually appear?
In a single story arc
Bluto debuted September 12, 1932. It was the Fleischer cartoons that made the Popeye-Olive-Bluto love triangle the standard plot.
Q 16Which studio turned spinach into Popeye's trademark by having him eat a can whenever he needed strength?
Fleischer Studios
In Segar's strip Popeye's strength was mostly permanent; Max Fleischer saw the can of spinach as a repeatable gag.
Q 17Segar sometimes signed his early strips with a drawing of what, a pun on his surname?
A cigar
Segar is pronounced SEE-gar. He was earning $100,000 a year from King Features by the time he died in 1938.
Q 18A 1937 Fortune poll ranked Popeye readers' second-favorite strip behind which one?
Little Orphan Annie
By 1938 Thimble Theatre ran in 500 newspapers with over 600 licensed Popeye products on sale.
Q 19How many newspapers carried the Popeye strip by 1938?
500
Segar died that October, aged 43; his assistant Bud Sagendorf eventually took over both the daily and Sunday strips in 1959.
Q 20Segar's former assistant who took over the strip and defined its look for decades was who?
Bud Sagendorf
Sagendorf drew the daily strip until 1986 and the Sunday until his death in 1994. Today's daily strips are reprints of his stories.
Betty has only a cameo; the short really introduces Popeye, Olive and Bluto. By 1936 Popeye had replaced her as the studio's star.
Q 24Which studio released the Fleischer Popeye cartoons to theaters?
Paramount Pictures
Paramount took control of Fleischer Studios in 1942, renamed it Famous Studios, and kept making Popeye shorts until 1957.
Q 25Theater-owner polls in the 1930s found Popeye more popular than which rival cartoon star?
Mickey Mouse
Paramount even sponsored Saturday-matinee Popeye Clubs to compete with Mickey Mouse Clubs, and Popeye held the lead for the rest of the decade.
Q 26Who wrote the theme song "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man" in 1933?
Sammy Lerner
Studio composer Sammy Timberg wrote the Betty Boop and Superman themes but handed Popeye's to Lerner because he had a date that night.
Q 27Which voice actor replaced original Popeye voice Billy Costello in 1935 and played him for decades?
Jack Mercer
Mercer was an in-betweener at Fleischer who did Costello impressions; he debuted in King of the Mardi Gras and voiced Popeye into the 1980s.
Q 28Mae Questel, the longtime voice of Olive Oyl, was already famous as the voice of whom?
Betty Boop
She modeled Olive's delivery on actress ZaSu Pitts, and in the wartime short Shape Ahoy she voiced Popeye himself.
Q 29Mae Questel based Olive Oyl's voice on which actress?
ZaSu Pitts
Questel played Olive from 1933 into the 1960s, apart from a Florida interlude when Jack Mercer's wife Margie Hines took over.
Q 30Which voice of Disney's Goofy also briefly voiced Bluto between 1938 and 1940?
Pinto Colvig
Gus Wickie is usually considered the most memorable Bluto; Jackson Beck took the role at Famous Studios and kept it into the 1960s.