>> I, Popeye the sailor man.

I'm Popeye the sailor man.

I'm strong to the finish cause I eat my spinach.

I'm Popeye the sailor man.

[MUSIC] I'm.

>> At one time, this cartoon character was more popular than Mickey Mouse, a working class hero.

This spinach eating sailor man is still considered one of the greatest cartoon characters of all time.

But why is this Southern Illinois community so enamored with Popeye?

We'll find out and take you to a museum created in his honor.

As we travel through Randolph County on Illinois.

Backroads.

[MUSIC] >> Man.

Popeye the sailor man.

>> Hi, I'm Mark Kiesling.

We're in Chester, Illinois, one of the great Mississippi River communities and one with a rich history.

Samuel Smith founded the town in the 1820s, naming it after his wife's hometown of Chester, England.

In the 1830s, the community was known for exporting castor oil.

In 1839, Nathan Cole began the city's first flour mill, which is still in operation as Ardent Mills.

Located right on the river, Cole used an electric generator to power the mill.

It created enough energy to also power electric street lights in town, giving Chester a convenience even Chicago did not have at that time.

But this city's greatest claim to fame is native son Elzie Crisler.

Seeger Elzie was born in 1894.

He and his family lived in a house not far from these steps, which run all the way from the river to the town on top of the hill.

One historian says Lsley would come down to these steps.

Have a seat and watch the barges load castor oil and other products.

Memories he would draw on later in life.

At the age of 12, he got his first paying job, one that would change his life.

[MUSIC] >> And it happened to be at the opera House where movies were shown.

Now, his job when he was 12, was to deliver the movie posters to all the places around town, and then to come back and do drawings on the sidewalk in chalk of the movies that were being shown at the opera House.

>> Eventually, L's worked his way into the job of projectionist, which would lead him to.

Drawing a course for his future.

>> When the movies were shown the first couple of times, he would of course watched the movie.

But when he began seeing the movie over and over and over again, he got a little bored.

And so he brought a pen and paper and started doodling as the movie was being shown.

And of course, the piano was accompanying it.

[MUSIC] >> It wasn't long before his boss noticed Elsie's talent.

[MUSIC] >> The two of them decided that Elsie should enroll in a correspondence course on drawing, and William, who was known as windy Bill Shugart.

We'll talk about that a little later.

Um, paid for it.

Okay, so Elsie worked very hard in this correspondence, uh, class with drawing and, and did in fact get better and better until he finally realized that his future was going to have to be in a big city to be able to do what he wanted to do.

So packed up, moved to Chicago.

[MUSIC] >> Lsley moved in with his half brother in Chicago, and soon a New York company came calling.

[MUSIC] >> When he got to New York City, he worked for the Hearst Corporation and was told he needed to come up with a cartoon centered around the theme.

Thimble Theatre.

So the first cartooning that he ever did was a series called Thimble Theatre.

It was made up of.

The main characters were the oil family o y l oil, coal oil was the father.

Nana oil was the mom, olive oil was the daughter, and castor oil was the son.

>> Those names Castor oil, coal oil in particular are kind of a homage to Seeger's hometown, right?

>> There's no doubt about that.

>> So let's talk about the connection between the town and the character Castor Oil.

>> Chester, in its earliest history, was known as a castor oil production center.

The.

There is a building still standing that.

The lower floor was a warehouse for castor oil awaiting big riverboats to come.

Load the castor oil on the ships and then take it wherever.

And so Elsie, as a young man, obviously saw this happening and, um, worked that into, uh, his, his history of cartooning by naming that whole family the oils.

>> And so, and then coal oil was named for a founding member or one of the original members of Chester.

Right.

>> The original mill in Chester in the early 1800s, was owned by a family whose last name was coal, and that mill is still in operation today, owned by the Ardent Company.

But it's has been a mill continuously since the 1800s.

>> And that's the longest continuously running mill in the US.

>> That's our understanding, yes.

>> Wow.

Cigar created the successful Thimble Theatre comic in 1919.

Ten years later, he added the character of Popeye, the sailor man who took over the script, becoming an iconic figure known worldwide.

Popeye was modeled after a real life sailor and Chester resident whom Seeger knew as a boy.

>> The gentleman, and that's using the word loosely that Popeye was modeled after, was named Rocky Frank, Rocky Fiegel.

He was known to be kind of a rough houser and had been hired by a local saloon to be what we would call a bouncer.

And there are stories about him doing just that to a number of folks and stories about, um, local youth sort of egging Rocky on to give him the reputation of a fighter.

>> In the 1930s, Popeye was so popular, he caused a 33% nationwide spike in spinach sales.

And he wasn't the only character based on a person from Seger's childhood in Chester.

So, Brenda, you were telling me that Seger started with the Thimble Theatre, and some of the original characters included the Royal Family and this young lady.

>> Olive oil.

>> So what can you tell us about Olive and the other characters we see?

>> Well, the other two characters are a little less known, but also very important.

Sweet pea up here.

And the Jeep Eugene the Jeep.

Now olive oil entered the Thimble Theatre in 1919 because she was one of the original oil family.

Um, Sweet Pea came along in 1933.

Now, there are varying stories about how Sweet Pea got to be the adopted infant as Popeye called Sweet Pea.

>> Okay.

>> And Sweet Pea is interesting in the fact that Swee'pea can talk and fight but can't walk.

>> Oh.

>> So you'll never see Sweet Pea walking in the comic strip.

Eugene, the Jeep is a magical character.

He can appear and disappear at will wherever he thinks he's needed.

The interesting thing about Eugene the Jeep is the word Jeep was never in the English language until Eugene the Jeep became a character.

And it's it's thought that possibly, um, the soldiers in World War two.

Renamed the vehicle Jeep because it could basically go anywhere.

Same as Eugene.

>> So how did the character of olive oil come about?

>> Well, olive oil was based upon a real person here in Chester who actually ran a store right here behind where the statue is.

It was a general store.

And folks would come in and she would, uh, the young folks in town would joke with her buying penny candy, but she was known as being tall and thin and always had her hair back in a bun and was fairly stern.

So that became the role model for olive.

>> Olive oil is one of 19 Seeger creations that make up the Popeye character trail.

It stretches throughout Chester.

Her dad, Cole Oil, can be found at the library.

He's inspired by the library's founder, C.B.

Cole.

That Arthur Conan Doyle book is a reference to Seeger's love of the Sherlock Holmes series.

Popeye's nemesis, Sea Hag, and her vulture Bernard camp outside the town's Walmart.

Another rival, Bluto, is seen flexing outside a local bank.

Yes, his name was later changed to Brutus and north of town, Popeye's ornery dad, Poopdeck Pappy, steers his ship with a cargo of spinach.

[MUSIC] Another character, based on a former Chester resident is found in Gazebo Park.

[MUSIC] So Brenda is getting close to lunchtime and I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

What do you say?

>> Well, that brings us right here to J. Wellington Wimpy, who was the hamburger loving character that Elsie Seger created, who we believe was modeled after his real life boss, William Shugart?

Now, William went by windy Bill because he was always known to have a story to tell.

And along with his storytelling came this love of hamburgers, which he sent Elsie to get on a regular basis from a tavern, Wiebusch tavern that was located right over there.

Hence, we've got J. Wellington Wimpy, who's had several burgers in his life and has become a well known and loved character.

[MUSIC] >> So, Brenda, this is the old opera house right where ABC Seeger got his start as a projectionist all those years ago.

>> Yes, this building is it.

There was an entrance on the back side as well that took you up to the second floor, which is where the opera House was.

>> And that's where they would show the movies.

>> That's where the movies were shown.

Yes.

>> This mural tells the story of Popeye joining the comic strip, reducing the roles of Olive oil's family members and her former love.

>> But poor old Ham gravy is facing the opposite direction with tears in his eyes because once Popeye entered the scene, ham gravy was virtually non-existent.

>> So not only did he was he written out of the script, but written out of Olive oil's life as well.

>> You bet.

[MUSIC] >> Just around the corner from the mural is a business dedicated to the town's hero and his friends.

[MUSIC] Spinach Can collectibles is owned by Mike and Debbie Brooks, who started the business in 1994.

It's located on the lower floor of the old opera House.

The theatre where Seeger once worked was located on the top floor.

The front half of the business is a retail store.

In the back is a museum dedicated to their favourite character, Mike.

Quite a place here.

Uh, how many items would you say you have here related to Popeye?

>> Uh, several thousand.

Let's just put it that way.

I don't want to get into the exact figures.

That's close enough.

>> And you were telling me earlier you have stuff that's not even out here.

You have more merchandise.

>> There's more merchandise, and there's more collectibles, too.

We kind of rotate those out and then the displays over the years.

So everybody, if they want to make multiple trips, then they get to see them all that way.

>> Oh, nice.

So can you give me a little bit of a tour of what you have on display?

>> I think what we'll do first is tell you that the oldest thing that we've got in here, Louis Marx, was The company that made tin toys back in the day, and they had another company called Linamar, which is the Japanese version of theirs in the 1950s.

This guy right here, Popeye with the parrot cages from 1931.

And the line ma stuff is like the little the the moving truck down there.

Now, the cameo company from 1936, they did the the Jeep theirs from 1936.

Eugene, the Jeep and Popeye over in the corner is also from the Cameo Company from that same era.

But they literally have done just about everything.

That alarm clock right there is from 1967.

Sweep.

His head clicks away.

The seconds as it as that thing runs.

Oh, and that's actually an English piece, a British piece.

>> So how did you come about all these different pieces?

>> We used to go places.

We used to go to a lot of places and look even some toy shows on occasion.

But once you are in this position here, you can't go anywhere anymore because you got to be here for other people to live, right?

So we've kind of changed roles over the years.

>> In the museum section, visitors are greeted by a wooden Popeye cutout made by a friend in Rochester, New York, who also created carvings of olive oil, sweet pea and Eugene the Jeep.

The museum includes many rare and memorable items.

>> Well, for example, some oddball stuff transistor radio shaped Popeye said 1958 in the box, believe it or not.

Wow.

And they did an assortment of all kinds of crazy stuff over the years, like the the Pepe puppet up here.

That's another one from the 1950s or early 1960s right there.

Uh, every era that you can think of practically these were out when I was a child.

These 1957 and 1961.

Jack in the box's, you know, this one, he pops out of a spinach can and when he's got the cloth outfit on.

And those are supposed to play on Popeye the Sailor man.

When you do the crank and he pops out at the, you know, at the at the right second.

And they did all kinds of other crazy stuff.

One of the, one of the things that we hear a lot when people are in here visiting is they'll, they'll see those gumball banks up there and they'll say, I had one of those when I was growing up.

That's from Hasbro toys.

>> Many of these collectibles come from overseas, showing how the Sailor Man's popularity traveled the world.

>> This silk doll is from England, as I recall.

Those two things there next to it are from Spain.

They're hot water bottles.

Oh, and an interesting piece of information about that particular one is olive oil.

You see there.

She's she's holding a sweet pea, right.

And Popeye is doing his thing strutting along there.

This company made one other product that made that made these water bottles.

And it's not a cartoon character.

The only other hot water bottle that they made was the Jayne Mansfield.

Now you'd have to be an older person to know who Jayne Mansfield was.

The Rubik's cubes down there are also from England, the Netherlands for a lot of these plates and dishes up here, including on the bottom down there.

Those two Christmas ornaments right there are actually from, uh, the um, Germany and from the Japan Olympics from 1964.

At the bottom, you see those wooden figures back there?

Those are from from the Olympics, actually, Olympic figures.

They're all doing something at Olympic related.

>> To give you an idea of Popeye's popularity worldwide, the Brooks have welcomed visitors from all 50 states and 99 countries.

>> She's got some French people that come here on a on a regular basis every year.

They don't.

They hardly speak English, but they know who Popeye is.

They love Popeye.

>> For Brooks and his visitors, many of these toys are a walk down memory lane to a simpler time.

>> And one of the clever toys.

And this goes back to 1956.

These guys right here are dying register banks.

And they're actually really, really clever.

You put your dimes in and you get $5 worth of dimes, and then it opens up and lets you get them out.

Otherwise you have to take a hammer to it and break it.

Here's the second part.

If you look at the one over here on this side, you see Popeye is much cruder than the Popeye there.

On the one on the right, on your right.

It's because this one was an illegal one that was being made without permission from King Features Syndicate.

They were busted and they came out with their own with the correct version of Popeye.

Color forms is another thing that they did multiple sets of back in the 1950s and 60s Popeye was the very first Colorforms character, celebrity type character that that company ever made.

When they when the Colorforms sets came out, those were those little, little plastic pieces.

And you peel them off and you make little scenes with them.

I don't know if you remember those things or not.

So you do remember them?

Yes.

And one of the things that's particularly interesting to me was this little magic play around.

Set.

This Amsco company did two characters.

Only two sets.

They're identical in the way they're set up with the.

With the the way the base is and so on and so forth.

But the two characters were Popeye and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

And, you know, because Westerns were big back in the 50s, as was Popeye.

Of course, the the other one has the horses and all the other thing on it.

But here you've got the Popeye group in there.

And the interesting thing to me about this was like a like a buck and a half.

When it originally sold back in 61, it was this was a bribe for me.

I was being taken to the doctor for a shot, and if I didn't complain about the shot, that was the payoff.

So I didn't complain about the shot.

Wow.

>> So above that are those finger puppets?

>> Those are those are hand puppets up above.

And, uh, some of them are from without the names on the front.

Those are from the 50s and the ones that have their names on them, wimpy, Popeye and olive oil and so forth.

Those are from the 60s.

So they literally have done pretty much everything.

Uh, this is the good one right here.

This, this Popeye, uh, holster set that's $0.98 came out about 1960.

Today, most people, when they come back here, they miss our signs up there that says museum area.

This stuff's not for sale back here.

And of course, little kids, they don't read anywhere, can't read at one point or another.

But we've had so many kids back here.

Usually boys, because boys are more into the cap gun thing.

They'll get down there and they're just sitting there, their mouths watering over that thing.

You know, they want that thing so badly and they try to convince an adult, usually a grandfather, because dads, a lot of dads don't know who Papa is either.

They don't know who Popeye is, but they know it's cap guns.

And they want and they'll try to use the con.

Look, it's only $0.98.

And I'll say, yeah, one like that today is about $400.

Wow.

>> Brooks credits Popeye's success to the fact that he was an everyman relatable to just about everyone.

>> So it wasn't long until he took over the comic strip, and Olive oil hated him at first, but she became his girlfriend later on, and in the early 1930s, they went to the movies.

Fleischer brothers animated them first, and he's been through Fleischer, he's been through Hanna-Barbera.

He's been through King Features Syndicate cartoons.

They did 220 cartoons with Popeye and him.

Altogether, he's in 646 cartoons, which is outnumbers Mickey Mouse by about 500 times.

We've got a lot of older stuff and a lot of new stuff, and it's a lot of hodgepodge mixture of everything, pretty much.

>> The Brooks spent many years traveling the country to find these vintage pieces.

>> We used to go to the fairgrounds a lot of times because you find a lot of stuff at fairgrounds and that sort of thing.

We used to go down to Dallas a lot because there's a lot of Popeye's stuff down there, and they also had some toy shows that way, and a lot of the people that are older than me and probably older than you too.

They were in.

They weren't into Popeyes so much.

They were collecting all the Western stuff, the Cowboys and stuff like that before.

And then Popeye became.

That was the next big thing was Popeye.

>> Did you acquire all of this, or are some of these donated by people who want to give them to the museum so that they other people can see them?

>> We've probably got maybe a half a dozen pieces like that.

Maybe there's not that many that have actually been done.

Some relatives would die and the family didn't know what to do with it, and so it ended up here.

That's usually the scenario that follows that situation.

>> So.

So the rest of it you've acquired.

>> We've acquired over the years by one means or another.

The tin toys are actually this older fella.

This goes back a ways to all those tins that you see in there.

It's about pretty much every ten you see in there was once belonged to him.

So he made us a deal that we couldn't refuse more or less.

And so we ended up with them.

There's a, an old rowboat toy from 1935.

I think from the Hodge Company, where Popeye rows the little boat and sells for $20,000 at an auction.

Now.

>> If you want to take home a souvenir of your visit, Spinach Can collectibles has that covered too.

>> And believe it or not, the most popular thing out of all the junk we got up here for sale.

You know, the the videos and all that sort of stuff is t shirts.

People love t shirts.

And you know, even the kids love t shirts.

Whether they know who Popeye is or not didn't seem to matter.

>> The Brooks also have a section of comics and other books featuring Popeye and his friends.

>> Well, those are reprints.

The Dell Company from 1948 to 1962 did original Popeye comics.

They did a. What was the total?

50, 60, 65 of them all total.

And these are reprints of those original Dell comics that some gentleman took it upon himself to to do that in a limited capacity, and we at once.

Yeah.

Craig Yeo was the guy's name y o e. And this is what we have left of that of that series of books.

>> And they're never short on Popeye trivia and information.

>> Incidentally, I got to ask you a question.

Sure.

I, I assume you guys watch the cartoons a lot, right?

>> You're.

>> You're.

>> Younger.

Do you got do you have a mental image in your head?

Inside your head?

What, you think the voice actor that did Popeye would look like or what?

You think the guy that did Brutus or Bluto might look like, or the woman who did olive oil.

>> You know, I guess if I it would be similar to Popeye.

I mean, that's just like that Popeye voice.

I would expect it to come out of somebody looking like Popeye with that, you know, like kind of scrunched up face.

>> Well, actually, these are the these are the people right here.

That's Jack Mercer.

That's Popeye.

This is Mae Questel.

She's Olive Oyl and also Betty Boop.

And this Jackson Beck, Bluto Brutus.

That's probably blows you all of your mental images right there.

>> Mae Questel later played Aunt Bethany in the holiday movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

>> Are we boring you enough yet?

>> This is great, I love it.

>> I could bore you to death if you want us to.

>> There is much more to see in Chester.

The city has maps allowing you to take a self-guided tour of the character trail.

There are also QR codes on each statue providing a link to information.

If you plan to visit.

Brenda suggests making the Welcome Center your first stop.

>> The Welcome Center houses lots of information.

First of all, you can find historic information about Chester.

You can find historic information about the river.

You can also find all kinds of brochures that will take you to all the fun places around town, including numerous Popeyes statues, and you'll find a penny press machine where you can make likenesses of the four main Popeye characters on pennies.

[MUSIC] >> A couple quarters.

[MUSIC] A crank of the handle and you have a little souvenir of your visit to Popeye's hometown.

[MUSIC] Make sure you stop by this historic river town as you travel the Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC] >> J Wellington wimpy, the hamburger eating friend is right over to our right.

Yep, that was not so good.

[MUSIC] >> So, Brenda, I hear there's another character.

>> Uh, it's hard for me to move my mouth.

[MUSIC]