Popeye Trivia
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49 free Popeye trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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 49 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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which classic Nintendo game was first designed as a Popeye game?
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong. Shigeru Miyamoto first sketched it around Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto, who were then redrawn as Mario, Pauline and the gorilla.
Q 02Popeye first appeared in 1929 as a bit player in which ten-year-old comic strip?
Thimble Theatre
Thimble Theatre had starred Olive Oyl and her boyfriend since 1919, but the walk-on sailor took over so completely that the strip was later renamed Popeye.
Q 03Popeye debuted in January 1929, days after which European comics hero?
Tintin
Tintin reached print on January 10, 1929, one week before Popeye, a sailor his creator meant to use only once.
Q 04Frank "Rocky" Fiegel, believed to have inspired Popeye, was known locally for what?
Getting into fistfights
Getting into fistfights. Fiegel was a tough, pipe-smoking local whom the cartoonist remembered from boyhood, and his gravestone now bears an engraving of Popeye.
Q 05Doctors call the bulge left by a torn tendon in which muscle the "Popeye sign"?
Biceps
Biceps. A torn tendon lets the muscle bunch into a ball above the elbow, a bulge doctors named for the cartoon sailor's arms.
Q 06Bernice, whose head feathers gave Popeye luck in his first story, was what kind of bird?
A whiffle hen
A whiffle hen. Rubbing Bernice's head let Popeye survive a hail of bullets, making him indestructible two years before spinach entered the strip.
Q 07Popeye left the strip after his first adventure in 1929; what brought him back within weeks?
Reader demand
Reader demand. Popeye had been hired only to crew one voyage, but the audience missed him so much that he returned for good and became the star within a year.
Q 08Who was Olive Oyl's original boyfriend before she left him for Popeye in 1930?
Ham Gravy
Ham Gravy, short for Harold Hamgravy, had been the strip's leading man since 1919, yet he was written out within weeks of losing Olive.
Q 09What is the name of Olive Oyl's brother, an early protagonist of the strip?
Castor Oyl
Castor Oyl ran the get-rich-quick schemes that drove the early stories, and one of them, a voyage to a casino island, is why he hired a sailor called Popeye.
Q 10How did baby Swee'Pea join Popeye's household in the 1933 comic strip?
Left as a foundling
Left as a foundling, the baby was adopted by Popeye; later stories revealed him as the crown prince of Demonia, hidden from a scheming uncle.
Q 11J. Wellington Wimpy is famous for promising to pay on which day for a hamburger today?
Tuesday
Tuesday. In the strip Wimpy never pays up, a running joke that a Bank of America ad later cashed in on by showing him finally settling his hamburger debts by phone.
Q 12Eugene, the yellow doglike animal from Africa with magical powers, is what kind of creature?
A Jeep
A Jeep. Eugene joined the strip in 1936, and the Army's wartime jeep is thought to owe its name partly to him, alongside the initials G.P. for general purpose.
Q 13Which character began as the Sea Hag's bodyguard and ended up as Swee'Pea's babysitter?
Alice the Goon
Alice the Goon so frightened young readers that parents complained, and she was softened from the Sea Hag's enforcer into a gentle nursemaid.
Q 21Why was cartoonist Bobby London fired from the daily Popeye strip in 1992?
An abortion storyline
An abortion storyline, told through a doll, got him sacked, and the daily Popeye has run nothing but reprints ever since.
Q 22On January 1, 2025, what happened to the 1929 strip that introduced Popeye?
It entered the public domain
It entered the public domain, 95 years after it first ran, so anyone may now reuse the 1929 sailor, though King Features still holds the Popeye trademarks.
Q 23Popeye's first regular cartoon of 1933 took its title from which of his catchphrases?
I Yam What I Yam
Q 14Which old sailor did Popeye find in 1936, only to be rejected?
Poopdeck Pappy
Poopdeck Pappy is Popeye's long-lost father, and a far rougher character than his son: when finally found, the old man just wanted to be left alone.
Q 15In the original 1930s comic strip, how often did Popeye's rival Bluto appear?
In a single story arc
In a single story arc: his creator never used Bluto again, and it was the cartoons that turned the one-off bully into Popeye's permanent rival.
Q 16As World War II loomed, the cartoon Popeye enlisted in which service?
The US Navy
The US Navy. He enlisted in 1941's The Mighty Navy, traded his dark shirt for an all-white uniform and spent a string of wartime cartoons fighting the Axis.
Q 17E. C. Segar often signed his Popeye strips with a small drawing of what?
A cigar
A cigar. The little doodle beside his signature was a pronunciation guide: Segar is said SEE-gar.
Q 18Which newspaper baron owned King Features, the syndicate that launched Popeye?
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst ordered the strip up in 1919 as a knock-off, to replace a movie-parody comic whose cartoonist had just walked out on him.
Q 19Whose mirror-polished steel sculpture of Popeye sold for $28 million in 2014?
Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons. Casino magnate Steve Wynn paid the $28 million and put the gleaming sailor on show at one of his resorts.
Q 20Which former assistant to Popeye's creator later took over the comic strip and drew it for decades?
Bud Sagendorf
Bud Sagendorf drew the daily strip until 1986 and the Sunday page until he died in 1994, and papers that run the daily today are still printing his old stories.
I Yam What I Yam launched his own series later in 1933, after a guest spot in another star's cartoon proved the sailor could carry films of his own.
Q 24Which comedian played Popeye in the 1980 live-action musical film?
Robin Williams
Robin Williams was still starring in TV's Mork & Mindy when he played the sailor, and film stardom waited seven more years, until Good Morning, Vietnam.
Q 25In the 1930s, the Popeye cartoons rivaled those of which other cartoon star in popularity?
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse. Popeye reached the screen only in 1933, yet within a few years his cartoons were rivaling the mouse's as the most popular of the day.
Q 26Popeye was shrugging off bullets in 1929, nine years before which comic-book hero made his debut?
Superman
Superman arrived in 1938, by which time the indestructible sailor had been surviving gunfire for years, which is why Popeye is often called a forerunner of the superheroes.
Q 27Jack Mercer, the voice of Popeye for decades, also voiced which cartoon cat on 1950s TV?
Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat. Mercer supplied nearly every voice in the 1958 series, hero and villains alike, while still playing Popeye in new TV cartoons.
Q 28Mae Questel, the longtime voice of Olive Oyl, was already famous as the voice of whom?
Betty Boop
Betty Boop. Questel had been boop-oop-a-dooping since 1931, but for Olive's voice she said she was imitating the actress ZaSu Pitts.
Q 29When first asked in 1929 whether he was a sailor, what did Popeye sarcastically say he might be taken for?
A cowboy
A cowboy. "'Ja think I'm a cowboy?" was Popeye's very first line, and the wisecrack got him hired on the spot for what was meant to be his only voyage.
Q 30Pinto Colvig, one of Bluto's voices around 1939, was the original voice of which Disney character?
Goofy
Goofy. Colvig left Disney in the late 1930s for the Popeye studio in Miami, where he growled as Bluto, then returned to play Goofy until his death in 1967.