Welcome to 1935… As Popeye points out in January 2’s panel, the public is still laffin’ at the 1934 pictures, and the hilarity would build even further.
Interestingly, even though the Fleischer lineup had expanded to include the Color Classics by this point, they almost never promoted the series, or the Screen Songs, in the Paramount Sales News panels. For years, it was only Popeye and Betty.
One thing I’ve noticed looking at these chronologically is that Hal Seeger’s handling of Popeye is getting stronger, evoking the strongest animation of Popeye in the January 16 and February 27 panels. Navel fetishists note February 22’s panel highlights Betty as the “cutest thing in shorts,” even though the Fleischer artists were covering her with more and more clothes!
(Click each image below to enlarge)
01-02-1935
01-09-1935
01-16-1935
01-23-1935
01-30-1935
02-06-1935
02-13-1935
02-20-1935
02-27-1935
Below: A sample of what the Paramount salesmen were selling to the theaters at the time these promotional pieces above appeared in print.
Above: Beware Of Barnacle Bill (released January 25th, 1935)
Below: Baby Be Good (released January 18th, 1935)
THAD KOMOROWSKI is a writer, journalist, film restorationist and author of the acclaimed (and recently revised) Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. He blogs at 
Apparently, Hal Seeger was born in May 1917, so that means he was drawing these promotional ads when he was 17. Pretty outstanding.
I’m amazed at the 1935 sexy Betty Boop add. By then all hints of eroticism had been removed from her cartoons.
Love seeing these every week..raises a question..whatever happened to volume 4 of the Popeye cartoons…the ones from the 40’s and 50’s. Any update? Thanks.
What happened? The DVD market tanked. I don’t want to go off topic here, but Warners will release the color Famous Studios Popeye’s in subsequent volumes someday, to piggy back on the publicity of Sony’s new Genndy Tartakovsky CG Popeye feature. The earliest it may come out at this point may be 2016 or 2017 – and I’ll add this will happen IF the current management of Warner Home Video are still there and IF the DVD market doesn’t sink any lower than it is today. There simply isn’t enough return in the investment of restoring, mastering, marketing of such sets to warrant producing more sets of classic animation (at that studio) at this time.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions about why we don’t see any more good cartoon home video issues, Jerry. I’m afraid that by the time the new Popeye feature arrives, there may no longer be a DVD or even a Blu-Ray market. Studios by then will expect everyone to stream their catalog product whenever they choose to make it available.
Yeah, and I still don’t see the point on why stream something and not having a physical copy with you just in case.