Situation: Popeye the Sailor was over 80 years old and still had a loyal following, but mostly amongst cartoon buffs and collectors of the licensing and merchandising items. He had been phenomenally popular during his heyday, but no new entertainment vehicles had featured the character in almost 20 years. Hearst Entertainment and King Features realized the enormous latent potential the character embodied if he could come to life for new, younger generations of fans through television or film appearances. He was widely recognized by younger audiences, but there was serious concern that his appearance, actions and attitude made him seem too old fashioned and unattractive to be relevant to modern kids.

Symptoms:

• Primary fan base of the character was aging baby boomers but did not include younger viewers.

• Reruns of Popeye cartoons were fading from television—reducing the potential for younger viewers to meet the character.

• Two previous attempts to revitalize the character had not been successful (Popeye the Movie, Popeye & Son television series.)

• Licensees and prospective licensees showed a great deal of interest in the character but wanted to know where Popeye was going in entertainment before embarking on anything concrete.

Solution:As with most venerable characters, it was essential to begin by distinguishing between relevance and fashion. The temptation to focus on making a character look more contemporary usually does more harm than good. Being relevant and contemporary is about the way characters look at things, not about the way characters and things look.

Revitalizing Popeye meant rediscovering the depth and vitality in him rather than inventing a new version of the character. At Camp, we explored the idea that the way to make him more engaging to contemporary audiences was to re-establish the complexity of his world and the dynamics of his relationships. In particular, Popeye stories had come to revolve almost exclusively around the love triangle between Popeye, Olive and Bluto, with spinach playing more of the hero role than Popeye himself. While this was fertile story material, it had quickly been reduced to a simplistic and predictable Popeye "formula." Formulas for character behavior and storylines inexorably wring the life out of the characters they are designed to perpetuate, rendering them boring and tired. The answer for Popeye was to explore the themes that originally connected him to audiences and examine which of these themes were still relevant and how. What we discovered was that Popeye had all the makings of a thoroughly modern character already built into him—these elements simply had not been part of any of his more recent incarnations, which relied almost exclusively on the Popeye love triangle and spinach formula.

The Popeye Character Sourcebook that resulted from camp describes a relevant, revitalized Popeye but one that is also deeply grounded in who the character has been in the past. It details his motivations, his world and the ensemble of supporting characters in great depth. Based on the Popeye Sourcebook, a script is in development for an hour-long TV special that will launch the newly revitalized 80-year-old sailor in a way that will connect him with young audiences without alienating his diehard fans.