Capt. Jim's Popeye Club
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Capt. Jim's Popeye Club was a local children's television series during the 1970s, which showed Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons. Captain Jim was played by Jim Martin, who is now a puppeteer for Sesame Street. The series was described as a "classic" in 2005, by Bob Karlovits of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
On Sept. 9, 2006, the daughter of the host, Cindy (Eckman), inserted a note on this page in an imprpoer style (she may not have been aware of Wikipedia's standards).
In statement, she said that her father, Ted Eckman, played Captain Jim. She said that the reason his character's name was "Jim" instead of "Ted" was because another person was using the "Captain Ted" name. She said that this other person's name was Jim but that it could not have been Jim Martin as he was too young to have hosted the show. Jim Martin was a frequent guest of the show as "Bimbo the Clown," Cindy said.
Cindy also said that the "Captain Jim" show was broadcast from 1959 to about 1965 in an after-school time slot with Popeye cartoons. She said that this version of the show ran for an hour.
The second version, according to Cindy, was a half-hour show broadcast starting in 1970 and running for "a few years." This show ran in the early-morning hours targeted for pre-schoolers. It contained the syndicated series "New Zoo Revue".
Another "Popeye Club" series, hosted by "Officer Don" (actually local radio announcer Don Kennedy) had a long run on local television in Atlanta, Georgia, beginning in the late 1950's. It was telecast on WSB-TV, at that time the local NBC affiliate, on weekdays from 5:00 to 6:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. In addition to showing "Popeye" catoons (both old and new), it featured interviews with celebrities promoting family film such as Born Free, and children's games such as "Untie the Knot", musical chairs, and most famously, "Ooey-Gooey", a game which featured four grocery bags which rotated on a platform. Three of them contained groceries, but the fourth always contained a gooey mixture of egg yolk and other items. The contestant (always a child, although Officer Don occasionally played) would be blindfolded, the platform would be turned, and then the contestant was required to stick his/her hand into one of the grocery bags, not knowing if they would clutch a grocery item or the gooey mixture.
