"Jeep Tale" is a 1960 Popeye the Sailor episode about Eugene the Jeep. It is a parody of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, as it shows that Eugene was a fatherless, unruly child with three sisters (who, on the other hand, would behave).
Plot
Curious, Swee'Pea asks Popeye how Eugene the Jeep learned to do so many tricks. As Eugene is continually bouncing on his tail and disappearing/reappearing, Popeye says that Eugene had to learn it the hard way, and starts telling a story.
In the story, Eugene lives with his mother and sisters Flipsy, Mipsy, and Tossytail in a jeep house (in a tree), and there are farmers on opposite sides: a good farmer (Popeye, still dressed in his sailor oufit) with a spinach garden on one side, and a bad farmer (Brutus, still dressed in his casual outfit) with a thistle patch on the other. He says that he raises thistles because jeeps are "pests." Mama Jeep hisses at him, but the Bad Farmer laughs. Because of this, Swee'Pea says he (the Bad Farmer) was mean, and Popeye agrees, revealing that Mama Jeep taught her children how to disappear, flash their noses, heat signal, and bounce on their tails, but gets angry with Eugene because he refuses to participate. Swee'Pea rubs it in Eugene's face for having been a bad boy, much to the latter's shame.
One day, Eugene's sisters go to the Good Farmer's garden to pick up spinach, but Eugene, refusing to eat spinach, goes to the Bad Farmer's to pick thistles while the latter is asleep, but he wakes up and tries to stab Eugene with a thistle, but instead stabs the part of his hammock where his rear end is, and then falls up and back onto the ground, and throws thistles at Eugene as he runs off. Not knowing how to disappear, Eugene hides in a tool chest, but it is exploded, and the Bad Farmer captures him and locks him in a cage. When Swee'Pea points out that the Bad Farmer was real mean, Popeye points out the latter was "meaner than that."
The Bad Farmer starts to chop down the jeeps' tree, but Mama Jeep makes the ax vanish, causing him to slam his fingers onto the tree, and she holds the ax. Angry with Mama Jeep, the Bad Farmer runs to fetch the ax back, but the Good Farmer offers to take the ax, so she gives it to him and vanishes just as the Bad Farmer is close to her, so he crashes into the fence. When the Bad Farmer points out his detestion of jeeps, the Good Farmer tells him it is because jeeps are too smart for him. Mama Jeep reappears and bounces her tail onto the Bad Farmer's face, much to the Good one's content. She bounces to her tree and vanishes to make the Bad Farmer crash into it and then hypnotizes him into feeling funny and thinking he is a jeep, and he keeps bouncing onto his bottom, much to the Good Farmer and Mama Jeep's amusement, the latter being when he bounces onto his own thistles near his cage, to Flipsy, Mipsy, and Tossytail's delight, and then Eugene, seeing him coming, disappears from the cage just as the Bad Farmer ends up in it in his place, still exclaiming in pain.
Swee'Pea questions Eugene as to whether he learned his lesson. Eugene agrees, and so does Popeye, explaining that is why he is so smart today, and Eugene continues to do tricks.
Trivia
As this is a parody of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Eugene is in the Peter Rabbit role, his sisters are in the role of Peter's, Mama Jeep is in Mrs. Rabbit's role and Brutus (as the Bad Farmer) is in Mr. McGregor's. However, there was no good counterpart to Mr. McGregor like Popeye in this episode.
External links
- Jeep Tale at the Internet Movie Database