Does spinach make you strong? Ask Popeye.. and science (Photo / CNN) Sat, 3 Jul 2021, 10:03AM If you were a kid raised anytime between the 1930s and the 1970s -- or raised by someone who was raised then -- chances are good that you grew up with the idea that spinach was a muscle builder par excellence. We owe that notion to a comic-strip cartoonist named Elzie Crisler Segar, who created a character that he based on a rough-edged, hard-drinking local from his Illinois hometown. Segar christened the character "Popeye," a sailor who debuted in a strip in 1929. By 1933, when he began to appear as one of the lead characters in an animated cartoon series called "Thimble Theatre," Popeye was getting instant strength from spinach.