Capt. Jim's Popeye Club was a local Pittsburgh 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.
Captain Jim was originally played by Jim Saunders who was later replaced by Ted Eckman, who used the name "Jim" instead of "Ted" was because another person was using the "Captain Ted" name. The "Captain Jim" show is further asserted to have been broadcast from 1959 to about 1965 in an after-school time slot with Popeye cartoons, with this version of the show running for an hour. This broadcast ran on WIIC-TV, now WPXI.
The second version 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".
An earlier "Popeye Club" series, hosted by "Officer Don" (actually local radio announcer and actor Don Kennedy) had a long run of more than ten years on local television in Atlanta, Georgia, beginning in the late 1950s. It was telecast on WSB-TV (WPXI's sister station), 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" cartoons (both old and new), it featured interviews with celebrities promoting family films, such as Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers talking about the their newly-released film Born Free , and children's games such as "Untie the Knot", musical chairs, and most famously, "Ooey-Gooey". This was 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.
The WSB-TV version not only showed the old Popeye cartoons but also those created especially for the TV series Popeye the Sailor. However in Pittsbugh, ABC affiliate WTAE-TV also aired a Popeye related program that featured the 1960-62 TV series while WIIC had the theatrical versions.