Perisphere & Trylon reintroduces Popeye at Toy Fair

Perisphere & Trylon specializes in retro toys, and at the Toy Industry Association's 114th North American International Toy Fair, which closed Tuesday at the Javits Center, it dusted off an old doozy.

Its new Popeye the Sailor Man Game displayed the original artwork of the 1940s-'50s The Adventures of Popeye Game, as it was called in its original issue. And now, all these decades later, it couldn't be more timely, said P&T owner Dodd Harris.

"This time in our culture," Harris said, "we need a disenfranchised sailor to take on an unmovable brute--and I won't say who that brute is. I'm just a toy man!"

But Harris did say that Popeye was a "heroic character" who has been "in demand for years," who's now "come around again" to the licensed toy market—this time with the symbolic significance.

Meanwhile, a toy tradesman was at the other end of the P&T exhibitor's booth, admiring its Build Your Own Internal Combustion Engine kit, already assembled and perched atop a column of other working toy model engines.

"They don’t' teach combustion engines in school anymore," Harris lamented to the tradesman, who was clearly thrilled to at least spot one at Toy Fair.