Watertown, MA -- Well blow me down: Popeye fans won't be allowed to see the original Popeye cartoons on DVD.

King Features Syndicate, which owns rights to the cartoon character, has just decided it will not allow Warner Bros., which owns rights to the classic Popeye cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s, to release the shorts on DVD.

That has cartoon fans like Jerry Beck, who runs cartoonresearch.com, fighting mad. He says from an archival point of view, young people today are losing out by not seeing the original Popeye cartoons, yet they can get -- in his opinion, "the 1950s crappy Popeye on DVD." He says, "[King] is cutting their own throats."

Likewise, Popeye historian Fred Grandinetti was hoping the deal would go through, if not for him, for the sake of the children. He loans videotapes of old Popeye episodes he's recorded from TV to children's hospitals but, unfortunately, his supply is limited.

Now he fears kids will never get to see the films he hasn't managed to record on tape. In his words, "Business is business, but for crying out loud we're on earth to make people happy."

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