Gordon Sheehan likes to recall how a scene he was animating in a Popeye cartoon called Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp was changed to avoid offending the public. In a scene where Popeye is tied up and about to be smashed to smithereens, his only chance of saving his life is to wiggle a can of spinach out of his hip pocket. While Sheehan was drawing the scene, Dave Fleischer came through the studio with visitors. By chance he picked up Sheehan’s drawings and flipped through them for his guests. Sheehan says: «After flipping my drawings, he seemed to get a little “shook-up” and put my drawings back on my desk without comment. Later that day, Dave Tendlar, the director, told me Dave [Fleischer] told him that my scene was too violently “suggestive” and that the action would have to be “toned down” to avoid any promiscuous sexual implications. This was something that never entered my mind, but I did as I was told, and modified the “offen- ding” actions».

Karl F. Cohen, Forbidden Animation, McFarland, 1997