My mother said it’s some sort of cartoon character from long ago, I know I have heard it, but cannot place it, any takers??
It’s from Lil Abner, and it was a species, not just a character.
While the page I found this on ( http://www.well.com/user/jay/shmoo.html )was not strictly about shmoos and L’il Abner, I thought these parageaphs covered the subject:
yes, if i recal correctly, it was a friendly white blob that could take any shape he particularly wanted. originally from an ollld comic strip ( prob’ly lil’ Abner or some such), but was breifly resurected for a few late scooby doo’s ( or at least i seem to remember they tried a “scooby doo and the new schmoo” shortly before they introduced “scrapy doo”)
-luckie
of course, i could be wrong on all counts…
Somewhere, I have a book called Vintage Aircraft Nose Art. Unfortunately, I’m eagerly awaiting a move to the Pacific Northwest and have packed it away; otherwise I could scan a picture from it. There’s a photo of “The Big Shmoo”, IIRC a B-29 Superfortress based in the Pacific Theatre in WWII. The art depicts a shmoo.
The New Shmoo may or may not have appeared on Scooby Doo. He did however have his own show for at least a brief period, probably in the late 70’s or early 80’s. I remember the theme song:
“It’s the New Shmoo, the incredible New Shmoo.”
For some reason, I think he got his start on Space Ghost before taking his career solo. Maybe it was “The Scooby Doo and New Shmoo Show” with half hour episodes of each. I don’t ever recall Scooby and New Shmoo hanging out together in the same cartoon.
FWIW, I do.
Anthros
Forget Scooby Doo! Ye gads, are you Gen-Xers convinced that history began during the Ford Administration?
The first couple posts were correct. Al Capp invented the Shmoo (as opposed to merely buying the rights to use someone else’s idea. There’s a big difference). It appeared in his cartoon strip “Li’l Abner”. They were creatures that resembled bowling pins made of marshmallow fluff, and, as noted, were able to breed at an alarming rate. Shmoos were gregarious to the point of being annoying. I would be interested in the origin of the name (if there is any derivation from schmooze).
I thought they actually tasted like delicious foods, depending either on where the cut was taken, or what the diner desired, eg, if you liked steak, they tasted like steak. If you liked chicken, they tasted like chicken.
Shmoos were, apparently, very popular among the readers, and infiltrated other venues of popular culture. In On The Town, when Frank Sinatra is in a cab being chased by cops, his companion asks if the cops are still behind them. Sinatra looks back, sees dozens of police cars and replies, “They’re multiplying like Shmoos.”
Agreeing with Dave and Lynn about the origin of the Shmoo… it was Al Capp’s way of satirizing government welfare and left-wing give-away programs, as well as complacency and right-wing obessessions. Shmoos provided everything one could ever possibly want – “if you look at them hungrily, they happily flip over into a frying pan.” You could even use their hair for toothpickes; you could skin them for clothes and children played with them for entertainment, and they were eager and happy to die for the pleasure of humans… and they multiplied faster than anything imaginable, so there were always more shmoos to replace the ones that you et.
In consequence, the government and military viewed shmoos as the greatest threat ever to the American way of life – there was no longer any need to work, since all needs were provided by shmoos who were plentiful and readily available for all.
Kitchen Sink publishing house is putting out the complete Al Capp daily strips, they’re on about volume 30 or so at the moment, and I can provide more information when I’m at home with my resources handy.
There was an effort in the 50s to discredit Capp, claiming that he hid pornographic material in his strips. Some of the “evidence” included strips that had been altered, so there is little credibility to the accusation, although they lingered for years and made Capp’s life even more miserable.
Shmoos were one of the bits of evidence. First off, they are certainly phallic-shaped little critters (large round bottom and inverted-U shapped top). Then the descriptions that included “if you look at them hungrily, they happily flip over” accompanied by a picture of a man drooling and a little phallic shmoo opposite (supposedly implying oral homosexual act, which was a HUGE no-no in the 50s.) Notice how the words “…into a frying pan” were ignored by the accusers. Similar drawings with shmoos and scantily-clad females (a staple of Capp’s Li’l Abner strip) were used or doctored to seem to imply pornography.
More on the weekend, if anyone is interested.
CKDextHavn
Unfortunately, Dex, Kitchen Sink was putting out the complete Li’l Abner daily strips, but it (Kitchen Sink) went out of business about a year and a half ago. Much of the Kitchen Sink inventory is now being sold off by Bud Plant Comic Art, but no new ones are being produced at the moment.
I have about ten of the hardcover Li’l Abner volumes, but I haven’t gotten up to the shmoo years yet.
The web page quoted by Johnny L.A. says the Schmoo was briefly revived about ten years after its first appearance in 1948, then retired forever. This would mean no Schmoos after 1958 or so. Unfortunately, I clearly recall reading Schmoo-laden Lil’ Abners, and I wasn’t born until 1960. I would place those late-'60s schmoos around '68 or '69.
Webster gives the derivation of “schmooze” as coming from the Yiddish “shmuesn,” from “schmues,” mesaning “talk,” itself from the Hebrew “shemu’oth” (diacritical marks removed) meaning “news” or “rumor.” “Schmooze” first appears in English in 1897, antedating Capp’s creation by a good half-century.
I recall shmoos showing up in Lil Abner in the late sixties and maybe early seventies, too.
They’re mentioned on at least one episode of MASH.
They bred imitators, too. I recall a Beany and Cecil cartoon about “shmoes” from the early sixties.
Are you sure that’s not merely a variant of schmo? - Slang for idiot.
What about those neon Shmoos in that cartoon about the caveman planet? Hell if I can remember what it was called but I remember the rhino-looking thing that shot fireballs out its horn. Do those count?
IIRC, that show was called “The Herculoids,” and no, I don’t think they would count as Shmoos. They were more like big ameobas.
TV Guide’s Televisionary column answered a question about the New Shmoo show a few weeks ago.
http://www.tvguide.com/tv/televisionary/000613a.asp
"The New Shmoo had his own series for a brief moment in 1979. Originally an old character from the ancient Li’l Abner strips of the '40s, his Shmooness was a blobby thing (sort of a seal with two feet and no flippers) from the formulaic Hanna Barbera factory of the time. (Not that I’m putting them down — they raised me, after all.) Working in the Scooby-Doo/Funky Phantom/Speed Buggy mode of teaming a bunch of snoopy teens with a wacky creature or thing, the Shmoo used his morphing abilities to help his adolescent pals solve mysteries.
The Shmoo’s series didn’t last long, but he returned, shoehorned into the hour-long Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo and Flintstones Comedy Hour programs."
BTW, the Televisionary also answered a question about the Herculoids in this column:
I vaguely remember the shmoo from the scooby-doo cartoon, sometime back in the 70s. It seems to me it was around the same time as Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch (excellent cartoon! 
) more or less…(?)
But so what? I just like saying “shmoo”.
shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo shmoo
heh.
Dex, I wish Al Capp had drawn pornographic images. His women were put together! Stupefyin’ Jones, and what was the name of that woman who smelled so bad, but looked so good? Moonbeam McSwine! That’s it!
hubba hubba
Best cartoon babes on the planet! Thanks, Al Capp, for drawing 'em better than the good Lord made 'em.
I could have told you there must have been a Shmoo revival, though I wouldn’t have known the context. But I remember clearly as a kid having a Shmoo punching bag – you know, one of those plastic blow-up deals with a weight in the bottom that you could punch and it bobbed right back up. This would have been in the mid-70s, long after the Shmoo’s debut. Oh, and recently Coke ran an ad/trailer in theaters that featured a guy sketching random things – eventually he sketches a Coke bottle, but first he sketches the Shmoo. When I saw it, pretty much every adult in the theater went “Shmoo!” while all the kids went “huh?”
Konami has used Schmoos (Schmooes?) in a video game. Check out Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (or Castlevania: Nocturne in the Moonlight if you wanna import). They fly, have some sort of mask on, and have a long white tail like a comet.