Shmoo
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- This article is about the cartoon creature. For other uses, see Shmoo (disambiguation)
A shmoo is a fictional cartoon creature, created and first drawn by the cartoonist Al Capp in his newspaper comic strip Li'l Abner. Their first appearance occurred on August 31, 1948. The shmoo is shaped like a plump bowling pin with legs, but no arms.
The primary purpose of the character was to satirize political debates about the supposed loss of personal incentive due to the growth of the "welfare state". According to the storyline in the comic strip, the leaders of government and big business spend great amounts of energy trying to exterminate the shmoo as a dangerous threat to civilization as we know it.
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[edit] Physical characteristics
The basic premise allowed Capp to ascribe a variety of characteristics to these creatures, each of which contains other layers of satirical social observations connected with the main theme:
- They reproduce asexually, and are very prolific. They require no sustenance other than air.
- Shmoos are delicious, and are so eager to be eaten that if they are looked at by someone who is hungry they will gladly jump into a frying pan, after which they taste like chicken, or into a roasting pan, after which they taste like beef (Raw,they taste like Oysters on the Half-Shell). They also produce eggs, milk, and butter (no churning labor needed.) Their fresh pelt is a perfect boot leather, or house timber depending on how thick it has been cut. Their eyes are ideal suspender buttons, and their whiskers are perfect toothpicks. Naturally gentle, they require minimal care, and are ideal playmates for young children. In short, they are simply the perfect ideal of a subsistence agricultural herd animal.
- The frolicking of shmoos is so entertaining (such as their staged "shmoosical comedies") that people watching them feel no need to go to movies or turn on television to relieve their boredom.
- A substantial colony of shmoos live in the Valley of the Shmoon near Dogpatch. There is no literature-based evidence of shmoos trying to "escape:" however, Li'l Abner stumbled into the Valley of the Shmoon and brought several hundred shmoos out with him to help the citizens of poverty-stricken Dogpatch. The big corporate fat-cats did not like these amicable and giving creatures; therefore, they started rumors of "havoc" and destruction of society. Hence, the shmoos were almost destroyed. But two of them returned to the Valley where they live happily today with thousands of fellow shmoos, hopefully never to be asked to help humans again. Indeed, they had no need to escape, and no shmoo ever caused physical harm to anyone or anything. After the shmoos were destroyed in Dogpatch, they were never heard from again. There have been commercial attempts to integrate the character into a TV series (see below); however, the true essence of the shmoo remains in the Valley and will likely not return to civilization.
[edit] Later uses of the character
The Shmoo gained its own animated series in the late 1970s, as part of the animated series Fred and Barney Meet The Shmoo (which consisted of reruns of The New Fred and Barney Show mixed with the Shmoo's own cartoons; the two pairs of characters didn't actually "meet"). The two pairs of characters did meet, however, in the early 1980s Flintstones spinoff The Flintstone Comedy Show. The Shmoo appeared in the segment Bedrock Cops as a police officer alongside part-time officers Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble; however, this Shmoo had little relationship to the L'il Abner character other than appearance. Also in one episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, "Billy and Mandy Begins" the Shmoo can be seen dancing in the cauldron that held the Grim Reaper.
Another Hanna-Barbera venture in 1979 included Shmoo as a title character, The New Shmoo, where he is pegged as the helpful, shape-shifting mascot of Mighty Mysteries Comics, a group of teens who solve Scooby-doo-like mysteries. In this series, the Shmoo could morph into any shape.
Episodes of The New Shmoo include:
- The Amazing Captain Mentor
- The Beast of Black Lake
- The Ber-Shmoo-Da Triangle
- The Crystal Ball of Crime
- Dr. Morton's Monster
- The Energy Robbers From Space
- The Flying Disc of Doom
- The Haunting of Atlantis
- Monster Island
- The Pyramid of Peril
- The Return of Dracula
- Swamp of Evil
- The Terror of the Trolls
- The Valley Where Time Stood Still
- The Wail of the Banshee
- The Warlock of Voodoo Island
[edit] Popular culture
- In the movie Lucky Number Slevin, Morgan Freeman's character refers to the Shmoo as something from stories he liked as a child.
- French artists Etienne Chambaud and David Jourdan have written "Economie de l'abondance ou La courte vie et les jours heureux" a new adventure of Jacques le fataliste et son maître from Diderot, based on the discovery by Jacques of the Shmoo.
- In the game Castlevania Symphony of the Night, there are small flying monsters named schmoos that drops food often when you kill them.
- Artist and professional skateboarder Mark Gonzales often uses schmoos in his artwork.
- In the M*A*S*H episode "Who Knew?" Colonel Potter displays an inflatable Schmoo toy he purchased for his grandson in his office.
