EVERYTHING AND THE KITCHEN SHMOO

[MattBrady]

special to Newsarama by Daniel Robert Epstein

For years I thought the Shmoo was created to hang out and solve stupid mysteries with Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. I only recently discovered that Shmoo was created in Al Capp’s classic comic strip Lil Abner and was insanely popular back in the day. Lil Abner discovered the cuter little creatures in the back of his fictional town of Dogpatch. When they were broiled they tasted like steak, when fried they taste like chicken, they lay eggs, give milk and when you look at a Shmoo like you want to eat them they die from pure happiness.

Shmoo and Al Capp appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 1950. In 1949 close to one hundred licensed Shmoo products were produced in less than a year from seventy-five different manufacturers year, some of which sold five million units each.

Denis Kitchen is the biggest collector of Shmoo memorabilia in the world and contributed a great deal to Overlook Press’ book The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo. He also published 27 volumes of Lil Abner strips up until 1999. He was a great help when putting together this interview.

NEWSRAMA: How much did you contribute to The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo?

DENIS KITCHEN: I supplied the archival material and background on the Shmoo. They used it as part of the promotions for the book.

NRAMA: Shmoo was obviously different from anything Al Capp had done in Lil Abner.

DK: Yes. After the Shmoo he tended to come up with new creatures every few years. The next one after the Shmoo was the Kigmy. He did the Bald Iggle. There was a variety of them and each one had a certain ripple but none of them had the phenomenal success of the Shmoo. That one just hit something in the American psyche at a certain time. It was the post war period and it was just so damn cute. Also the fact that he had them all killed was something unprecedented in comic strip. People expect if you create a cute character then you want to perpetuate it because people love it. Having it be too good to be true and then having them murdered just made people upset.

For the rest of his career Capp got countless letters of people begging him to bring the Shmoo back. Periodically he would do it but each time it ended the same way with the Shmoo being too good for humanity and he had to essentially exterminate them again. But there was always one or two who would survive for future plot twists.

NRAMA: Do you know what the genesis of the Shmoo was?

DK: No we don’t. Capp never revealed that. I’ve never seen anything about that in his writings. He wrote about it fairly extensively after it became a phenomenon but he never explained. I think it was one of those bursts of genius. He was a genius, there’s no question about that. For the 44 years that he did Lil Abner was constantly doing things that demonstrated that he was a first rate satirist. Maybe in the last few years his powers declined as he got old and sick. I’ve read all the Lil Abner strips and I’m impressed with what a brilliant guy he was. Shmoo to me was just one of many but it was the one that caught the public’s imagination the most.

NRAMA: When I first heard of the Shmoo he was solving mysteries with Fred Flinstone in the 1970’s cartoon, Flintstones Comedy Show.

DK: That represents your generation. At that point it was licensed and became a mutant Shmoo. Each generation has a different Shmoo it remembers first. But when you talk about the genesis Capp never envisioned that this would be a character that would be animated with the Flintstones. That happened posthumously.

NRAMA: What was the purpose of putting the Shmoo into that Flintstones cartoon?

DK: I think it was to keep the trademark alive and to continue to exploit the property. That was the most practical way to do it. Hanna-Barbera remembered how huge the Shmoo was and they wanted to capitalize on what they thought would be a multi-generational appeal. Kids would like the new version but parents would remember the original. That’s not that common. It’s the same thing that happens with Superman and Batman. The Shmoo is a rare in that he is not a superhero.

NRAMA: What was the Shmoo’s purpose in political satire?

DK: The truth is that Capp never created it to be political. After it came out both the left and the right attacked the Shmoo. Communists thought he was making fun of socialism and Marxism. The right wing thought he was making fun of capitalism and the American way. Capp caught flack from both sides. I think he was caught completely off guard by it. For him it was an apolitical morality tale about human nature, which is if a device like the Shmoo enabled you to just stay home and your food would just appear, and that people are just essentially lazy if they are allowed to be. That’s going to offend some people who don’t think humans are inherently selfish and lazy. What Capp said is that society could not tolerate something as good as a Shmoo so we had to get rid of them so we can take care of ourselves. He didn’t mean for that to be a political statement. At that point in time, the late forties, Capp was a diehard liberal. Later in his career he became a diehard conservative. So people assume that he had a liberal point of view with the Shmoo but he denied it.

NRAMA: I did read the fact, that Shmoo merchandise generated 25 mullion dollars in 1948 [equivalent to over 200 million dollars in 2003].

DK: It was pretty amazing since it only came from this daily strip. There was no radio show, no TV show, and no push from a giant corporation. Today these kinds of licensing phenomenons are manufactured. If Walt Disney is coming out with an animated feature next year they already have a plan on how every McDonalds is going to have a toy. That doesn’t always work.

The Shmoo was genuine grassroots love affair. Capp didn’t anticipate but he did take advantage of it. Ironically just the year before he had wrested the merchandising rights from his syndicate. In the context of the 1940’s virtually no cartoonist owned his own creation.

NRAMA: How did he do that?

DK: Essentially he was powerful and daring enough. He went to his syndicate, United Features, and said I want a better deal and they said forget it you signed a contract and you’re getting 50 percent of the revenue but we own the copyright, go back to work. He basically said 'Fuck you I’m going to get a better deal.' The way he did it was that in his next Lil Abner strip he created a cartoonist who was mercilessly exploited by his syndicate who was literally chained to his drawing board just to crank out his strip everyday. He made them look excruciatingly bad and publicly embarrassed them. He wouldn’t let up on them until they gave him a better deal.

Finally they told him if he wants out he better buy his way out. He could afford it because he was a millionaire. So he bought his own contract and then he allowed them to continue to syndicate his work with a profit sharing deal. But he kept all the merchandising rights. Then he created a corporation with his brothers called Capp Enterprise Incorporated. One year later the Shmoo came out and once it was clear the public loved the Shmoo he told his brothers to start cranking out the merchandise.

NRAMA: Its not one of those sad stories.

DK: No it’s not like Siegel and Shuster [creators of Superman]. He was bold enough, brave enough and bottom-line line rich enough to be able to get his character back. No one ever did what Capp did. The only other cartoonist in the forties that owned his own was Milton Caniff but he didn’t get to own Terry and The Pirates. He had to abandon Terry and The Pirates and create a new strip Steve Canyon which he was allowed to own. Will Eisner owned The Spirit but that was a small syndicate and even today it’s still in print after 60 years. Those were the only three guys.

NRAMA: What kind of merchandise did they have back then?

DK: I collected this stuff myself and it’s across the board. It includes ashtrays, birthday cars, boy’s belts, women’s brooch pins, charm bracelets, drinking glasses, earmuffs, Grape Nuts cereal, household deodorizers, puzzles, glass milk bottles, songs and large plush Shmoo dolls. One of the weirdest ones is fishing lures.

NRAMA: Well they do taste delicious.

DK: Well I guess the assumption there is that if you want to catch a fish then they will be attracted to a Shmoo. All that stuff is just the tip of the iceberg.

NRAMA: When did you first discover Lil Abner and the Shmoo?

DK: I was a toddler when it first came out. I grew up reading Lil Abner and see the periodic revivals of Shmoo so I was aware of it. When I became a publisher in 1969 I started reprinting classic strips in the 1980’s. The one I always wanted to do was Lil Abner. I finally negotiated with Capp’s estate to do it. At that point I began really seriously researching and I’ve acquired an archive that I think is second to none. I’ve got everything from correspondence from Capp, articles about Capp from every national magazine and of course every comic strip. I began an ambitious program of publishing every single one. It would have been 54 volumes. I go to volume 27 when Kitchen Sink Press went out of business in 1999.

NRAMA: How well did the reprint books sell?

DK: The first volume sold about 15,000 copies. A lot of people couldn’t afford to buy them all, others just wanted a sample volume and one thing I think happened is that a lot of the Lil Abner fans are old and literally starting dying before they could get them all.

I even had letters from some semi-celebrities like Hugh Downs [co-anchor of 20/20, born in 1921] who wrote “Hurry up; I want to get them all before I die”. Also Gene Shalit, who has cancer, said I have to put out more than two a year or I’ll die before they are all out.

Right now I am packaging four more volumes that Dark Horse Comics is going to put out. They are going to start doing the color Sunday Lil Abner when Frank Frazetta was the ghost artist. He worked for Al Capp for eight years and penciled and inked a lot of stuff.

Check out Overlook Press’ website for The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo at:
http://www.overlookpress.com/fiction/shmoo.shtml

Daniel Robert Epstein lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. He is a contributor to such websites as UGO.com and FilmFestivalreporter.com. He is also a former producer for MetroTV, where he worked on such shows as The Daily Beat, Studio Y and New York Eats. Most recently he worked at E! Entertainment for New York City's Fashion Week.

He has also worked on such feature films as Tromeo & Juliet by the Troma studios and Dinner and Driving. He loves referring to himself in the third person.

[I-Ching]

The Shmoo!!

Wow I had no idea of it's/his history. I thought it was just some bad late 70's/early 80's knock off of The Barbapapa's or Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids used to cash in on some Smurf like success.

Didn't Shmoo get his own show at one point too?

Interesting stuff guys, thanks.

[OM]

...Al Capp, like Walt Kelly and Milt Caniff, are sorely needed at a time like this. Two points of order here:

1) I need a Shmoo Bop'n'Bag, so I can put Saddam's face on it. I've a website client that wants to put one in the lobby of the club so patrons can give the bastard what he deserves by proxy.

2) An interesting side note about the Shmoo's cartoon appearances with Fred & Barney: the tall inbred who accompanied the Shmoo on their Scooby Doo recycled adventures was originally intended to be the son of Abner and Daisy Mae. However, due to all the licensing rigamarole, it never got officially noted in the cartoon.

quote:

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Denis Kitchen sez:
Right now I am packaging four more volumes that Dark Horse Comics is going to put out. They are going to start doing the color Sunday Lil Abner when Frank Frazetta was the ghost artist. He worked for Al Capp for eight years and penciled and inked a lot of stuff.

---

...Heh, now there's a concept: Abner, dressed as a swordwielding barbarian, standing on top of a mountain. A damn-near nekkid Daisy Mae is at his feet, seeking protection. At the base of the mountain, being beaten back, are a pack of evil revinooers, and behind Abner, on top of a still, is Mammy Yokum with a sawed-off shotgun.

Li'l Conan, written by Kurt Busiek, drawn by Frazetta, anyone?

[MW]

As Denis knows I'm a huge collector of the Shmoo. My wife accidentally even beat him out on a Shmoo shirt on some ebay auction, not knowing who she was going up against. It now is proudly warn by alarge Shmoo sitting on a shelf above my desk. The only thing I'm still looking for is the full set of stacking Shmoos (nothing less than the full set will do).
As for Abner, I'm thrilled to learn that Denis is coming out with more volumes, especially the Sundays in color. I remember reading them as I was growing up and loving them. Everyone needs to support them if only to keep them coming out.
The prizes of my Abner collection are a picture Capp drew for me (I watched him so I know it's him), an original daily he signed and gave me, and a 1938 Sunday page of original art in which Abner is being turned into a "Super-Man" - at exactly the same time Superman was first published.
The manb was a genius, no doubt about it.

[Paul Hamilton]

quote:

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Originally posted by I-Ching:
The Shmoo!!

Wow I had no idea of it's/his history. I thought it was just some bad late 70's/early 80's knock off of The Barbapapa's or Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids used to cash in on some Smurf like success.

Didn't Shmoo get his own show at one point too?

Interesting stuff guys, thanks.

---

Wow, somebody else remembers Barbapapa!
I always thought the Shmoo was a rop off of that too.
It did have it's own show, I remember it too.

[Anders Wolleck]

They are delicious

[sindaco]

I see this is an old thread, but it seems the right place to ask a question. As said in the main post, after the Shmoos, Al Capp introduced many different creatures into the Dogpatch universe - many of them with a social subtext. I am thinking Kigmys, Bald Iggle and the alike... Wasn't there some kind of anti-Shmoo? Some animal who was totaly useless, that stunk, that bit you when you stroke it... and thus became a status symbol because no one would ever buy something so useless and obnoxious if he hadn't really, really a lot of money to waste? What was this creature called? Thanks in advance,

Alberto