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A shmoo is a cartoon creature, created and first drawn by the cartoonist Al Capp (Alfred Gerald Caplin), an American cartoonist best known for the satiric comic strip, Li'l Abner. Li'l Abner, first appearing in 1934, became one of the most significant newspaper comic strips ever. Published over four decades, Li'l Abner was chock full of political, financial and pop culture satire, as seen through the eyes of the numbskull hicks who lived in Dogpatch, U.S.A. The comic strip gave birth to the shmoo, the Sadie Hawkins Day race (and the attendant dances), two movies and a successful Broadway play.
The comic strip starred Li'l Abner Yokum, the dumb but good-natured hillbilly (some call him an utterly worthless layabout) whose main goal was evading the marital goals of zaftig, virtuous and dedicated Daisy Mae Skaggs, his well-endowed girlfriend. Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry in 1952. This was such big news, the happy couple made the cover of Life magazine.
The shmoo first appeared in September 1948, when Al Capp decided to solve the problems of mankind by introducing the shmoo. The shmoo was an ever-changing, blob-like shape, with toeless legs, but no arms. A colony of shmoos lived in the hidden Valley of the Shmoon, somewhere in the Dogpatch country. Shmoo was a tiny animal who only did good. Shmoo laid eggs and gave milk, both Grade A, of course. When you looked at one as though you would like to eat it, it died out of sheer will to please you. When fried, shmoo tasted exactly like chicken; When broiled, shmoo came out like steak. The eyes of shmoo's made splendid suspender buttons, while the whiskers made the finest toothpicks.
Wherever he would go, Li'l Abner presented free shmoos to all, because a single shmoo could produce an endless supply of the necessities of life at absolutely no cost to the shmoo-keeper. The frolicking of shmoos was so entertaining that people watching them felt no need to go to movies or turn on television to relieve their boredom. Due to these facts, the government and big business spent amounts of energy trying to exterminate the shmoo as a dangerous threat to civilization as we know it.
Al Capp used the shmoo to show us that earth will give us everything we want, just as the shmoo does, if only we leave it alone and do not abuse all of its resources. If only, in our passion and hatred and intolerance, we do not tear it apart, the shmoo would live on forever. In short, love your shmoo and he will love you back.. and he may bring everything good to you always.
Shmoo became the designated name for the graphical display, the Shmoo plot, most likely because the region where a particular device passes or fails, plotted against the sweep variables, may have some of the rounded curves and shifting nature of the cartoon figure. Often, the shape of the plot may provide useful information about the failures. To shmoo is to run a test repeatedly while varying one or more parameters. These parameters are the axes of the shmoo plot.
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