The Shmoo, Part 2

The Shmoo Part 2

NOTE: Unless noted, All photos of Shmoo Lures and catalogs provided by Chris Labuz.

In upstate New York, Richard Balch, director of one of the largest tackle manufacturers in the country, got caught up in Shmoomania like everyone else. Unlike most, however, Balch had an idea, and that idea would morph into one of the neatest fishing lures of the post-World War II era: The Shmoo.

There has been some speculation over who actually manufactured the Shmoo--various sources state either the Shurkatch Company of New York or an unknown maker. We can conclusively put the rumors to rest. We get a great glimpse at the manufacturer of the "Shmoo" bait in an article in the Utica Daily Press dated 01 August 1950. Entitled "Salesman Attend 3-Day Meeting of Local Firm," it covered the annual meeting of the approximately 50 salesmen of the Horrocks-Ibbotson Company of Utica, New York. As the article declared:

The conference, featuring the presentation of the company's new lines, opened yesterday morning and will continue through tomorrow. The 1951 line, President Richard H. Balch said, include new split bamboo rods, tubular and solid fibre glass casting and fly rods, and improved models of fishing reels. The exhibit of the company's complete [line of manufactured] products includes for the first time the new Robatrola automatic trolling device and "Shmoo" bait plugs.

So we know that Balch--a very important figure in the history of American fishing tackle and the son-in-law and successor to Edward D. Ibbotson--and his company were both the manufacturers and sellers of the Shmoo Plug Bait. They also, by the way, purchased Shurkatch as well.

The Shmoo bait was a neat idea. Clearly, like all Shmoo products, H-I paid a royalty for use of the L'il Abner figures directly to Al Capp. Capp himself was one of the pioneers of licensing and merchandising for cartoon figures. In a successful $14 million lawsuit against King Features Syndicate in 1947, he wrested control over his creations and thus benefitted financially from its merchandising, unlike so many other less fortunate cartoonists.

The lure itself first appears in the 1950 Horrocks-Ibbotson catalog.


The Shmoo catalog cut. Apparently the lure was made in five colors.

The Shmoo dealer box came with six lures per box.
The Shmoo certainly has abundant collector appeal. The box is an outstanding pictorial two-piece cardboard item with the modern cellophane cut out window. Festooning the side are pictures drawn by Al Capp for the lure, including one of the Shmoo fishing, and another showing L'il Abner and a suitably tressed blonde declaring "The Shmoo Plug Bait kin ketch anythin' 'cept L'il Abner." This of course references L'il Abner's legendary ability to avoid the alter in Dogpatch, Kentucky.




The only problem with H-I's Shmoo Plug Bait is the timing. Certainly conceived in early 1949, when Shmoo mania swept America, the time table for producing a new lure was certainly a full year, which explains why the Shmoo hit the stores only in the spring of 1950. The problem is, this was almost two years from when the character was introduced, and the mania over the Shmoo had certainly waned by this point. Oversaturation and the fact that the Shmoo was conceived only as a short-term character (its final appearance was on 20 December 1948) meant that, like most fads, Shmoomania was short-lived.



An awesome collection of three H-I Shmoo Lures from Chris Labuz's collection.
The Shmoo was always a collectable bait, as is almost all Shmoo items, but particularly after the great Ted Williams Upper Deck commercial of 1992, prices for the Shmoo skyrocketed. It is, after all, one of the few examples of cross-over promotion between fishing lures and comics (but not the only--we'll profile another similar lure with a comic tie-in in the near future). It was introduced in 1950 and had disappeard by 1952 from the H-I catalogs.


Awesome dealer one-sheet display announcing the H-I Shmoo in 1950. Courtesy Gary Paschal.
My thanks to Chris Labuz for pushing me to write this piece, and for providing information on the endearing and classic Shmoo. Thanks also to Gary Paschal for sending the neat Shmoo one-sheet.

-- Dr. Todd

The Shmoo Part I

The Shmoo Part I:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Schmoo But Were Afraid to Ask

by Dr. Todd E.A. Larson
© 2008

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On August 31, 1948, cartoonist Al Capp added a strange new character to his popular nationally syndicated cartoon L'il Abner, itself already nearly fifteen years old and enormously popular. An amorphous blob sometimes called a "bowling pin with legs," the Shmoo as it was called immediately became a national sensation.


One of the oddest characters in the history of an odd business, the Shmoo was basically a being created to serve man in all his needs. If a character was hungry, the Shmoo gladly killed itself so that the human master could eat. As a political editorial pointed out a year later (referenced later in the article):

[The Shmoo] is a remarkably amiable creation, the non-existent shmoo delights to serve humanity's wants. Versatile enough to give milk, eggs and butter, all packaged, when fried the shmoo tastes like chicken, when broiled it tastes like steak, when roasted it tastes like pork, and when baked it tastes like catfish.



A very early Shmoo cartoon by Al Capp, dated 10 September 1948. Note the baby Shmoo dies in ecstasy as soon as the character gets hungry.
The basic story of the Shmoo dominated the comic strip for several months; obviously, the benefits to mankind were unbelievable, but at what cost? This is the issue Capp explored in his comic. L'il Abner discovers the Valley of the Shmoon by accident, but when word of his discovery leaks out, it causes a massive economic panic as humans can use the Schmoo for almost any available need--from coat buttons to building materials. The Shmoo morphs into basically whatever humans need.

In a strange and deeply allegorical story line, the U.S. Government discovers L'il Abner's Shmoos and systematically sets out to exterminate them, literally sending out teams of Shmoo death squads to eliminate them as L'il Abner watches in helpless shock. The story line ends when it is discovered L'il Abner has saved a boy and a girl Shmoo (although why one of each sex is needed is unclear, as they are said to reproduce asexually) and they are last seen in company with their children returning to the hidden Valley of the Shmoon.

All of this was MASSIVELY popular, both as a commentary on the state of society, as well as a classic Utopian tale and an allegory of greed and corruption tarnishing all that is good and innocent in the world. As cartoonist Dennis Kitchen wrote in 2003:

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 flak from both sides. For him it was an apolitical morality tale about human nature... I think [the shmoo] was one of those bursts of genius.

The Shmoo indeed spawned a media sensation. It was so popular that literally overnight merchandise bearing its picture and name came to dominate five-and-dime and department stores; everything from Shmoo ear muffs to Shmoo drinking glasses soon hit the market.

The Shmoo was so popular it even replaced Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse as the face of the children's savings bond for the U.S. Treasury in 1949. According to one article at the time, the Shmoo showed "thrift, loyalty, trust, duty, truth, and comment cents [that] add up to aid to his nation."

College students--who had flocked to Al Capp's cartoon as far back as the mid-1930s and who made his invented idea of a "Sadie Hawkins Dance" universally adopted--flocked to the Shmoo as well. One school--Bridgeport University--even launched the "American Society for the Advancement of the Shmoo" in early 1949.


But it wasn't just college kids who were enamored with Shmoomania. The Shmoo even made it into political parlance; in an editorial in The Winona Republican Herald, Gordon R. Closway used the Shmoo to describe what he considered the current state of American politics:

People who follow the comic strips, and it seems that most of us do, know the "shmoo." This remarkably beneficent and friendly little animal appears with Li'l Abner in the strip drawn by Al Capp.

A remarkably amiable creation, the non-existent shmoo delights to serve humanity's wants....Mr. Capp could have invented the idea of the shmoo from a study of political history. Indeed, he would not have needed to have looked into history, but only to have read the news of the times.

The Welfare State—in which government assumes responsibility for these various aspects of individual welfare—might well be called the Shmoo State.

The term would be apt if for no other reason than because "there ain't no such ani- mal." The shmoo exists on paper. The government that takes care of everything for everybody exists only in fancy, or only temporarily, simply because the thing cannot be done. There always comes a wreck.

In upstate New York, Richard Balch, director of one of the largest tackle manufacturers in the country, got caught up in Shmoomania like everyone else. Unlike most, however, Balch had an idea, and that idea would morph into one of the neatest fishing lures of the post-World War II era: The Shmoo.

(Tomorrow: the Shmoo Plug Bait in all its glory).