The character created a fad that lasted into the 1950s, including merchandise, songs, fan clubs, and appearances on magazine covers.

The Shmoo didn't have any social significance; it is simply a juicy li'l critter that gives milk and lays eggs...

The Daily Worker cussed me out as a Tool of the Bosses, and denounced the Shmoo as the Opium of the Masses...Capp introduced many other allegorical creatures in Li'l Abner over the years—including Bald Iggles, Kigmies, Nogoodniks, Mimikniks, the Money Ha-Ha, Shminks, Abominable Snow-Hams, Gobbleglops, Shtunks and Bashful Bulganiks, among others.

According to publisher Denis Kitchen: "For the rest of his career Capp got countless letters [from] people begging him to bring the Shmoo back.

But there was always one or two who would survive for future plot twists..." The origin of Capp's word "shmoo" has been the subject of linguistic consideration by scholars for decades.

It has been speculated by that shmoo was a thinly veiled phallic symbol, and that the name derives from Yiddish schmuck (schmo) meaning ‘male genitalia’ or a ‘fool, contemptuous person’ (Arthur Asa Berger and Allan H. Orrick of Johns Hopkins).

[1][2] Even prior to these two academics, Thomas Pyles (U. Florida) had favored the shmuck etymology over the derivation from the Yiddish schmu (‘profit’), suggested by Leo Spitzer.

[a][3] Spitzer noted the shmoo's providential characteristics (providing eggs and milk) in arguing his hypothesis, further explaining that in Yiddish schmu specifically connoted "illicit profit", and that the word also giving rise to term schmus ‘tale, gossip’, whose verb form schmusen or ‘shmoosing’ (schmooze) has become familiar even to non-Jews.

[4] Lilian Mermin Feinsilver assessed this association with shmu ‘illicit profit’ as "pertinent", together with the observation that shmue was a taboo Yiddish term for the uterus.

Revealing an important key to the story, Al Capp wrote that the Shmoo metaphorically represented the limitless bounty of the Earth in all its richness—in essence, Mother Nature herself.

Al Capp was even invited to go on a radio show to debate socialist Norman Thomas on the effect of the Shmoo on modern capitalism.

"[16] Shmoo dolls, clocks, watches, jewelry, earmuffs, wallpaper, fishing lures, air fresheners, soap, ice cream, balloons, ashtrays, toys, games, Halloween masks, salt and pepper shakers, decals, pinbacks, tumblers, coin banks, greeting cards, planters, neckties, suspenders, belts, curtains, fountain pens, and other shmoo paraphernalia were produced.

The Shmoo phenomenon arose immediately, spontaneously and solely from cartoonist Al Capp's daily comic strip—and it appealed widely to Americans of all ages.

The Shmoo was so popular it even replaced Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse as the face of the Children's Savings Bond, issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1949.

The valid document was colorfully illustrated with Capp's character, and promoted by the Federal Government of the United States with a $16 million advertising campaign budget.

According to one article at the time, the Shmoo showed "Thrift, loyalty, trust, duty, truth, and common cents [that] add up to aid to his nation".

[20] The Life and Times of the Shmoo (1948), a paperback collection of the original sequence, was a bestseller for Simon & Schuster and became the first cartoon book to achieve serious literary attention.

The original book and its sequel, The Return of the Shmoo (1959), have been collected in print many times since—most recently in 2002—always to high sales figures.

Kitchen edited a second Shmoo-related volume for Dark Horse in 2011, on the history of the character in newspaper strips, collectibles, and memorabilia.

"Shmoozer", a talking shmoo with an anthropomorphic human body, was a recurring sidekick character on Fearless Fosdick, a short-lived puppet series that aired on NBC-TV in 1952.