On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:48:59 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip
wrote in :

BTW, the foo fighter name came from Smokey Stover...

Scram Gravy Ain't Wavy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter
The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World
War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena
seen in the skies over Europe and the Pacific theatre.
Contemporary witnesses often assumed that the foo fighters were
secret weapons employed by the enemy, and it was not until after
the war that it was discovered neither side had anything to do
with them. Despite these fears, foo fighters (whatever they might
have been) were apparently never reported to have harmed or tried
to harm anyone. To this day the case remains unexplained.

Though usually thought of as blobs of light or fire, several
different types of reported phenomena were classified as "foo
fighters".

Contents
1 Etymology
2 History
3 Explanations and theories
4 Foo Fighters in fiction
5 References
6 External links

Etymology
"Foo fighter" was supposedly used initially as a semi-derogatory
reference to Japanese fighter pilots (known for erratic flying and
extreme maneuvering), but it became a catch-all term for fast
moving, erratically flying objects. There were several other terms
used to describe these objects, such as "Kraut fireballs", but
"foo fighter" seems to have been the most popular.

The term is generally thought to have been borrowed from the often
surrealist comic strip Smokey Stover. Smokey, a firefighter, was
fond of saying, "Where there's foo there's fire." (This "foo" may
have come from feu, the French word for "fire", or Feuer the
German word for "fire", or from Smokey's pronunciation of the word
"fuel".) A Big Little Book titled Smokey Stover the Foo Fighter
was published in 1938. Foo may alternatively have come from either
of the French words "faux" meaning "fake", or "fou," "mad." ...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Stover
Smokey Stover was a comic strip written and drawn by Bill Holman
from March 10, 1935 until he retired in 1973. It was distributed
through the Chicago Tribune and was the longest lasting of the
comic strips of the "screwball comedy" genre.

The strip featured Smokey the firefighter, in his two-wheeled fire
truck called "The Foomobile", fire chief Cash U. Nutt, his wife
Cookie, with her question-mark pompadour, and his son Earl. Odd
bits of philosophy, and recurrent signs carrying bizarre phrases
such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 Nix Nix" were featured in the
strip. (Holman described the phrase "Notary Sojac" as Gaelic for
"horsecrap" and as Gaelic for "Merry Christmas". [1]) Holman also
wrote and drew a companion strip about Smokey's cat, Spooky, who
had a perpetually bandaged tail.

"Foo" was one of these recurring nonsense words and was taken up
by World War II's "Foo Fighters". Foo may have been inspired by
the French word for fire, feu, but Holman never gave a straight
answer as to the origin. Smokey Stover wore a hat with a hole in
its hinged bill. He sometimes used the hole in the bill to hold
his (burning) cigar.

While no clear connection has ever been asserted, Holman's term
"Smokey Stover" might have been, at least in part, chosen to
remind his readers of the nearly ubiquitous stationary engine
manufactured by the Stover Manufacturing and Engine Company of
Freeport, IL which, between 1895 and 1942, made over 270,000
engines for use on America's farms. Such stationary engines were
imprecise machines which often produced substantial exhaust smoke
when fueled with kerosene, a common fuel used before catalytic
cracking of petroleum became more common in the 1930s.

http://www.smokey-stover.com/history.html
Bill’s most popular creation was a fireman called Smokey Stover
and his zany boss Chief Cash U Nutt. They drove to fires in their
two-wheel fire truck known as the Foo Mobile. What’s Foo? My uncle
found this word engraved on the bottom of a jade statue in San
Francisco’s China town. The word Foo means Good-Luck. Another
phrase that was popular and used by uncle Bill was Notary Sojac
which in Gaelic means Merry Christmas and 1506 Nix Nix, which was
the hotel room number of a fellow daily news cartoonist Al Posen.


http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msojac.html
Actually, Holman is better remembered for "foo." Stover drove a
truck called the "Foomobile" and the word was later picked up and
used by Bob Clampett in some of his cartoon work for Warner
Brothers. There is some evidence that the phrase "foo-fighters,"
in reference to pilots investigating alleged UFOs during World War
II, can be traced back to Stover. It may have also influenced the
formation of the military acronymn "fubar" (****ed up beyond all
recognition). Back in DOS shareware days, old fogeys may remember,
"foo" and "bar" were often the default variables used by
developers to illustrate how you'd insert an argument into command
line input.


A shmoo was something entirely different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo
A shmoo (plural, shmoon) 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. Their skin was smooth, they had no ears, but did sport
eyebrows and a sparse moustache. Their round feet were rather
short, but cartoon drawings showed them to be quite utilitarian.
They had super facial expressions, and expressed love by exuding
hearts over their heads.

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 spent
great amounts of energy trying to exterminate the shmoo as a
dangerous threat to civilization as we know it.