Empty talk. Marryat (1833) has “to feed fools on flapdoodle.’ N.E.D.
1862. [McMahon utters] flap-doodle for the nourishment of the Richmond mind.—N.Y. Tribune, Jan. 20 (Bartlett).
1884. A speech all full of tears and flapdoodle.—Mark Twain, ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ chap. xxv. (N.E.D.)
