Precursors

A precursor to Maria leading the Von Trapp family through the Austrian alps, and "the hills [very literally] are alive."  From Nebelspalter, 1909.

Here's a precursor to Richard Nixon on thin ice, from Nebelspalter, 1905.

A precursor to the singing ghosts atop their tombstones in the finale of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion?  From Le Chariviari, 1884.

Here's a precursor to Mario facing a falling slab monster Whomp as flowers with mouths menace and strange blobs are underfoot.

From Nebelspalter, 1905.

Here's a precursor to image-sharing sites like Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, and Pintrest.  Too bad we can't find such a site that's any good!  Tumblr thinks even an ink drawing of a flower (not even a pansy!) is pornography, Instagram doesn't let one repost something of interest, and have you ever tried to manage your photos on Flickr?  They're all either the products of utter hack programmers or (not as far-fetched as it might sound) beings who have never been to earth.  From Nebelspalter, 1903.

Here's a precursor to Elvis as a celestial body in Blue Star Love.  From The Gopher Purge Fanzine #3, KMUW After Midnight 1987.

Plus, this is a precursor to the astonishing Danish band Heilung.

From Memphis State's 1972 yearbook.

What, me worry?  A precursor to Aldred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine.

"Caricatura de Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro (1846-1905)," via Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

In these two images, four steps span an entire lifetime.  This is a precursor to Philip K. Dick's Ubik.  From Henderson-Brown's 1913 yearbook.

From St. Nicholas magazine, December 1917.

Here's a precursor to the Big Gulp and other super-sized beverages.

The caption, "Love laughs at icebergs," is a Googlewhack.  From Life, 1900. 

Nearly a century before activity tracking gadgets, walkers were counting their miles.  From Rockford's 1915 yearbook.  See 52 Wishes for Walkers.

Apparently, polar bears have been used for advertising for as long as there has been advertising.  Here is revealed how they're lured into the work.  From Lustige Blätter, 1916.

Before "gay and tired," there was "queerest and restless."  From The See and Say Series, Book Two by Sarah Louise Arnold, 1914.

Here's a precursor to our photo of Morro Rock, from The Link, 1956.

You've seen the photos of pets that look like loaves of bread.  Here's a precursor, "the Bread-Panther," by Carolyn Wells in St. Nicholas magazine, 1901.  Since then, of course, the bread-panther has been bred [pun unavoidable] down into house cat size.

Here's a Bewitched (Season 4, Ep. 6) precursor to How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.  The captions read, "You should see what she wrote in the class yearbook: 'Roses are red, violets are blue; it may take a while, but I'll get you."  How and why this works is explained in the book.

"Shoegaze" was identified as a genre in the late 1980s, but here's a precursor from Swarthmore's 1961 yearbook.