Precursors

Here's a precursor to the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine tries to run a clothes store called Putumayo out of business after receiving bad customer service, by shopping at the competing Cinco de Mayo, only to discover that both stores are owned by the same person.  From Tufts University's 1925 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to getting anybody to thumb-up your video on Youtube, when they're seeming all allergic to simply tapping an icon.  From Indiana University's 1924 yearbook.

Before Fastmail there was the "Fast Mail (Male) Trail."  From Tulane University's 1899 yearbook.

Obviously the dream came true -- Big Pharma and its branching machinations are not only televised but are the only news.  From Kirksville College of Osteopathy and Surgery's 1933 yearbook.

Over five decades before James and the Giant Peach.  From John Dough and the Cherub by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by John Neill, 1906.

Here's a better scan of this precursor to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), fromFrom Poets' Wit and Humor by Wh. H. Wills and illustrated by Charles Bennett and George H. Thomas, 1860. Poets' Wit and Humor by W. H. Wills and illustrated by Charles Bennett and George H. Thomas, 1860.

Here's a better scan of this precursor to The Fly, from Poets' Wit and Humor by W. H. Wills and illustrated by Charles Bennett and George H. Thomas, 1860.

Three cats, three women, and a rifle -- a precursor to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!  From two decades earlier, in Brevard's 1946 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to the Back to the Future poster.  (Thanks to PleasantScreams for noticing this!)  From Improvement Era, 1944.

Here's a better scan of a precursor to the "Be Our Guest" segment of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, from Poets' Wit and Humor by W. H. Wills and illustrated by Charles Bennett and George H. Thomas, 1860.

Th earliest instances of "Dog is my copilot" we've found in print go back to the mid-1980s.  A decade earlier, we find, "O.k. Duffy ... let's switch to co-pilot."  From the University of Maine at Machias' 1975 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to Disney's "Soarin'" ride.  "The world itself a vast picture below you as you swing back and forth in the heavens."  From Photoplay Magazine, 1920.

Here's a precursor to the film Blade Runner.  "I make friends.  They're toys.  My friends are toys.  I make them."  From Hood College's 1967 yearbook.

Here's a precursor to the line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" (Apocalypse Now).  Charlie Chaplin had a horror of "the smell of gasoline in the forenoon."  From Photoplay Magazine, 1920.

Here's a precursor to today's worthless self-help books.  The first three ways to get what you want are blank, and the fourth is to "look around you."  The only self-help book we can vouch for is How to Be Your Own Cat.  From Millikin's 1948 yearbook.

A pharmicist is making people small, decades before Steve Martin's comedy routine about getting "small" on placebo.  From the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's 1912 yearbook.

A knight battles a caveman in this precursor to time-travel tales with unlikely encounters.  From Story-Telling Ballads by Frances Jenkins Olcott, 1920.

What does the musical The Sound of Music have to do with The Tibetan Book of the Dead?  The latter says that when the eight objects of consciousness are naturally liberated, the sound of music will manifest.  In the musical, Baron Von Trapp and his seven children constitute the eight objects of protagonist Maria's consciousness, and the hills were indeed alive with the sound of music as Maria found liberation from both her convent and the German occupation of Austria.

A precursor to the famous New Yorker cover of the compressed map showing New York's view of the world.  It's Noah's Log-Book, from The Century Illustrated, 1889.