It's hard to remember a time when there could be such a picture without at least one smurf t-shirt or other advertising gimmick.
How I recall it spreading in our area.
First there was the kid down the street whose father was a Hamm's beer distributor. One year alluva sudden he had all these near stickers with the Ham's bear doing all sorts of cute things. (to sell beer of course)
His stuff was covered in them. We all demanded ours. He actually produced for some of us.
Guessing that it was around 1969 or 1970. Was in grade school.
Wasn't long until someone had the first Budweiser T-shirt and it was on! At first it was a very exclusive thing and there was a lot of chatter among us mere mortals who had no stars upon thars. Yeah it was like the Sneeches kind of. Us non-star-bearing kids said it was degrading to brand ourselves by clothing ourselves in an ad as we were wearing our converse all -stars. lol
The kid that had first Bud shirt, by the time the craze really got going, was wearing the bar-issue sports shirts to school in high school. His father owned the beer warehouse and distribution place in town.
We'd wear our bud shirts to school and get sent home but when he wore his "official" beer gear it was ok.
Different times.
I've heard that it's incredibly stupid to fuck around with a crazy man's head.