"Like most young men with a sense of adventure during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Lovecraft would have been aware of any news stories coming out of Tibet. It was a mysterious country—until 1984 visited by fewer than 2000 Europeans and North Americans, and the majority of those were among the Younghusband expedition of 1904."
For his own monstrous invention, Lovecraft borrowed the Tibetan word for Yeti: Mi-Go, aka Migyu.
That sounds a heck of a lot like Mogwai, the mysterious furry cryptids from the Gremlins movie.
Anyway, while I'm still (barely) on the topic, Lovecraft also drew inspiration from Theosophy for his Cthulhu mythos. Read more about Theosophy and Yetihere.
2) Santa/Krampus/KLAUBAUF
Did you know? There's a Yeti chilling with Santa. Or maybe Santa has just been Yeti all along?
I've blogged about it here, here, here, here, and here, and over the course of this blog's lifetime, Krampus the Christmas Yeti has just gotten more and more well-known and mainstream.
This whole pagan thing is exactly why yeti got horns. I mean, besides the popularity of Wampa and WoW.
3) Yeti's Haircut
I discovered that Yeti got a mop top or a pointyhead hairstyle depending on the fashion of the time.
Beatlemania made the 1960s yeti depictions have mop tops.
And the Pangboche scalp was found in 1954 and it's super pointy so yeti went pointyheaded.
CB Gorby from “The Ecology of the Yeti” by Thomas Kiefer, Dragon magazine No. 127, November 1987
4) Top Tropes
From TVTropes, there are three big tropes to be aware of:
My personal favorite, however, is the one I call "You are the Yeti". It pops up all over, in the first ever comic featuring yeti in 1952, and even in a very recent video game. I have trouble finding its exact descriptive match in TVTropes, but it's basically:
Seek the beast and you shall find him... for he will be you. This sounds a lot like an old Sherpa saying (er, no way to actually prove it's a Sherpa saying, but that's what people like to say on the Internet anyway), which goes:
"There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it."
5) Nazi Yeti-Hunting Expedition
Here's the first sentence of this article about the Nazi Yeti Hunters:
"1938 was a big year for Hitler. He won Time magazine’s person of the year, invaded Czechoslovakia, doomed the world to the bloodiest conflict in human history, and also decided to hunt down the f$#%ing Abominable Snow Man."
I don't see why there isn't already a BBC dramatic series about this..,
Rule-of-thumb: If yeti is actually not yeti, he is a robot. And if he's not a robot, he's a smuggler, and if he's not a smuggler, he's a warrior-monk/shaman. (See the 2nd trope in # 4 above). And if he's none of the above, he's you.
I suggest reading these three posts for additional theories:
New Matterhorn + Far Cry 4 + Boston + Goosebumps + Minions
At the start of every year, I think to myself, "Well, I doubt this upcoming year is going to have much yeti in it." And I'm inevitably proven wrong.
2015 was no exception to the personal wrong-proving. Who knew that Disney would redesign Harold, its famous Matterhorn ride animatronic? Or that someone would run around the frozen streets of the Boston blizzard in a generic yeti costume to become a huge social media star, garnering national attention? Or that two big summer kids movies would have yetis?
Or that a whopping SIX (6) picture books would come out with yeti as the main subject?!
Follow me as I take a fine-toothed comb and fully flick through Fab '15, the Year of the Yeti....
NEWS:
Easily the biggest news item of the year was the Boston Yeti. This anonymous do-gooder made a big impact.
Examples of coverage from when he made his original appearance during the Boston Blizzard in early 2015:
At Boston's LEGOLAND Discovery Center, keen eyes can spot a Yeti at Harvard's Widener Library. A reference to the Boston Yeti? I have no idea, but probably!
Photo courtesy of my brother Colin
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Also making the headlines late this year, the Starbucks for Life Contest featured an ablobinable "Thirsty Yeti" mascot:
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In other news: with Saks Fifth Avenue making it a staple of their holiday branding, there has been a continued fad for clothing stores to set up elaborate window displays featuring a yeti or two, the most famous this year being Dolce & Gabbana (I blogged about the Milan one in Feb):
But other clothiers have followed suit (no pun intended):
Finally, popular stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan performed at the Madison Square Garden under the title, "Yeti in the City", using a promotional poster depicting himself as a King Kong yeti.
MOVIES:
Unique CGI versions made appearances in two summer kids films!
Minions featured a brief scene with a tribe of yetis:
Goosebumps put a spotlight on the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena as one of the chief antagonists:
The story features a yeti getting unleashed into the world from a magical book, and young people have to put a stop to it.
Side note: Could this prevent us from seeing yetis in an even more major tent pole film series in the near future? Recently, plot elements were revealed about the upcoming 2016 Harry Potter prequel movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The story will feature various rare and endangered magical creatures getting unleashed into the world from a magical valise, and young people have to put a stop to it. Sound familiar? Now, the Yeti is canonically part of the Harry Potter universe, mentioned in the actual novels, and is even an entry in the fantastic bestiary book the new films are based on, but having such a similar plot element in Goosebumps will likely mean Rowling will avoid including yeti in her films. It's already been done in Goosebumps so memorably. This makes me sad; so much so that I'm seeing Dementors. :(
Earlier this week, I showed you what some of the earlier (more traditionally yeti-ish) designs looked like for the game. And I'll be honest and say I was a little disappointed with the final result, which reads to me more as a hulking zombie-mutant (see game spoilers for why this is) rather than the familiar Abominable Snowbeast we all know and love, and actually want.
But I will say I was happy to see that LEGO Worlds made the Series 11 mini-figure be a playable character - Huzzah!
And, also worthy of mentioning, Bloodborne has its creepy Giant Lost Children, which players nicknamed "Yeti". Good for them.
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Anyway, mobile gaming had a strong offering, as per usual...
Lara Croft: Relic Run was hugely popular and brought yeti (three types!) back into the world of Tomb Raider.
Beast Quest, based on the book series, has the yeti as just one of its many boss fights, but it uses it as its icon and places it prominently on the title screen:
There's also two mobile games with mountains in the title:
Finaly, even though it's of the non-electronic variety, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Jenga-like board game, Yeti in My Spaghetti
MUSICS:
Well, lookee here, the They Might Be Giants video for their song "Good to Be Alive" is about a man recovering from a Yeti attack:
The Land of Nod, nostranger to Yeti Love, released a compilation CD "Nod Fam Jams" of family music. The cover featured front-and-center a vested yeti playing the guitar:
Occasionally in my trawlings, I learn about projects where there might have been yeti involved - it got real close - but we ended up with not yeti. If only things had gone another way. Somewhere there's an alternate reality where these yetis exist...
> According to her Wikipedia entry, as of 2010, Jill Culton, director of Open Season, is "writing and directing an animated film about a little girl and a Yeti, tentatively titled Everest." Um, that never happened, I guess.
> An early clay model in 1980 for the wampa looked even more yeti-ish, pointy-head and all:
> As I blogged about, Aardman Animations was going to adapt Eva Ibbotson's chapter book The Abominables, but the film was sadly canceled. Now, a stop-motion Aardman yeti would have been incredible (and no, this cameo in Pirates! doesn't really count). I feel an Aardman yeti movie's absence in the world like an unhealable wound.
> As I blogged about, Captain Gutt from Ice Age was going to be more yeti-ish. Here's an early sketch:
> And Chris Sanders (of Lilo & Stitch) did a design for a tusked abominable snowman for some unmade project:
