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This is how The Flintstones originally depicted Pebbles all grown up
This is not the elder Pebbles you probably remember.
After The Flintstones' original TV run ended in 1966, it took half a decade before the first spin-off aired.
The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show debuted in 1971, transporting the toddlers from Fred and Barney's homes to Bedrock High School, where they formed a band and got into all kinds of high jinks.
Pebbles proved she was a chip off her dad's old block, as she was often the one whose wild ideas got everybody in trouble. Her catchphrase mirrored Fred's, too: "Yabba-dabba-doozy."
In this cartoon spin-off, Pebbles typically sported a short, pink, tiger-striped mini-dress, a thick bead of magenta rocks as a belt, a little white kerchief off her neck, and a bold white bone in her hair, a clear nod to her toddler image. You can see that version of Pebble on the upper left.
What probably everyone forgets is that in the original series, The Flintstones gave us an alternate preview of Pebbles all grown up.
In the 1963 episode "Groom Gloom," Fred has a nightmare in which Pebbles marries the paperboy. It comes at the end of the episode, and when it does, we get our first glimpse of the older Pebbles.
We first see a bird acting as a record needle. When its beak hits the vinyl, the groove starts to play and the scene pans over to reveal this new Pebbles.
This Pebbles has some key differences to the look that animators ultimately used for the character in the spin-off show. Most notably, she has her hair pulled up in a ponytail, but there's no bone keeping her red locks in place.
No Pebbles fan would accept this substitution looking back, but likely the choice was made to reflect a new, mature Pebbles, whose hair is tied with a neat ring of, possibly, pearls — a nod to mom's necklace? She wears a cute, sensible black shirt with a simple leopard print-flecked T-shirt tucked into it.
She's not as trendy as the rocking cool girl that Pebbles ultimately grew up to be. This early version shows Pebbles more doe-eyed, as she reveals to Fred that she is about to wed. Likely this characterization was necessary to establish tension as we sense a father about to lose his innocent girl, who in the episode wholesomely tells Wilma she better hurry up and explain the birds and the bees.
Of course, what's most shocking about this episode is that it was not written that Pebbles is marrying Bamm-Bamm. This is because this episode actually arrived just before we meet Bamm-Bamm in the very next episode, "Little Bamm-Bamm."
So not only did The Flintstones show us a different side of Pebbles, but an entirely different future, married to a different Bedrock boy.
When describing the paperboy, Pebbles sighs, "He's handsome, strong, intelligent, charming and ambitious — in fact, he's the most wonderful man in the world!"
In Flintstones lore, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm do end up getting married, in the very same place Fred and Wilma did: Rock Vegas.
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And again it's a dream. 'Rip Van Flintstone.' In Fred's dream, he's come back to Bedrock after being asleep for 20 years (even though all the adults seem to have aged about FIFTY years) and he learns that Pebbles and Bamm Bamm are now married. They enter the room, and we hear them coming because grown-up Bamm Bamm has very loud footsteps.
