"When The New Yorker started its caption contest, in 2005, it quickly became the world’s most popular weekly cartoon caption contest. I don’t have any data to back this up, but back then, just having a weekly cartoon caption contest made us the world’s most popular one. Five years and more than a million and a half entries later, a Google search for “cartoon caption contest” yields about 292,000 results...
I’ve been pretty frustrated by all of them, not due to the copycat factor but because I haven’t been able to win..."
I can understand Mr. Mankoff's frustration.
I wonder when did the first picture (photo, cartoon...) caption contest debut anywhere in the world?
For me it started in children's magazine 'Chandamama'. Marathi version of it 'Chandoba' (चांदोबा) was launched in April 1952. (Past issues of Chandoba are available here.)
I don't know in which month's issue the caption contest was launched but when I started reading the magazine, c 1967, it was well established.
In Marathi, it was called 'photo jodanaave chadaaod' (फोटो जोडनावे चढाओढ). I think as a family we tried to win the contest by attempting it a couple of times but failed.
Here is a typical contest:
Contest: from January 1969 issue
Winning Entry: from March 1969 issue by Ms. Lata Kharade, Mumbai (लता खराडे, मुंबई)"आपण दोघे मित्र जणू / शुभ्र वेषांत !" "मैत्रीचा गोड घास घे / तुझ्या मुखांत !!"
(p.s. Today they may get an entry saying that we shouldn't encourage feeding animals in captivity at zoo!)