Thin blocks are a reasonable ad-hoc alternative to the relay network.
In non-adversarial conditions
I don't think so, and I've thought about it. There may be adversarial issues with the specific implementation in whatever Bitcoin forks are implementing it (I don't keep track). Of course, you can't entirely get around the possibility of isolation, but if you can manage to disseminate 500 KB blocks somehow (which you assumed), then you can disseminate suitably-compressed blocks of the same size.