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Topic: What Sort of Man Reads Playboy? Post ReplyPost New Topic
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Some of you older folk around here may remember this question, featured in a long running series of house ads in the (in)famous men’s magazine.

I just now googled the phrase, and was delighted to find many examples from the Fifties and Sixties. Snapshots of an age that never really existed.

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James Best
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I read my first Playboy magazine way back in 1981 and then had a subscription starting in 1985 (a courtesy gift from my parents, as I was heading off to college) that ran for about ten years.

I can't remember if the house ads during the 80's were still using that particular slogan. But I think that in terms of circulation and sales, Playboy had hit its peak during the 70s.

The cachet of being a "Playboy reader" didn't last very long due to the glut of other men's magazines that hit the shelf during the 70's and early 80's that took a bite out of its market share.



Edited by James Best on 11 November 2024 at 5:30am
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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

PLAYBOY was pretty much decimated by the internet and easy access to hardcore porn. Those who really did read the magazine saw it slip and slide until it began imitating MAXIM in content and layout.

NATIONAL LAMPOON parodied the decline with a comparison of “Bachelors Then and Now”, THEN being the kind of suave sophisticate Hefner like to pretend his magazine represented, and NOW being a gym-suited slob.

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Brian Miller
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

My wife was a HUGE fan of THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR. She’s now immersed in
a podcast by two of the three titular girls who are revealing quite a bit about
being part of Hef’s harem. She’s told me a few of the things they’ve shared
and Hef sounds like a total douchebag. A complete reversal from the sweet
little older guy that liked to have pretty girls around him image that he
seemed to have.
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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

"titular"

--

Biting my tongue......
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Rodrigo castellanos
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I've always found Hef interesting.

In real life he was nothing like the "Mr. Playboy" character he invented for himself, but as time went by the mask eventually became the person (and not in the best way).

We comic book readers know how that dynamic works, heh.





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Michael Penn
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Posted: 09 November 2024 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I found the stash of my friend's older brother's issues. Yeah, of course, the pics. But then... I actually read some things, and the one that really hit me was John Lennon's last interview before his murder.
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Mike Baswell
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Posted: 10 November 2024 at 2:44am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I have a box of old ones out in the garage somewhere. The interviews and fiction stories were always pretty good. Pretty sure I have a Trump interview from the 90's, which might be interesting from a morbid curiosity viewpoint, as well as one from the 70's with a Jimmy Hoffa interview before he vanished.
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Joseph Vecchio
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Posted: 10 November 2024 at 3:45am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

I agree that they peaked in the seventies, even though I was underage at the time...I always thought the women were very beautiful.  I did get the magazine because of the women but that doesn't mean there wasn't anything else about it I liked.  I liked the Gahan Wilson cartoons, he was brilliant!  Also his "Nuts" comic in National Lampoon.
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Craig Earl
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Posted: 10 November 2024 at 11:45am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

The only time I ever bought an issue was because it featured a Walking Dead spin-off story about Michonne (I was a big fan of TWD comic). The same issue also included an interview with Mick Fleetwood (I'm a big Fleetwood Mac fan too). 

The fact that naked ladies appeared was just a bonus.

This was in 2012. I do remember thinking that much of the content was more civilised that I expected to find.
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Joe Smith
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Posted: 10 November 2024 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Mr. Turbarg had every issue in the upstairs of his garage. As I was friends
with his son Jason, I was allowed to read from the beginning and be up to
date monthly. I say allowed, but only because he kept the door unlocked.
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David Miller
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Posted: 13 November 2024 at 5:32am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

When I was in college in the early Nineties, somebody donated a stack of Eighties Playboys to the common area, and I subsequently subscribed for a year post-college.

I read the articles, swear to god! I also looked at the pictures, and I realized the photographers resorted to a relentlessly limited variety of master poses. Once I noticed that is was impossible to unnoticed and it really drove home the Playboy Philosophy's gross commodification and lack of imagination. The celebrated interviews were more often shallow and self-parodic.

I'll always cherish that Sherilyn Fenn pictorial, though.
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