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Men's
magazines: an A to Z
Men's magazines, lad's magazines, glamour magazines, pin-up magazines
and top-shelf magazines covered alphabetically. This page addresses Ice
to London Opinion, via Lilliput and London
Life. On other
pages:
Introduction
- 3D titles to Boys Toys
- Carnival to Cut
- Deluxe to Esquire
- Fable to Front
- The Gentleman's Magazine to The
Humorist
- Ice to London Opinion (this page)
- Man to Maxim
- Mayfair to Monkey
- Nine to Playboy
- Razzle to Stuff
- T3 to Zoo Weekly
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Ice
first issue of the men's magazine in 2001. Later covers became
even more racey. The one below features 'Pammi', Pamela Anderson
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Ice /
So / Switched On [closed] Top
Ice Publications / Galaxy. 2001-2007
In 2001, Ice appeared from its eponymous publisher. Its
covers became more and more indistinguishable from top-shelf titles.
It branded itself 'The men's magazine for real men.'
Ice was sold on to top-shelf men's publisher Galaxy, and they
tried to revamp the title and take it more upmarket as a
mainstream magazine - out went the 'babes' and in came gadgets.
However, the title could not shake off its downmarket image. So,
in 2007, the title was relaunched with the title So - Switched
On. However, this only lasted for three issues and was closed
in April. The title lives on as a website.
Switched
On website
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I-D
with singer Sade on the cover for February 1984
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Levelprint, 1980-
Style magazine that has outlived all its competitors. A feature
of the cover is that all the subjects are shown with one eye closed
or covered (a visual pun on the smiley-like title i-D). Issues are
usually themed: skin, happiness, scratch and sniff. Publisher Terry
Jones has published a book about the magazine: I-Dentity: An
Exhibition Celebrating 25 Years of I-D Curated by Terry Jones.
Dylan Jones became editor of i-D in 1984. He worked on
The Face and Arena and is now editor of GQ
in the UK.
i-D website
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Jack: first issue of James Brown's compact format men's
magazine
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IFG/Dennis, 2002-August 2004
After bemoaning the state of the men's market, James Brown. launch
editor of Loaded and former editor of GQ, set
up his own company, I Feel Good and launched film magazine Hot
Dog. Then, in 2002, he put his reputation on the line in launching
a men's quarterly, Jack. It took the A5 ‘handbag’
format popularised by women's glossy Glamour. It described
itself as ‘an orgy of war, animals, fashion, genius and cool’
and ‘another great British men’s mag with lions instead
of lager.’ However, Jack failed to achieve substantial sales
and, with an ABC of about 33,000 copies, IFG was taken over by Dennis
in autumn 2003. Jack was relaunched for its November issue
in a larger, sub-A4, format (176mm wide by 255mm - 8mm wider and
29mm taller). However, this did not work either and Jack closed
in August 2004, selling fewer than 40,00 copies.
IFG profile
Dennis
profile
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King:
first issue funded by Paul Raymond
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Europress, winter 1964-1967?
According to an obituary of journalist John Sandilands in the Telegraph,
King was launched by Paul Raymond: 'Raymond baled out after the
first issue, and Peter Sellers, Bryan Forbes, Bob Monkhouse, David
Frost and others were persuaded to invest to keep it going.'
King ran colour nudes but was swamped by
the likes of Bob Guccione's Penthouse and
was taken over by Mayfair in 1967.
To save money, the first issue of King used 21-year-old
editorial assistant, Jo Brooker, as the cover
girl; she later became editor of the IPC weekly Woman. |
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Code name for men's magazines that was reported to be in development
in 2005 by Daily Express and OK! publisher Northern
& Shell.
Northern &
Shell profile
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Later:
Loaded strategy for 30-plus men
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IPC, 1999-June 2001
Later took the Loaded lads magazine strategy to a 30-plus
readership under editor Phil Hilton. Failed to catch on. Closed
with sales reported at below 50,000.
IPC profile
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Level aimed to come out six times a year with music as
its core offering
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4130 Publishing, Brighton. April/May 1999-?
Editor Chris Quigley put together a mix of people, style, music,
film, travel, life and adventure - a mix of 'all things good'
that aimed to create 'a brand new hope'. Unfortunately, from
the editor's letter it seems obvious that the publishers weren't
clear about what Level was and wanted to do. Music was
important, though, with pieces on hip hop and a cover interview
with The Cardigans.
4130
profile
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Lilliput first
issue. The cover was by Trier, who always featured a man,
a woman and a scottie dog

Lilliput
in its heyday (1946)

The
last issue (July 1960) - it was taken over by Men Only
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Pocket Publications/Hulton Press/Longacre Press, July 1937-July
1960
Lilliput, a pocket magazine (stapled, 136x196mm), made
a name for Stefan Lorant - the title was bought by Hulton who
let Lorant go on to create Picture Post. At sixpence, Lilliput
was half the price of Men Only. It was intended for a
general audience - subtitled 'The Pocket Magazine for Everyone'
- but became a men's magazine after the second world war.
It was
a bestseller in its day, famous for its mix of photographs,
reportage, cartoons and air-brushed nudes. It was selling about
102,000 copies under Hulton in May 1959. In July 1960, it was merged
into Men
Only.
Many issues have a page describing the contributors,
who included people such as actor James Mason, Antonia White,
Ronald Searle and Tom Driberg. |
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Time Life Ent. Group Ltd, Spring 2000
Line was a sports fashion magazine launched by Wallpaper founder
Tyler Brûlé. It used two covers: male and female
models.
Line failed to build on Wallpaper's success
and was closed.
IPC profile
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Loaded
established the lads magazine sector that has spread around
the world

Relaunch in May 2005 with a DVD of Lucy Pinder and Michelle Marsh,
a price cut and a redesign were designed to protect sales from the
new weeklies, Nuts and Zoo
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IPC Media, May 1994-
Loaded defined a 'laddish' culture that was ground-breaking and
was to reverberate around the world. On television, the same
laddish element was seen in BBC programmes such as the sitcom Men
Behaving Badly,
the sports quiz They Think It's All Over and the irreverent
news quiz Have I Got New for You (in which one of the
teams was led by Private Eye magazine editor Ian Hislop).
Other TV presenters and stand-up comics were part of the trend,
such as Paul Merton and Frank Skinner (who was featured on the
cover of issue 6 - 'Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: Frank Skinner's
world of smut').
A couple of photographs of up-and-coming actress Elizabeth Hurley,
an article on hotel sex and a competition to win a dirty weekend
in Brighton's Grand Hotel (scene of the IRA's bomb attack on Margaret
Thatcher's Conservative party a decade earlier) were as far as the
first issue of Loaded went.
Founding editor James Brown wrote a regular editor's letter entitled
'page three', a reference to the Sun tabloid newspaper,
which had become famous for its topless women on that very page.
In the first issue, Brown wrote: 'What fresh lunacy is this? Loaded
is a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of
sex, drink, football and less serious matters. Loaded is
music, film, relationships, humour, travel, sport, hard news and
popular culture. Loaded is clubbing, drinking, eating,
playing and eating. Loaded is for the man who believes
he can do anything, if only he wasn't hungover.'
Of course, this is too long for a front cover, so it became 'For
men who should know better.' There were variations on this: 'For
men who should know letter' for a July 1995 cover on David Letterman;
and '...snow better' for the January 1995 cover showing Santa being
knicked.
The first issue sold 59,400 copies and Loaded broke the
100,000 sales barrier with its ninth issue, its lads magazine
formula overtaking the fashion-based Arena
and GQ in the process. Its first audited yearly sales
figure was 96,000 - and this rose by 82% to 174,763 for the period
Jul-Dec 1995.
Brown went on to edit GQ and found Jack at IFG.
Loaded deputy editor Tim Southwell (and founder of Golf
Punk) described the magazine's early days in his book Getting
Away with It (Ebury, 1998).
IPC profile
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Loaded
Fashion was relaunched as Fashion Inc
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Loaded Fashion
[closed] Back
to top
Most of the big men's titles have tried to move into the upmarket
fashion niche, launching Arena Homme Plus, FHM Collections
and Loaded Fashion. These met with limited success.
Loaded Fashion was relaunched as Fashion
Inc in spring 2006.
IPC profile
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London
Gentleman was a free men's magazine distributed to central
London homes. Above is the July/August 1985 issue
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London Gentleman
[closed] To
top
Viewstead Ltd. mid-1980s
The London Gentleman was published 10 times a year and
distributed free to '200,000 selected homes within a 30-mile radius
of central London'. Viewstead was a member of the European Courtesy
Magazines Group. The editorial was based on darker side of English
sports, sparked by the Heysel stadium disaster.
Customer
magazine publishers |

London
Life was fond of punny cover lines. This issue (9 August
1941) featured: 'Her first flying lesson ... at the Serpentine
lido' and 'Another "panky" portrait on page 21'. Another was: ‘Little
man you’ve had a busy day, by "Mounted mannequin"’
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London Life [closed] To
top
New Picture Press, London. 1922-(at least )1960
London Life was a strange mixture of bathing suit
pin-ups sprinkled among copious letters pages full of fetishistic
correspondence illustrated with readers' drawings and photographs
about corsets, stockings, high heels and artificial limbs.
The covers were black and white but with spot colour or duotone
and occasional use of silver ink. A feature was often made
of the middle four pages, which were printed on a coated, thicker
paper.
Before the second world war, London Life was published at an A4-ish size,
but paper rationing saw it cut down to a much smaller
format. Also, its Fleet Street offices were bombed and it moved
out to Reading, though later returning to a London address in
the Strand.
London Life was
printed by Keliher, Hudson & Kearns, Hatfields, London SE1.
The title London Life was also used by Tatler in
the 1960s (London
Life / Tatler). |
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London
Opinion during the first year of the second world war. The
cartoon caption on the cover of this August holiday issue reads:
'Hello Fred! I got your card saying you wished I was here!'

London
Opinion and The Humorist (Nov 1945)
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London Opinion
[closed] Back
to top
George Newnes, 19?-1954
London Opinion was a monthly that merged with Men
Only in
1954. A similar formula to Men Only with stories, cartoon
and photographs - including a couple of artistic nudes.
The November 1954 issue of London Opinion published a
photograph of a woman wearing a headscarf on which was printed
the cover of Men
Only from
October 1942, which showed a cartoon of a Russian sailor. The
picture caption read: 'Just a "babushka" turns Pat
into Patrushka.' (One meaning of babushka being a headscarf.) |
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