# It's the end of an era: Family Circle ending after 87 years **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 19, 2019, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998 "2019-10-19T14:35:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/21 "2019-10-22T03:29:53Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I was fond of the page long weight loss ads for AIDS, a candy you would eat before eating, to fill you up so you wouldn’t overeat. AYDS. Originally, the active ingredient was something that numbed the taste buds. Later it was changed to an appetite suppressant. (Not quite an upper.) > [@](#): > > Those ads disappeared by the early 80s. I wonder why? My mom scoffed at me when I said “They’ll have to change their name.” Regardless of what the product was called, it was doomed for another reason: SlimFast. And NutriSystem. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/22 "2019-10-22T03:36:53Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > My mother dragged me along to the “beauty parlor” weekly to get her “hair done” back in the 60s when I was a kid. If I ran out of reading material I would fall back on the women’s magazines. I was fond of the page long weight loss ads for AIDS, a candy you would eat before eating, to fill you up so you wouldn’t overeat. > > Those ads disappeared by the early 80s. I wonder why? I saw those AYDS ads in “Workbasket”, a craft magazine my grandmother subscribed to and was published until 1998, where it changed iterations. The name later changed to “Diet AYDS” for obvious reasons, and then the product was discontinued in the late 1980s due to poor sales. They were actually benzocaine lozenges, designed to blunt the sensation of taste in addition to slightly filling one up before a meal. We get lots of “Family Circle” mags donated to the library where I volunteer, in addition to BH&G and “Good Housekeeping”. > **[History of Workbasket Magazine](https://mycraftbasket.wordpress.com/history-of-workbasket-magazine/)** > > New Up Date! Please visit my new updated, upgraded website at MyCraftBasket.com!! I recently switched to a Web Editor format that makes it much easier to enter information. This also caused my rank… ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/23 "2019-10-22T06:16:00Z")
Gee, it took me longer than some other folks to realize my faux pas. Yes, I thought you were referring to “Family Circus”. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/24 "2019-10-22T06:33:59Z")
Jeff Keane now draws the “Family Circus” strip. McCall’s was taken over by Rosie O’Donnell’s empire, and folded a few years later when she got into some kind of scandal. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/25 "2019-10-22T11:57:08Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Shit… saw the feed, read/thought-I-read the same thing. Finally, Billy is dead! But no such luck. I was thinking of Dolly holding a bloody knife standing over the corpses of Billy and PJ. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/26 "2019-10-22T13:03:46Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > well its auidence had been diminishing for decades which was mainly housewives and grandma types that needed the latest recipe for dinner or decorating tips for the holidays along with knowing the latest diet/medical trend and throw-in a celb interview a few feel good stories and a chapter or two 9f next months must have romance along with shopping guides and there you have every issue of fc ever “Jello molds and breast cancer” is how someone once summed up magazines aimed at housewives. According to Ruth Rendell, the British equivalent is “Royalty sycophantic/crocheted tea cozy”. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/27 "2019-10-22T13:33:23Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > McCall’s was taken over by Rosie O’Donnell’s empire, and folded a few years later when she got into some kind of scandal. No scandal and not taken over by Rosie’s “empire”. A German company had bought it (one of several ownership changes). They brought her in to remake the magazine, which included naming it after her _a la O_. But she had little control over the material and it wasn’t reflecting what she wanted the magazine to be. So she left. This created a problem. A magazine named after someone who was no longer associated with it and didn’t like the content. And it folded. If she had actually owned it, the content would have been decided by her and the magazine would have … died anyway. (She wouldn’t have gotten in a lawsuit with herself over the result either.) It was near death anyway. All it took was a gentle nudge to send it over the edge. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/28 "2019-10-22T13:39:20Z")
Every once in a while, I’ll page through magazines. They’re 75% ads. I’m surprised any of them are left at all. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/29 "2019-10-22T16:54:08Z")
I also thought it was ‘Family Circus’. I was imagining the last cartoon, in which little Billy is murdered for being annoying and his soul takes a very ‘humorous’ circuitous path to the gates of Hell, stopping at each point along the way to reap the souls of the rest of the family. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998/30 "2019-10-22T16:57:37Z")
Oh, I’m sorry to hear this is ending, I always read it at the ‘blue hair’ hair salon. Was it that magazine or ‘Woman’s Day’ that used to have the tear-out calendar in the December issue, that you removed and stapled to make a calendar booklet? Each page had an illustration and a bible quote. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-end-of-an-era-family-circle-ending-after-87-years/841998.md?page=1)