yeah, when they did a parody of ST:TNG I was already busting up just reading the character names in the intro panel.
Picard: Jaunt-Fluke Retard
Riker: Linoleum Wiper
Dr.: Loverly Cruncher
Wes: Pestly Cruncher
can’t recall the rest…
Like so many others, I loved it as a young teenager, but haven’t looked at a current issue in many years. I always assumed, though, that the similar-aged kids of every generation would continue to enjoy their MAD magazine. Sad for the kids who won’t get to enjoy fresh MAD material in the future.
I loved all of it, but I always had a soft spot for Don Martin, his sound effects (SPROINGACHONK!), and his cast of hinge-footed characters.
mmm
I remember one time, when I was sick in bed with the measles, my mom and dad actually brought me a copy of MAD from the store. I bought a lot of paperbacks of reprinted material, too. Don Martin was my favorite artist. I thought their movie and TV titles were pretty clever.
Clodumbo
Saturday Night Feeble
The Planet That Went Ape
201 mins. of a Space Idiocy
A Crock of Blip Now
Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid
How-Are-Ya-Five-O?
The White, Shadowed
William Mildred Farnsworth Higgenbottom Gaines III, that is.
My sisters and I avidly read Mad through the mid-Seventies. Good stuff, and lots 'o laughs. Sorry it’s wrapping things up.
FTW!
IIRC my first copy was the 1961 Upside Down Year one, when I would have been 9. I bought it religiously through high school, along with all the MAD paperbacks from previous years. I still remember many of the articles and jokes. But I switched to the National Lampoon when it first came out when I was a freshman in college. I haven’t seen an issue in decades, so I don’t know what their current shtick is like.
I used to subscribe. My big brother had a bunch of the books of reprints. I remember enjoying the “Mad Libs” for songs like “Jingle Bells” with funny phrases to substitute.
When I was about ten my parents forbade me from buying it because I was becoming too much of a smart-ass. Didn’t last. 
Then I moved on to 70s era National Lampoon and I was lost for good.
I would purchase Mad Magazine on occasion when going to the grocery store with my mother back in the 1980s. I haven’t purchased a Mad Magazine since around 1989 at the latest. My middle school had a lot of Mad Magazines dating back to the 1970s and I read quite a few of them. I can’t speak for the quality of the magazine over the last 30 years but in the era of vanishing magazines I’m a little surprised it held on as long as it did. I really enjoyed it as a child. And sometimes when I glimpse some of what they published I marvel at what they got away with.
I read basically every single Mad from the first issue to well into the 2000s. My dad collected them and I continued his legacy. I want to say writing dropped off in the late 90s and mid-2000s was when I finally gave up. I think Melvin was the first regular feature I started to skip but can’t recall much after that that really turned me off, just the movie and TV parody writing got sloppier and less researched, like very obviously basing a parody more off the previous installment than the actual thing being parodied.
I still have these issues, which I bought when issued (showing cover artist):
Apr ‘54 #10 Kurtz, Harvey MAD, Tales Calculated to Drive You – Humor in a Jugular Vein-Face Upon the Floor
May ‘54 #11 Wolverton, Basil MAD –Humor in a Jugular Vein-10c Beautiful Girl of the Month Reads ‘MAD’
Mar ‘55 #21 Kurtz, Harvey MAD, Tales Calculated to Drive You – Humor in a Jugular Vein
The early and mid-1950s issues were like a completely different magazine. I like those the best.
But the ones of the late 1960s were where I got a lot of my hippie and counterculture information as a kid. Growing up at that time in West Texas, there wasn’t a lot of that going around. And since my parents certainly weren’t taking me to movies like Midnight Cowboy and Joe, I was able to learn at least the general story lines of such fare.
I still keep a couple Nutty Mads figurines in my library.
“Nutty Mads were first produced by the Marx Company in 1963 with the first series and was likely inspired by Ed Big Daddy Roth, Basil Wolveton and Don Martin.”
I’ve got most of the rest of the series stuffed away in a box somewhere. I got them in ‘63 when I was 6. My sister painted them (very little chipping after nearly 60 years). Loved ‘em as a kid, and still love ‘em.
Someone’s got to save Mad dammit! Qadgop, you’re a rich doc … ever think of getting into the publishing biz???
Kaputnik, Roger.
I got it in the late '50s and up to 1964 or so. I even subscribed when I lived in the Congo in 1962. And I had all the early paperbacks with the earlier content.
When I was in Africa they said that they took all the staff to visit their furthest subscriber - in the Caribbean. I was 10, and I thought it was unfair that they didn’t visit me who was further away. Slightly later I figured it out.
I’ve seen one or two recent issues my daughter had, which seemed inferior. I don’t know if it was them or me.
I still remember East Side Story, with the Russians and Americans playing the Jets and the Sharks. I think I still have the issue with 201 Minutes of Space Idiocy.
CHEAP! x
Land of the Giant Bores.
Capt. Steve Burton: Stiff Bourbon
Pilot Dan Ericson: Darn Wrecksome
Alexander Fitzhugh: Fitzphew
[I loved that one.](I think I still have the issue with 201 Minutes of Space Idiocy.) The problem was I had never seen West Side Story. After my aunt went to see the movie, I asked her to sing some of the songs but she said she couldn’t remember them.
When you’re a Red
You’re a Red all the way
From your first party purge
To your last power play!
I started enjoying it in the early 1960’s, and I’ve saved all my issues. I interviewed one of its longtime writers, Arnie Kogen,
for a book on comedy.