There are quite a few magazines featuring male teen celebs such as “Tiger Beat”, “16”, etc. for girls, but what if a teenage boy (who isn’t old enough for Playboy) wants to see a magazine full of female teen celebs? This seems to be a huge untapped market. Why doesn’t this exist? [I know there’s “Teen People” but that’s gender-neutral.]
Teenage boys are not too young for Playboy. Plenty of celebs there, usually with a revealing dress at an award show.
But I don’t think boys care as much about celebs as they do games and scifi magazines. I’d guess that the media moguls have tested that a lot and the answer is what you see on the news stands.
Not much unexplored territory in the magazine business, with 100’s of titles starting up and going out of business every year.
Cant go wrong with the Hardy Boys! (truely claasic, i learned the word “Gosh” from those books…)
I think that males and females are looking for different things out of their reading material. I’m not a girl, but I’d imagine that PG-13 pictures of young men and gossip are what they’re after. I’m a teenage boy, I don’t particularly care whether the women are teens nor do I really care about their likes/dislikes or personality. I’d guess that my interests are pretty close to those of someone in his 20s. I’m not sure you could say that about a teenage girl.
Magazines like FHM and Maxim provide clothed(mostly) pictures of women and cover other topics that appeal to males; stuff like technology, cars, and recreation.
Maxim is great (I know, I’m 14 :)), and so is ‘Stuff’. It’s made by the same company, and has a different set of regular articles and monthly features.
There ARE celeb magazines for teenage boys–WRESTLING!! Especially the ones with pictures of “valets”, not to mention Chyna.
What about Ralph and FHM?
I think this is exactly what you are looking for.
Both Maxim and Stuff have used younger celebs on the cover. Last month was the girls from “That 70’s Show”.
Or so I hear…
I didn’t MEAN to read it.
I was sending it to my son in the Navy.
Really.
dragonlady, don’t be ashamed of reading Maxim. It is a great magazine–I read my husband’s issue cover to cover every month.
I don’t think 14-year old guys would be interested in much of the other stuff in Maxim than the pictures and there aren’t really enough of them to warrant the cover price without a subscription. Maxim is one of the only magazines with those kinds of steamy pictures that actually offers something interesting for men to read.
Hey this is a little off topic but do any of you know what happened to the Maxim message boards? I used to visit them all of the time. I’ve looked for them but cannot seem to find them.
I’ll agree with most others here that teenage boys don’t really have much interest in celeb teen girls (at least while they’re clothed). Totally different markets, IMO.
Teen boys will be into sci-fi, comics, etc. For titillation it’s playboy/penthouse/etc. They don’t give a rat’s ass what sabrina the teenage witch’s favorite songs are.
And I don’t think playboy would be a bad investment for a teen boy. With the internet, he can pretty much see anything at all for free anyway. At least playboy is rather tasteful, and the articles/interviews are rather intelligent and thought-provoking. He’ll be done with the centerfold, pictures within 10 minutes anyway, and maybe an article or two will catch his eye after that 
Well, up until the time I was 19, I read Highlights. But then my mom started to think that Goofus was a bad influence on me. She cancelled my subscription. I really was in a bad way, wanting to emulate the eternally good Gallant, but that Goofus just did the bad thing SO WELL. Sigh. Now I am working on Ranger Rick and Kricket. Also waiting for the return of Sweet Pickles.
Seriously, I agree that Maxim is a kickass magazine. Enough T&A and also funny & interesting enough to read cover-to-cover.
I think they should all read IMHO.