# Was PLAYBOY ever all that great? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 25, 2013, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301 "2013-05-25T08:12:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/21 "2013-05-25T16:48:58Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Not _one_ rock album was a suggested Christmas present during the 60’s? Interesting. Have you looked at the Billboard Top 100, historically? Few of the great rock albums (or songs) made it anywhere near as far up the charts as we’d like to think. The great mass of music buyers (and think about that for a bit) was buying Sinatra, Como, and the whitebread pop singers, when they weren’t buying movie soundtracks. The music that came to define those eras was not the commercially successful music of those eras. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/22 "2013-05-25T16:53:45Z")
> [@Mr.Greenjeans](#): > > In the late 70s, I graduated from Mad to National Lampoon. It had nearly as much nudity as Playboy and the writing was great. …and then we got a little older and realized NatLamp was pointlessly sophomoric and snide, and went back to Mad’s genuine social humor. (Unfortunately, Mad took the same turn to bitter, exclusive humor a few years back, abandoning 50+ years of sharp, you’re-in-the-club humor. I tried to get John Ficarra to see that but got a bunch of rationalizations adding up to “we’re a full-color ad-driven magazine now, so.”) ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/23 "2013-05-25T17:03:00Z")
The references to Playboy’s relationship with Rock might make for another thread where the main issue could be some sort of timeline for when Rock became a mainstream music genre. Aside from the Country perennial presence in musical sales and the up-and-down nature of the Jazz influence, Rock has been around for sure since the 50’s. And yet its dominance may be harder to point to a specific timeframe as the beginning of its major influence. Was it The Beatles? Elvis? Other British bands? And when did its strength begin? Anybody want to post that new thread? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/24 "2013-05-25T17:10:06Z")
People can complain nowadays that _Playboy_ takes itself too seriously and there’s certainly some truth to that. But _Playboy_ at least tries. Compare _Playboy_ to the magazines that have replaced it: _Hustler_ and _Maxim_. Are they improvements? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/25 "2013-05-25T17:14:08Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Have you looked at the Billboard Top 100, historically? Few of the great rock albums (or songs) made it anywhere near as far up the charts as we’d like to think. The great mass of music buyers (and think about that for a bit) was buying Sinatra, Como, and the whitebread pop singers, when they weren’t buying movie soundtracks. > > The music that came to define those eras was not the commercially successful music of those eras. I’ve looked. The post-Beatles age was defined by rock music reaching the tops of the charts. You can look at [number ones year by year here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_albums_of_1964_%28U.S.%29). Non-rock acts did appear throughout 1964, but The Beatles dominated. By 1967, every number one was rock except for one week. It’s harder to find individual top 100 charts, but rock groups dominated those charts as well. I have _The Billboard Book of Top 40 Albums_ and the dropoff in non-rock albums after 1964 is astounding. A tiny handful of big names survived. Everybody else vanished. Como did not make the book between 1962 and 1971. The _Hello Dolly_ and _Dr. Zhivago_ soundtracks were number one for a week each. We may be surprised that the record industry didn’t suddenly and completely turn on a dime on Feb. 9, 1964 but it came darn close. Zeldar, that’s the quick and easy answer to your question. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/26 "2013-05-25T17:29:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Compare _Playboy_ to the magazines that have replaced it: _Hustler_ and _Maxim_. Are they improvements? Maxim is what it is. It’s not high art, but (and I couldn’t believe it myself) it is highly readable. Although I guess “not terrible” is a pretty low bar for a magazine. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/27 "2013-05-25T17:51:28Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I distinctly recall \*Penthouse \*being the place for some very deep, hard-hitting and first-rate articles (one of the first to decry Big Cancer Research, around 1980, etc.) FYI, if you’re talking about the series of articles Penthouse ran in the 1990s about how the NIH was covering up the cancer-curing effectiveness of hydrazine sulfate, well… that wasn’t really so much deep, hard-hitting journalism as it was a [tremendous crock of shit](http://www.cancertreatmentwatch.org/reports/hydrazine.shtml). ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/28 "2013-05-25T17:53:02Z")
I don’t believe that Playboy was trying to court the same demographics as those who listened to rock. It had always (from my recollection, reading through the '70s) positioned itself as being more “mature” than that - jazz, martinis, top-line stereos, expensive cars, cigars, necktie at the office and golf on the weekend. Basically for WWII vets with a mortgage. wife and two-point-four children who wanted to daydream about being sophisticated around pretty young girls. The same audience as the Sean Connery Bond films. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/29 "2013-05-25T18:08:33Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > \<\< snipped\>\> The same audience as the Sean Connery Bond films. Excellent point! Fleming made as big a to-do over gizmos, gadgets and toys as Playboy ever did. No telling how many such pursuits I got into because of Playboy’s doting on the latest electronics marvel. Hell, I even smoked a pipe for a few years! And that appeal to the ex-GI is well worth pointing out, too. Hef worked at _Esquire_ for a time before starting his own empire and it was about bringing the _Esquire_ reader up-to-date. Just think of the knockoffs of the Bond franchise and Playboy was right there with them, too. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/30 "2013-05-25T18:13:16Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > I don’t believe that Playboy was trying to court the same demographics as those who listened to rock. It had always (from my recollection, reading through the '70s) positioned itself as being more “mature” than that - jazz, martinis, top-line stereos, expensive cars, cigars, necktie at the office and golf on the weekend. > Basically for WWII vets with a mortgage. wife and two-point-four children who wanted to daydream about being sophisticated around pretty young girls. The same audience as the Sean Connery Bond films. I’m not as old as Hef, but that pretty much nails it. The mag continued his tastes, anchored in the 1950’s, way past the time they were mainstreamly popular with the younger crowd. The seniors (in college or HS) liked jazz, and that was a step in the right direction, but the freshmen liked folk, then rock. The seniors looked down their nose at rock much like their parents looked down their nose at jazz, but the freshmen said, “Never mind, you’ll be gone in 3 more years, and rock will take over.” Meanwhile, Hef was getting increasingly irrelevant. And I say that as a huge fan of his for at least 2 decades. And yes, I read the articles. Second. > [@Shakes](#): > > Hugh Hefner’s net worth: 43 million > > Larry Flynt’s net worth: 400 million But consider what would have happened if Flnyt had come first. I don’t think Hustler would have had a chance if Playboy didn’t pave the way and break the ground. Remember, even Hef had to defend his stance in court over obscenity laws; _Tropic of Cancer_, _Lady Chatterly’s Lover_, _Evergreen_ magazine and _Candy_ were regularly hauled in to court. Porn was available only under the table, VCRs hadn’t been invented and even Pussycat Theaters didn’t exist until 1966. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/31 "2013-05-25T18:36:47Z")
As long as the Playboy logo is hidden on the cover somewhere, it will remain better than Highlights, which doesn’t have nude women pictures inside. This is why going to the barbershop is better than going to the doctor’s. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/32 "2013-05-25T19:20:18Z")
> [@colander](#): > > FYI, if you’re talking about the series of articles Penthouse ran in the 1990s about how the NIH was covering up the cancer-curing effectiveness of hydrazine sulfate, well… that wasn’t really so much deep, hard-hitting journalism as it was a [tremendous crock of shit](http://www.cancertreatmentwatch.org/reports/hydrazine.shtml). My _Penthouse_ reading days were about 1978-80, maybe 81. I bought one issue around 1995. I don’t remember anything about hydrazine sulfate but while the article content may not have stood the test of time, it was the first to attack the ACS-AMA-maybe NIH tendency to keep researching the same dead ends at the expense of promising alternatives. And 30 years later, we’re basically no further along in cancer treatment. But we can buy pink batteries and trash bags. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/33 "2013-05-25T19:54:36Z")
My dad got me my own subscription when I was 13, and I was a loyal subscriber for many years. Nothing perverted about this. My family had a cabin at a nudist camp when I was a child, so naked women were not an issue. I think I can honestly say I really did read it for the articles. I let it lapse when they tried to go to the Maxim “lad” demographic. I interviewed for a job at _Playboy_ a while back. Every single person I met was a woman. Apparently, they have a difficult time recruiting and retaining male employees due to the jealousy factor. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/34 "2013-05-25T20:00:34Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > …and then we got a little older and realized NatLamp was pointlessly sophomoric and snide, and went back to Mad’s genuine social humor. > > (Unfortunately, Mad took the same turn to bitter, exclusive humor a few years back, abandoning 50+ years of sharp, you’re-in-the-club humor. I tried to get John Ficarra to see that but got a bunch of rationalizations adding up to “we’re a full-color ad-driven magazine now, so.”) YMMV, but for a lot of us it was MAD, NatLamp, Spy then The Onion. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/35 "2013-05-25T20:03:11Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > My dad got me my own subscription when I was 13, and I was a loyal subscriber for many years. Nothing perverted about this. My family had a cabin at a nudist camp when I was a child, so naked women were not an issue. I think I can honestly say I really did read it for the articles. I let it lapse when they tried to go to the Maxim “lad” demographic. > > I interviewed for a job at _Playboy_ a while back. Every single person I met was a woman. Apparently, they have a difficult time recruiting and retaining male employees due to the jealousy factor. I’m not clear how this would play out? Who would be “jealous” and in what context? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/36 "2013-05-25T20:12:07Z")
I subscribed to Playboy as a protest, back when 7-11 stores stopped carrying it. Very recently, I let my sub lapse, because of the two “two-month” issues. If they can’t put out a magazine every month, they aren’t living up to the implied promise. Peaked? Early 70’s. Watergate era. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/37 "2013-05-25T20:56:14Z")
> [@astro](#): > > I’m not clear how this would play out? Who would be “jealous” and in what context? The question came up during one of the interviews “How would your wife feel about you working at Playboy?” Apparently there are more than a few women who have an issue with their mates working at a business specializing in presenting beautiful women. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/38 "2013-05-25T20:59:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Very recently, I let my sub lapse, because of the two “two-month” issues. If they can’t put out a magazine every month, they aren’t living up to the implied promise. They’ve gone bi-monthly? Very bad news - that is the [Cheyne–Stokes breathing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyne%E2%80%93Stokes_respiration) of magazine publishing. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/39 "2013-05-25T21:19:32Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > And 30 years later, we’re basically no further along in cancer treatment. I am guessing that oncology [isn’t your field.](http://progressreport.cancer.gov/doc_detail.asp?pid=1&did=2009&chid=95&coid=927&mid) ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301/40 "2013-05-25T21:19:53Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > They’ve gone bi-monthly? Very bad news - that is the [Cheyne–Stokes breathing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyne%E2%80%93Stokes_respiration) of magazine publishing. Arthur C. Clarke, talking about the end of the Clayton era? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-playboy-ever-all-that-great/659301.md?page=3)