What magazines did you read in your childhood/teens?

Cafe Society
1

When I was growing up I read a lot of MAD magazines, along with its competitor, called Cracked.

When I got older and into heavy metal music I bought issues of Circus and Hit Parade every month to keep up on the latest happenings in the rock music world. I also bought several magazines devoted to video games, but I don’t remember what they were called.

Once I was out of high school I had a Tandy Color Computer 3, so I was an avid reader of its companion magazine, the Rainbow, which featured listings of BASIC programs that you could type in (some of these would take hours of painstaking work). Once I moved into the PC world I started buying *Compute![i/] back when “blazing fast” 486 machines were cutting-edge technology. By then I was in my twenties.

So what were your favorite magazines from your childhood and teen years? What magazines did you read as you moved into adulthood? For this thread, let’s leave out the porn magazines. I’m talking about magazines that you could openly buy at the corner newsstand or had a subscription for when you were growing up.

2

Sassy, back when it was good and snarky (prior to Seventeen purchasing it)…I swear! It was a pretty well-done rag for pre-teen girls back in the day. I think the editors from Jane used to run it prior to the buyout.

YM & Seventeen

Time was one of the first magazines I remember reading as a kid-there were stacks of it in our house.

Readers Digest

and I used to be on a big policy debate team in high school and was assigned a few newspapers and magazines to “cut cards” for throughout highschool. I remember WSJ and The Economist and there was another really random one for foreign policy that I don’t remember but I got dumped on me because my father had a library card to MIT and I was able to get it through him.

3

Childhood – Mad and American Girl (published by the Girl Scouts – is that still in existence?).

Teens – Ms, National Lampoon.

Hmph. Even I’m not sure what to make of that. :wink:

4

Boy’s Life and then later Mad Magazine.

5

Childhood: Ranger Rick. I’d also look at National Geographic, but for the pictures as the articles tended to be over my head.

Teens: Glamour, Cosmo and YM

Now I’m back into National Geographic, along with Cooking Light and Rolling Stone.

6

When I was a pre-teen, my two favorite magazines were MAD and Calling All Girls (which later became Young Miss and then YM).

7

In the beginning, there was Highlights. I still find it in doctor’s offices, and it still warms my heart. (Damn you Goofus!).

Somewhere between Highlights and Mad/Cracked there was something called Dynamite or Banannas or something like that.

Lets see… Anyone else read/remember:
*321 Contact?
Pennywise?
Ranger Rick Schollastic somethingorother?
Dragon Magazine *(did that comic in the back ever get to sex and D&D?)
Games?

I’ll also second Boy’s Life and National Lampoon.

8

Childhood: Popular Mechanics, New Yorker, National Geographic.

Teens: Penthouse, Playboy, Dragon.

9

Boy’s Life, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic and The Saturday Evening Post which shows how old I am.

Could not afford to buy any of them back then, but I read them all in the library, as well as newspapers.

10

I’m not much of a magazine reader, but I used to love Nintendo Power when I was a kid.

I started reading ChartAttack as a teen, and I still like it. It’s got a great mix of stuff on independent music and very mainstream pop.

11

Childhood:
Cricket - I actually got a couple poems published in this one.
Ranger Rick
Boy’s Life
National Geographic
Reader’s Digest

Teens:
Mostly just Hit Parader and occasionally Circus. Frequently picked up MAD Magazine.

In my twenties:
Scrye and Inquest (collectible card game magazines), Playboy, Hustler

Nowadays:
Bass Player, Dragon, and Dungeon.

12

Boys’ Life, Nintendo Power, Ranger Rick, Highlights, 3-2-1 Contact, Discover, Some other sciency magazine that became Discover (started with an E or I), Sports Illustrated, all at one time or another.

13

Boys Life
Cracked
Omni
Field & Stream
Car & Driver

Not necessarily in that order. I think Omni was a constant companion through my teen years.

14

Oh, I remember Hit Parader and Circus. And Cream! I spent all my allowance money on records. Rolling Stone, back before it was glossy.

I read Time if it was around the house, Reader’s Digest (for the jokes) at other peoples’ houses.

Then Mademoiselle and Glamour.

15

Omni! So it was an O, not and E or I.

16

Beginning in 1973 and in roughly chronological order, I had subscriptions to:

Cricket
Boys Life
Cracked
Pizzazz
Sports Illustrated
Electronic Games

I also read Time, Readers Digest, and TV Guide (does that count as a magazine?), since my parents had subscriptions. As a young teenager I struggled through their copies of Harper’s and Smithsonian.

My younger brother got Highlights and Ranger Rick, so I sometimes read those. At my grandparents’ house I was baffled by the New Yorker.

I bought single issues of MAD and of various annual football or baseball season-preview magazines.

17

Other than comic books?

I never read many magazines as a preteen. Once I was a teenager, I was into Scientific American, Science Digest, Omni, and Harper’s. If I’d consistently been able to get my hand on The New Yorker, I’d have read that too.

18

Oh, I forgot that I also read confession magazines like True Story, Modern Romance, etc. once I started writing for money, which was when I was 17, as I figured them for a (relatively) easy sale.

19

I had a subscription to Highlights, so I read it. My parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest, and I read that too. However, my very favorite magazine was Analog (science fiction) and I enjoyed going over to my grandparents’ house where Grandpa would let me read just about any book or magazine in his collection. He subscribed to quite a few SF magazines, and had a wonderful book collection. He was a pompous old bastard, but he was delighted that one of his grandkids was interested in the field.

20

Popular Mechanics
Popular Electronics
Mad Magazine - read reread and rereread them until the magazines fell apart.
Playboy magazine (found my father’s stash). And I actually did read them for the articles (1960’s)
National Lampoon