Health and National Geographic.
What can I say-- I’m boring. v:(v
Health and National Geographic.
What can I say-- I’m boring. v:(v
Weekly Reader (if that’s a magazine)
My mother’s *Woman’s Day * and *Family Circle * magazines
Mad Magazine
Seventeen (as a young teen. It made me feel very inadequate.)
Omni (now THAT was a great one)
Esquire (so shoot me)
I don’t think it quite makes the “teens” cut, but I LOOOOVED Spy magazine.
I remember reading these; they came through the Scholastic book clubs. They also had a science-fictioney type magazine called Weird Worlds that reprinted stories by the likes of Ray Bradbury. IIRC, at least some of these mags were edited or contributed to by “Jovial Bob Stine,” who later wrote the Goosebumps books as “R. L. Stine.”
As a kid and/or teen I also read MAD, and Boy’s Life, and National Geographic WORLD, and GAMES, and Dragon, and Reader’s Digest, and eventually one or two computer magazines (the kind that had the programs you could type in).
My first subscription was to Highlights/ Every so often I’d submit one of my drawings to their “art gallery”, but to no avail
My parents always had *Time, Newsweek, Yankee, The Saturday Evening Post, * and Reader’s Digest, so I read those.
Starting from junior high onward, I subscribed to:
Teen
American Girl (it’s now published 6x/year, I believe, and it’s no longer owned by the Girl Scouts. It’s more geared to “tweens” now)
Glamour
Mademoiselle
Seventeen
National Geographic
Later I dropped some and added:
*Jane
Marie-Claire
Self
Natural Health
Elle
Boston
Bon Appetit
Cooking Light
Pastry Art and Design * (industry mag)
American Cake Decorating (ditto)
Taste Of Home and Light 'n Tasty
I’d buy [i[Mad* at the corner store every so often as a kid; I loved “Spy vs. Spy” and their takeoffs on a particular movie. Ditto for 16 and Tiger Beat because, of course, I HAD to have every photo of David Cassidy plastered all over my bedroom walls
I stopped subscribing to Glamour last year…let’s see, that was, what, after almost 30 years?!? mind boggles I hate the way it’s been dumbed down to a Cosmo clone. Speaking of which, I was never a big Cosmo fan.
I buy Allure and Self at the newstand. I still subscribe to all the aforementioned cooking magazines plus Marie-Claire and Jane. Mom still subscribes to *Yankee, Boston, [i/] and TSEP, although she can no longer read them.
Me, a magazine junkie? Nah
Dynamite was great. They had various young 70’s celebrities on the cover (Kristy McNichol, Leif Garrett, and of course J.J. “Dy-no-mite!” Walker). They encouraged you to form your own Dynamite clubs, and do activities like make a pillow out of a rock concert T-shirt. Bananas was supposedly for an older audience (meaning early teens), but I never graduated to that. Dynamite continued (or reappeared) into the early 90s. No word on Bananas.
Mad * and Cracked. Ranger Rick * as a kid, and my sister got another one like that, although I don’t remember the name.
Reader’s Digest and Popular Science/Mechanics, because my grandparents got them and would save the magazines for me.
I had a subscription to *Smithsonian * for a few years when I was about 12.
I read everything I could get my hands on, up to and including the cereal box (still do) but those were the regulars that I can remember.
My own kids read the *Nickelodeon * and *Disney * magazines, as well as *National Geographic * when it’s around.
As a child, I went through the Sesame Street -> Electric Company -> 3-2-1 Contact progression.
I also read World, a kids’ magazine which I believe was published by National Geographic
In my teens (more or less following the order in which I started reading them)…
Mad
Enter (PBS/CTW-linked computer magazine with BASIC programs. When it folded, my subscription was switched over to 3-2-1 Contact, which didn’t really hold my interest as a 7th-grader)
Omni
Discover
Poular Science
Popular Photograpy
Petersen’s Photographic
National Lampoon
In college:
National Lampoon
Heavy Metal
Photo
Playboy
Scientific American
I don’t remember the name of the teen/pop star magazine that was popular when I was a teenager. It wasn’t Teen, it was trashier than that, I think.
Mostly I read the true confessions and true crime mags – was there a Mickey Spillane magazine – I seem to remember that. And all the Creepy and Eerie I could find, and Mad and Cracked.
I also read a magazine that had the lyrics to pop songs. Maybe that one was Hit Parade, but I don’t remember.
I enjoyed my aunt’s Arizona Highways, and a friend’s dad’s Playboys.
Childhood:
Mad
CarToons, similar to Mad but dealing with hot rod/car culture.
CycleToons, as above but motorcycles.
Readers Digest
Teens:
Car Craft
Hot Rod
Any motorcycle magazines, dirt bikes, choppers, racing-didn’t matter.
Outdoor Life
Psychology Today, my Mom subscribed to this for years.
Late teens/early twenties:
Heavy Metal
High Times
Still into cars/motorcycles.
Penthouse-Playboy
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. As a teen I was also a heavy reader of Twilight Zone, a sci-fi short-story mag that went under after a couple of years.
and if reading my parents’ magazines counts, then add in National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and Track & Field News.
Wow, I just found a CarToons web site. I never realized it ran from the late 50s through 1991. I would have been reading it in the late 60s.
I can’t believe that Nickelodeon Magazine is still around. I use to read it when I was a kid during what I regard as the Golden Age of Nickelodeon. I feel old.
I don’t remember ever buying a Mad magazine, but I’ve read plenty of them. I remember reading Reader’s Digest at my grandmother’s house when I was small, but not for the feature articles - it was for the humorous anecdotes at the end of articles. My father had stacks and boxes of old “Popular Electronics” and “Popular Mechanics” magazines from the early '50s through the mid-'60s.
In my teens, I bought High Fidelity, Stereo Review and similar titles, National Lampoon, and any number of musicians’ publications - Guitar Player, Keyboard somethingorother, and recording technology magazines. High Times. And Rolling Stone, back when it mattered. Later on, I subscribed to The 910 and Belmo’s Beatleg News, the place where my wife discovered me in the classified section.
More than a couple of years. I think it ran from 1981 until at least 1988. Great magazine – there hasn’t been anything like it since, for good horror, SF and fantasy fiction, interviews, movie info, etc. Plus TZ scripts.
MAD, National Geographic, Surfing…
As a youth, my aunts gave me an annual subscription to Reader’s Digest. I believe that the first magazines I subscribed to on my own were Fangoria and Rolling Stone.
Ah, jeez, I am really gonna’ show my age!
Okay, yes, I actually remember reading Weekly Reader in grade school. Avidly. When I joined Boy Scouts, I got and read Boy’s Life every month, cover to cover. Dad subscribed to Argosy, Time and Life, so I browsed through them – still read Time, and US News & World Report.
The Denver Post had its own Sunday magazine, Empire – I read it while I was growing up, and later, as a journalism student, had two articles published in it.
I was reading TV Guide by age six. I would also read Highlights and Jack and Jill whenever I was at my doctor’s or dentist’s office.
When I was seven, I began reading parts of the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle/Examiner. I would also read Mad whenever my father bought a copy.
At age eight, I started reading the daily newspaper of whatever town I was in along with the short-lived revival of Liberty magazine.
I began reading Time and National Geographic on a semi-regular basis at age nine. I started reading Time regularly at age eleven along with Newsweek, the long-defunct New Times, Readers’ Digest, Writer’s Digest, and–since I was a Boy Scout–Boy’s Life.
Because my parents subscribed, I began to read Sports Illustrated, Consumer Reports, and National Geographic on a regular basis at age twelve and Esquire and The Sporting News when I was 13.
In junior high, I took advantage of the wider selection of magazines available in the library by adding People, Saturday Review, Life * (monthly version), U.S. News & World Report, Science, Psychology Today*, and Omni to my regular reading list.
In high school, along with most of the publications I already mentioned, I regularly read The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, National Review, The American Spectator, and The Nation.
I’m probably leaving a few out.
Oh, National Geographic’s from 1917 to present (no, I’m not 90 years old, but my dear departed Gramma had a very impressive collection before the fire)
I’ve recently convinced myself that it is not a sin to toss them after I’m done - since the whole collection is available on DVD… I think… Oh man, I sure hope so! I can’t believe I tossed 10 years of NG.
I am SO going to hell.
National Geographic: World (the kids version)
Reader’s Digest