Magazines

[Egg Shen]

I slung mine long ago but i'd love to have a box of Kerrang! and Metal Hammers from 96-06 to dig through. Whenever i'm at a bootsale I hope to hit a goldmine but ive never been that lucky.

[SuperBacon]

5 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

I slung mine long ago but i'd love to have a box of Kerrang! and Metal Hammers from 96-06 to dig through. Whenever i'm at a bootsale I hope to hit a goldmine but ive never been that lucky.

Not quite the same but this is a good follow for some scans.

@moshermags seeing as it looks like it's not embedding.

Edited September 6, 2024 by SuperBacon

[Egg Shen]

Yeah i follow a few things like that, brilliant

[John Matrix]

First thing that came to mind when I saw this thread, though it’s maybe a comic book rather than a magazine, was Toxic!.

Remember very little of it now, but was instantly drawn to characters Marshall Law and Accident Man (couldn’t believe my luck when that character was brought to the screen a few years ago!) just remember it pushing boundaries, it felt edgy and exciting and also included comic book versions of Robocop and The Punisher which were right up my street at the time both from a story telling point of view, and from an artwork perspective - I’d spend hours trying to redraw the artwork from the pages of Toxic!

[HarmonicGenerator]

9 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

I'll also think nothing of picking up a copy of something if it generally looks interesting as well. Not long ago I fancied a read of a bit of history so got the BBC History mag which was great.

I’ve done fact checking for BBC History for the past three or four years. If you knew my real life name you’ll spot me in the staff list on the letters page. Did a bit for History Revealed too before they stopped that mag.

Like you, I’ve also always loved magazines and still do. Pretty much my whole life, I’ve bought the magazine for the subjects I’m most interested in.

As a young kid, obviously that was dinosaurs, so this magazine was the best thing ever.

 

And I also used to get the magazine for the best, most violent show on 90s kids TV:

 

Chances are all the old issues are still in a box in my parents’ shed somewhere.

Jump ahead a few years, I’m 8 or 9 and football is the best thing in the world, so I become a Match obsessive. 
 

Just a note to anybody who still likes football, it peaked in 1996 and hasn’t been good since maybe 2001. 

Used to love the sets of little pop out shirts for all the teams they’d do so you could track the tournaments and leagues.

Anyway, move on a few more years and we have a PlayStation, so from issue 39 (or maybe slightly earlier because I remember this Tekken 3 cover vividly) this was my Bible:

I carried on with the Official PlayStation Magazine right through the PS2 era. These I sadly don’t think I have anymore, but still (probably) got plenty of the demo discs from both incarnations somewhere.

(I also used to get the Official Nintendo Magazine around this time, I never had an N64 but it was the height of Pokemon fever on the GameBoy and this mag was the best place for tips and hints and which branch of Toys R Us might be giving away Mew next Friday.)

A little further ahead, I’m into proper telly now, ie Buffy, and what do you know, we’re right in the era where most popular TV shows had their own magazine. A golden era to be sure.

 

(Naturally when Angel got its own magazine I’d get that too.)

These I still have a fair few of, and if I’ve gone to conventions where a Buffy/Angel actor has been appearing, I’ve usually got one signed. Pretty sure I’ve got James Marsters and Juliet Landau’s signatures on the same cover.

Skip ahead to teenage me, I’m Into Music now, but I’m not very cool so Classic Rock is the magazine closest to my tastes because they’d put Zeppelin on the cover every other month.

While I’m away at uni, I discover the WH Smith in Newcastle stocks issues of Rolling Stone, direct from America and usually only two behind the current one. Through the mid-to-late 2000s whenever someone I liked was on the cover, I’d get it and I’d read it cover to cover, political long reads and everything, and all the music bits even if I was never going to start listening to Vampire Weekend or Grateful Dead.  

 

Not sure what 2007 soul patch Bruce was thinking here but he just about pulls it off.
 

Then wrestling comes into things. I occasionally got WWF and Raw magazines - any with a Torrie or Stacy centrefold were essential - but at the peak of my work rate wanker phase along came Fighting Spirit to appeal to my inner smarky twat. When it got to the point that Lister’s articles were the sole thing I’d read, I must have realised I was past being Wan of Dem and stopped getting it.

This over Power Slam. Yeah, I said it.

The magazine I’ve probably bought longest though, and the one I still get every month (apart from BBC History which they sometimes remember to send me a freebie of) is Empire. I used to alternate between that and Total Film from about 2000 before eventually giving up on the latter and subscribing to Empire from about 2010. Still keep hold of any issues where I like the film that’s on the cover, so have still got all the old Lord of the Rings issues, Star Wars ones, etc.

I will still have a look through the magazines if I’ve got some spare time at the train station but I very rarely have the time to read them properly now. When we went to New York in 2018 one of my big things I wanted to do was get a magazine from a newsstand. Went with Entertainment Weekly, it was okay and I am sad they stopped doing a print edition.

I will almost definitely go and buy a magazine tomorrow because of this thread. Great idea Bacon!  

 

Edited September 6, 2024 by HarmonicGenerator
Someone buy me a BBC Wildlife or something

[SuperBacon]

Amazing post @HarmonicGenerator Let us know what you buy

Love that newsstand story. I remember being similarly obsessed with the newspaper box things they have there. I remember thinking it was great you could pop in a quarter and take all of them if you wanted to.

Anytime someone goes to the states I always ask for a copy of Sports Illustrated. There used to be an ESPN magazine that was excellent too but think its now discontinued. 

 

 

[Dr. Alan Grant]

I used to buy 2 different PlayStation mags, neither of which was the official one. I think one was called PSW and the other PSM2 possibly. I re-read the preview feature for Resident Evil 2 about a million times before I finally picked it up from Woolworths. 

I also bought Total Film and Empire for years, finally giving up on TF last year. I still buy Empire, but hardly ever get around to reading it, so they just pile up. I do occasionally flick through the issues that have 200 greatest films type lists, just to see how many I have yet to see. 

I briefly tried a digital magazine app. It’s not the same. Reading an iPad whilst having a shit feels too much like I’ve time travelled to the distant future. 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I started with the Beano and Dandy for years. As I grew out of those I moved to 2000AD and White Dwarf, before finally Powerslam and Sky.

Some great times with them all. 

[Abe_Knuckleball_Schwartz]

Great thread.

I still have most of my gaming mags, full run of Total! Nintendo Magazine, Mega Magazine, GB Action, Ultimate Future Games, Arcade Magazine and all issues of Edge Magazine up to the 25th Anniversary and after that I decided to call it a day and stop buying them, mainly because I was running out of room and I was not enjoying it as much.

Such a shame that written media is now thing of the past and will be a sad day if and when the media dies as a whole.

 

 

[King Coconut]

The only mags that interested me were jazz.

Spoiler

Phwooooooar!

[Jazzy G]

Nowadays I tend to just read Viz, and I'm trying to get a handle on Private Eye as well, because it's such an interesting read. Occasionally I'll see what's in Retro Gamer as well.

When I was younger I used to read BEano and Dandy, as well as Buster, Whizzer & Chips, and Oink. I had a brief spell reading Look In and Smash Hits as well. I used to try and always get hold of the 100 sexiest girls issue of FHM, and then end up reading the next few issues. There was one called Vox that was decent. I also became a regular reader of the NME and Melody Maker for a few years.Sometimes I'd have a look at Loaded and Bizarre, and lost count of how much money I must have wasted on Zoo & Nuts. I used to pick up the occasional issue of White Dwarf, Kerrang, Metal Hammer. 

[Gus Mears]

The old man used to get bongo mags sent to the house and, upon a young Gus Mears accidentally opening one, claimed he didn't know why he was being sent them and had written several times to the publishers to request they stopped. It remains the biggest lie I've ever been told.

Edited September 6, 2024 by Gus Mears

[Fog Dude]

2 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

And I also used to get the magazine for the best, most violent show on 90s kids TV:

 

Chances are all the old issues are still in a box in my parents’ shed somewhere.

(I also used to get the Official Nintendo Magazine around this time, I never had an N64 but it was the height of Pokémon fever on the GameBoy and this mag was the best place for tips and hints and which branch of Toys R Us might be giving away Mew next Friday.)

When trying to wrack my brains for a non-gaming mag, only Animals of Farthing Wood and later the official Power Rangers mag sprang to mind, so I'm glad someone mentioned the former. From memory, Series 1 & 2 were delightfully gory (the Weasel-Scarface scenes are basically torture porn) but following complaints from parents they toned it down for the third and final series.

The magazine itself, on the other hand, can't have been much cop since the actual content inside wasn't very memorable. The cover art's quite good but that line at the bottom gives the game away that it was trying too hard to be educational instead of just telling great stories. 

As for Official Nintendo mag - think I bought that a few times when it was still called Official Nintendo Magazine System towards the end of the SNES/GB era but gaming-wise I was mainly a GamesMaster kid. 

56 minutes ago, Jazzy G said:

Nowadays I tend to just read Viz, and I'm trying to get a handle on Private Eye as well, because it's such an interesting read. Occasionally I'll see what's in Retro Gamer as well.

Yeah, the Eye and Retro Gamer are my main two these days as well, mainly for perusing while on the can. My first-ever Christmas present was the Beano annual but I was obviously unable to appreciate it for a good few years after that. In FE college I used to browse both The New Statesman and The Spectator to try to get a balanced view of current affairs, but wouldn't touch the latter with a barge pole these days. 

[Carbomb]

Just remembered: my dad got me subscriptions to the Marshall-Cavendish published science magazine Quest which you got in folders containing the magazine itself (which was designed to be split up in sections and put into binders with dividers they gave you), posters, mini science projects, and a cardboard model related to whatever subject (I remember building the Mir space station at one point):

and also to The Country Companion, all about wildlife in the UK, which was also released in a similar manner:

 

I got a lot out of those. Must've given them all away because I can't find them now.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

I’ve always been a magazine guy, going back to when I was young enough to pick them off shelves, like most kids in the early 90s it started with The Beano and The Dandy as well as WWF (as was) Magazine then later Match, Shoot, MOTD (remember that?) and the newspaper version of the official Everton magazine 

I used to be so addicted to buying mags in my mid to late teens that when going into town was a luxury, rather than the regular occurrence it is now due to working in the city  centre, I would head to WH Smith and spend a big wedge on nothing but them, the big 3 of lads mags FHM, Loaded and Maxim, CVG and Gamesmaster, FourFourTwo and World Soccer, Powerslam, Empire and Total Film

Nowadays I rarely buy a physical magazine, unless I catch Inside The Ropes and Wrestletalk in their release windows, as they are hugely pricey, around the £5-6 mark or higher (Starburst for example is nearer to £8) and instead have a subscription to Cafeyn through my phone bill (£7.99 a month as an addon) and download Total Film, SFX, World Soccer, FourFourTwo and Retro Gamer to read (though sometimes I forget and wind up having two issues of one or two titles to catch up on)