How To Identify Adult Porn Magazines

One of the questions I seem to get all of the time is why is it so hard to identify adult magazines from various publishers? As most collectors of hardcore pornographic magazines will know, most titles don’t have any publisher information, dates, index or models names.

TWO TYPES OF ADULT MAGS

Before we answer this question, it’s first necessary to identify the two types of adult mags that were published in the United States between 1950-1990. The first type is know as Nationally Distributed adult magazines (NDAM). These magazines were printed by legitimate publishers and distributed by regional publication print distributors. They included titles such as Hustler, Fling, Cavalier, Club, Adams World, Gent Dapper and Men’s World. Because of obscenity laws across the US, these publishers strictly adhered to national obscenity standards. They almost always displayed nude models of a particular gender (mostly women) . The covers were salacious but did not display actual nudity. They were typically displayed on the top shelves in corner stores and newsstands so that younger audiences could not view there contents. Like all nationally distributed magazines, their circulation was audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) and the publishers adhered to the rules placed by the bureau. The most of these rules was that the magazine had to have an indicia section inside. Indicia refers to a piece of text traditionally appearing on the first page after the cover. It usually contains the name of the publication, its publication date, address of the publisher and any disclaimers necessary for local distribution of such titles; such as “All Models Over 18 Years of Age”.

The second type of magazine are called Regionally Distributed (RD) adult magazines. These titles displayed much more explicit content and were commonly referred to as “XXX” by readers. They were printed by publishers with names such as Parliament, Utopia, Marquis, Nuance, Golden State News, Gourmet Editions, Visions of Fantasy, Visual Arts, GSN, Love Publications and Golden State News… just to name a few. These magazines were far more explicit than there more mainstream nationally distributed counterparts. They typically showed both males and females engaged in actual sexual acts. The problem that RD publishers had was that even though their content was legal in certain areas of the countries (New York) they were considered to be obscene in others areas (Texas). When you consider that the US has 50 plus State jurisdictions and a plethora of smaller town ordinances that govern what was obscene, it becomes apparent that RD publishers were limited to where they could distribute there work without infringing severe censorship laws. For this reason RD titles were primarily sold in large urban areas where obscenity laws were typically more liberal than say a small town in the bible belt.

However early in the infancy of the industry a cat and mouse game arose between RD publishers of explicitly porn and over zealous prosecutors. Starting in the 1950’s local county and state prosecutors from jurisdictions with strict obscenity laws would try and drag the RD publishers into court with false claims that they had distributed obscene material in more restrictive parts of the country area under the doctrine of willful blindness. Basically these prosecutors would argue that even though the materials were not physically distributed in the area by the publisher, the mere fact that they were sold in another jurisdiction, the publisher had to have known that they would end up in more restrictive areas. It did not seem to matter to these brimstone conservative prosecutors that these charges were rarely upheld by the higher courts. There real purpose was to harass the RD publisher into the costly ordeal of defending itself and in this way force them out of business.

ADVANCED MASKING MEASURES

The result of such needless prosecution was that RD publishers began to incorporate defensive counter measures to avoid indictments. First they began to print material without any indicia whatsoever. This made sense. If the RD publishers name and address was not present in the magazine they could not be identified. A lack of name or address would also thwart any attempt to recover a monetary judgment and make it next to impossible to give written notice of the commencement of the legal proceedings. This novel approach worked quite well at first but legislatures began to pass even more draconian laws to identify and prosecute RD publishers. In response RD publishers began to employ even more advanced masking measures. Parliament Magazines, for example, started using a multitude of names and symbols to denote the publisher. Basically they changed there name ever few months. Sometimes all they would put on the cover was a logo so that regular reader could know whose product they were buying. But there would not be any other editorial content in the magazines. It got so bad that even the models who were stars and performed under stage names would not be credited.

Another step RD publishers took was to remove any reference to the date the magazine was published. This added another powerful legal weapon in the arsenal of RD publishers to circumvent censorship laws. If a magazine could not be dated it would be very difficult to determine when it was published and which statutes it violated. During the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, states were continuously passing ever more stringent laws to censor explicit RD magazines. However since the magazine did not have a date, it was impossible for prosecutors in court the prove beyond a reasonable doubt when the magazine was printed. Without this information you could not determine which of the recently passed laws were infringed or when. Indeed without a date most magazine owner could claim that the titles were grandfathered from a date prior to any off the laws date of passage and were thus legal.

The end result of all of the above was that most of the adult magazines published RD publishers had very little editorial content. There was hardly any information about the publisher, models shown, date published or any kind of insight into what it’s readers wanted (such a letters from readers section). Indeed the editorial content was so minimal that most magazines were literally just thrown together with serious errors – such as some magazines would be published with the wrong covers. Too bad because for collectors and researchers this information would have been highly valuable. I have always believed that the reason that porn mags are not as widely collected today as other magazines is because of this lack of editorial content. Most people cannot be bothered to try and keep up with a particular publisher or model they really liked if they could not identify them. As time went on people lost interest and today most collectors still play guesswork when trying to determine whether a magazine is any good : – (