When Playboy Magazine debuted in 1953, Hugh Hefner printed a first edition of 54,000 undated copies as a hedge against the aspiring editor’s uncertainty about the publication’s potential.
But the man who would become known worldwide for his pipe, silk smoking jacket, pajamas, and armful of beauties, ‘Hef’ struck the American male libido full-on with the his first centerfold – Marilyn Monroe stretched out upon a red velvet background, eyes closed, mouth open, with only the radio on.
The Empire that followed was full of Playboy Clubs, Bunnies, domestic and internationally licensed products galore, resorts and casinos, books, movies and music production, dozens of foreign editions, even a braille edition (published since 1970 by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped), which includes all the written words in the magazine, but, perhaps prophetically, no pictorial representations. For several decades, the expansive Playboy Empire was truly the stuff of brand legend.
The Empire Winds Down
But over the years, a victim of changing styles combined with terrible brand management, the Playboy Empire would wind down to a shadow of its former iconic self. And, recently, Playboy Enterprises’ CEO announced that with the March 2016 issue, the 62-year-old magazine would eliminate the nude girl next door ‘Centerfolds’ or ‘Playmates’ in a PC move reflecting, perhaps, America’s rising conservatism. With the Bunny clubs long gone and now the print version of the Playmate re-assigned to the dustbin (although nudes will continue to appear on Playboy’s subscription website), can the death of the iconic ‘Rabbit’ head logo be far behind?
From a circulation that once topped seven million copies a month, Playboy saw its circulation plummet 23 percent in just the first half of 2015 over the previous year, to a bit over 800,000 (according to the Alliance for Audited Media). The U.S. edition of the magazine alone loses $3 million annually, while Playboy’s free public website, which went ‘nudity-free’ last August is, apparently, booming.
The decision to put an end to the long line of some 700+ magazine Playmates was, according to Playboy executives, partly a reaction to the massive growth of easily accessible online pornography. “You’re one click away from every sex act imaginable for free,” CEO Scott Flanders told The New York Times. “And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”
RELATED: Long Live Playboy: Playboy Magazine Will No Longer Support Nudity
A Respected Storyteller
Playboy has long been respected for quality storytelling, hilarious cartoons, and probing interviews, having published stories from hundreds of notable writers including: Vladimir Nabokov, Haruki Murakami and Margaret Atwood, along with ground-making interviews with prominent leaders like Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King Jr. The revamped print magazine will emphasize upscale lifestyle content, long-form journalism, celebrity interviews and fiction (what’s the dif?), will find plenty of competition waiting, such as the long stagnant Esquire magazine (750,000 circ.) among a trunkful of lad-mags.
Thankfully, Playboy management pledges that sex appeal won’t disappear completely. Readers will still find “sexy, seductive pictorials of the world’s most beautiful women” in the magazine’s pages, but the visual content will be more PG-13 than R-rated. Yes, Playboy will still feature a Playmate of the Month and sexy pictures of semi-clothed women, but they will be rated as not appropriate for children under 13.
Sex Lives Online
Online since 1994, Playboy developed a pay website called the Playboy Cyber Club (1995), which features chats, pictorials, complete magazine archives, and Playmates and Playboy Cyber Girls videos that do not appear in the magazine. In September 2005, Playboy launched the online edition of the magazine, Playboy Digital, and (2010) introduced “The Smoking Jacket,” a safe-for-work website designed to appeal to young men while avoiding nude images or key words that would cause the site to be filtered out of the workplace.
Long Live the Rabbit Head
Playboy‘s iconic and enduring mascot, a stylized silhouette of a rabbit wearing a tuxedo bow tie, created by Playboy art director, Art Paul, as an end note for the second issue, has appeared ever since. A long-running joke involves hiding the Rabbit logo somewhere in the cover art or photograph. Hefner said he chose the rabbit for its “humorous sexual connotation” and because the image was “frisky and playful.”
In giving up his beloved editorial duties – personally selecting each monthly Playboy magazine Centerfold Playmate – the 89 year-old Hef is seemingly on the verge of retirement. And, it all seems such a sad retreat, when readily available augmented reality apps like Blippar could transport Playboy magazine readers from the printed PC version to a full-on immersive video experience. One can only hope that technology will come to the rescue of Miss January, February, March or…?
Image source: Frank Gruber