Playboy Magazine Covers

December 4, 2003 8:52 PM

Every Playboy Cover Find the bunnies! (NSFW if they don't like you looking at Playboy Magazine Covers)
posted by ColdChef (24 comments total)

Also, check out your birth month.
posted by ColdChef at 8:54 PM on December 4, 2003

I don't remember where I read this, but someone did a study of the monthly playmates, and found that when times were good (US economy-wise) playmates were slightly fuller-figured. In leaner times, they tended towards leaner playmates.
posted by o2b at 8:59 PM on December 4, 2003

My birth month is depressingly safe for work. But what a superb post! I've been seeing (and even posting) unofficial Playboy catalogues for some time now - but this is the first that's official and feels right. Thanks, ColdChef - I had no idea you were interested in rabbits.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:02 PM on December 4, 2003

Bunnies, my friend. Bunnies.
posted by ColdChef at 9:03 PM on December 4, 2003

And then there's the argument against:

"In launching Playboy, perhaps the smartest thing Hugh Hefner did was in establishing his personality as that of a witty, urbane sophisticate who enjoyed the company of many, many young women. After all, who knows how many fewer copies the magazine might have sold, had he instead depicted himself as a solitary masturbator?" - Tim Carvell, McSweeney's.net

Turns out that Hefner actually IS just that.
posted by fedextruck at 9:06 PM on December 4, 2003

My birth month is great if you're a leg man.
posted by ColdChef at 9:07 PM on December 4, 2003

Hef may be a solitary masturbator, but as the Bible tells us: "Let him with the free hand cast the first stone."

(Okay, I stole that from Dennis Miller)
posted by ColdChef at 9:10 PM on December 4, 2003

That's a neat link, fedextruck. I doubt the author and I have very much in common at all but it is really thoughtful writing.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:29 PM on December 4, 2003

Um... some of us have a birth year and month not represented here...

*cries*

You know, compared to the current Playboy covers on the same page, many of those covers seem so innocent. Innocent. Innocent.

As we've discussed before, Playboy was launched in the days when magazine covers were allowed to be whimsical and unpredictable, and didn't have to have a shiny silicone-augmented and Photoshopped supermodel rampant gardant, surrounded by headlines in san serif bold.

*cries some more*

don't mind me, I'll just sit here by the fire with these old scrapbooks, you kids go and have fun. *blows nose*
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:29 PM on December 4, 2003

i feel a strange connection to my birth month , almost as if it held some truth for me and my relationships. very odd. my life as a playboy cover.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 9:44 PM on December 4, 2003

Two things:

1) Remember that Playboy, like most magazines, actually releases their issues ~2 months early, so if you were born in March (like me), the magazine on the shelf at that time may have actually been the May issue. Just an FYI for those of you really nitpicky about these things.
2) From what I've seen most of the covers are perfectly SFW, but the popups that arise from viewing the page itself are definitely not! :)
posted by crankydoodle at 9:48 PM on December 4, 2003

"...who knows how many fewer copies the magazine might have sold, had he instead depicted himself as a solitary masturbator?"

(with apologies to Neil Diamond)
Don't know that I will
But until I can find me
A girl who'll stay
And won't play games behind me
I'll be what I am
A solitary manmasturbator
Solitary manmasturbator

It kind of breaks the meter, but it's catchy.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:42 PM on December 4, 2003

fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:31 PM on December 4, 2003

Um... some of us have a birth year and month not represented here...
*cries*

That was my first thought, too, fellow old-timer. Then I realized that, judging from the covers I remember, I apparently was 16 or 17 before I even saw my first issue of Playboy. I presume that today it is perused by boys in kindergarten (perhaps when they're not studying anything else non-Christian.)

many of those covers seem so innocent.

Not having seen the magazine for a few years, I was struck by just how ugly and garish, and basically unappealing, the current covers are. In the old days some were even elegant, but now they're just pathetically crude. Most odd, I thought, was how many of the 2001 and 2002 covers have the words NUDE or NAKED in big letters on the cover. Are people really that stupid these days, that they have to be told on the cover that Playboy has pictures of naked women in it?
posted by LeLiLo at 11:59 PM on December 4, 2003

Good link CC. I scanned through every year. Impressions: I noticed that the issues from the 60's lacked, well, women, but they were stylish and clever. The 70's were by far the best ones. Not only are they clever and experimental, like the 60s covers, but they have the best looking girls of any decade, and they were far more risque than any decade before or after. By the time of my birth year (late Nov.) the magazine starts to slow down, getting progressively more 80's-ish. And the entire 80's decade is SCARY. The trailer hair, the thick, necrophilic make-up, the neon, animal printed, garish design patterns - literally, everything sucks. The 90's are just boring. How many times can you put Pamela Anderson on the cover? (and congrats for finally giving the spot-light to a black girl) 00's are just more of the same. Not stylish, creative or experimental or particularly sexy. indistinguishable from Maxim and all those other frat mags (and congrats on finally putting up an Asian girl).

On preview: what lelilo said (he even used the word 'garish'!).
posted by dgaicun at 12:01 AM on December 5, 2003

Here's a working version of my above link.

Actually not exactly what lelilo said. I don't really find the new ones crude, just obvious. The earlier and mid seventies ones are far cruder. And wouldn't you know it, it makes them better!
posted by dgaicun at 12:14 AM on December 5, 2003

My friend bought me The Playmate Book.

I cannot recommend it enough.
posted by Frasermoo at 3:15 AM on December 5, 2003

fedextruck's link above is absolutely well worth reading. It's from a Christian source, but even to somebody like myself who has a crushing obsession with smut, it's a fair piece.
posted by vito90 at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2003

but the popups that arise from viewing the page itself are definitely not!

Popups? Those things are still around?
posted by mfbridges at 7:26 AM on December 5, 2003

March 1986 is still one of my faves: Sally Field, of all people, in a Bunny outfit. *smiles*
posted by alumshubby at 8:00 AM on December 5, 2003

Every Playboy centerfold, 1960-1999
posted by Aaorn at 8:28 AM on December 5, 2003

Some of the covers look strikingly contemporary. Sad that they can't seem to get their act together graphic design-wise, but time seems to have passed Playboy by a long time ago....
posted by Scoo at 12:34 PM on December 5, 2003

I read it for the article titles.
posted by Dick Paris at 2:16 PM on December 5, 2003

Worst. Playboy. Cover. Ever.
posted by ColdChef at 6:41 PM on December 5, 2003