Penthouse magazine no longer to be printed

Well at least we’ve got Caligula on Blu-Ray.

7 Likes

I thought they’d gone out of business years ago.

Full disclosure (no pun intended):
I know who Arthur Blythe​ is thanks to an article about him in Penthouse.

Nat Hentoff used to write for them, too.

1 Like

Dear BoingBoing Forum…

32 Likes

…I never thought this kind of thing really happened, until one night when I thought I was alone in the office…

17 Likes

Penthouse shuts down five days after Al Jazeera America. A missed opportunity to combine resources for efficiency.

/Trump

14 Likes

…this needs to happen.

Tangent: when I was making cheese, I would wax the loaves. Then I started making stamps to press in the wax. They were usually wildlife or something like that, but Erotic Cheese Stamps just sounds yummy.

6 Likes

ftfy 

3 Likes

I am sure Helen Mirren did everything in her power to prevent that from coming to be. Including entreating dark Lovecraftian entities to devour the remnants of the Guccione family

1 Like

As far as the print copies go I wonder how complete the collections of the 31 holding libraries in WorldCat are.

1 Like

If they’re anything like the Bodleian library at Oxford University they will be complete. I do know that they have a copy of The Pop-Up Kama Sutra there.

2 Likes

My God I am devastated! Please pardon me while I go put on some Brahms and a black armband.

2 Likes

Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but I just talked to Kelly Holland, who oversees Penthouse magazine, and she assures me that the magazine version will continue to be printed with no end in sight. The digital edition will be IN ADDITION to the magazine, and will feature more up-to-the-minute content. Subscribers to the print edition will get a free sub to the digital version; those without a print sub can subscribe to the digital version by itself.

Mark Kernes, Sr. Ed., Adult Video News

9 Likes

I do think that their contribution to erotic “literature” is probably as or more important than their role in the 70s hardcore-ification of porn.

The July 1976 issue of Penthouse (Special Bisextennial issue!) was the first “dirty” magazine I ever saw, thanks to my youthful curiosity outmatching my older brother’s ability to hide something. I only share this because looking up the cover and seeing the articles advertised, I see some things never change: “The American Way of Upward Failure”. I’m very curious what examples they were using in 1976. Shows how my tastes have changed, I really do want to read the articles now!

2 Likes

I assume it would be “reimagined” as a website featuring porn and some articles behind a paywall. Sounds like a solid business model.

1 Like

I’m guessing that most Penthouse readers with fingers are more than familiar with the power of a digital experience.

" … will continue to be printed with no end in sight."

That’s not going to help sales.

6 Likes

Back when our neighborhood, and the neighborhoods around it, were still fairly new (surrounded by prairie; junk mail was still addressed to “rural route”):
I can remember finding a stash of Penthouse in a burned-out farmhouse, as well as another collection under some brush next to some woods. (The latter included swingers’ directories – I was 11 and had to figure out that’s what they were. Lots of “stub” descriptors.) Most likely some other kid had simply attempted to hide them, but right in that immediate vicinity, I was told that someone had exposed himself to a younger kid, and another was molested. All of that was hearsay, but later on it made me wonder if someone had left the magazines as a lure. A few years later when I was about 16, I was riding my bike through another new neighborhood and there was a Playboy on the side of the street. Not even hidden, just lying out in the open. No other houses nearby (and not yet under construction). I figured I couldn’t even get it into the house without being noticed, so I passed.

Guess it was a thing.

3 Likes

…I never thought this kind of thing really happened, until one night I was walking down 28th Street and…

4 Likes

I used to find Penthouse and other nude magazines when GIs were ready to ship off from the nearby Army base. Every so often there would be a box with a few dozen (or hundred!) near the dumpster of the nearby apartments. Lots of other magazines too, such as Penthouse’s sibling publication “Omni”. And even “Dragon”!

It was my introduction to the strange and disillusioning world of softcore not-porn. How and why is/was Penthouse considered “pornography” by most people if there was never any actual sex in it? It’s not unlike the whole Skinemax / grindhouse phenomenon of movies which lured people with an interest in seeing sex - yet had no intention of showing any. This has always perplexed me. Sure, show erotica, show not-erotica, but why the deliberate grey-area in between? It puzzled me then and still puzzles me now. I still suspect that it’s a symptom of living in a culture with schizoid attitudes about sexuality.

That said, Penthouse was an OK magazine, text content-wise, at least until the mid-80s. I haven’t read it since I was a kid.

2 Likes