At the New Year's Sale this past January, I picked up some wrestling magazines that are about as old as I am. One is even cover dated March 1974 which is kinda neat. I've only just started reading through them in the past few days and they're still a lot of fun. Many of the wrestlers are written very well, translating their vocal style well to paper, Bobby Heenan especially.
The design of these magazines did not change much for over a decade. Most articles start with a couple pages in the front half of the magazine and then to get to the rest of the article you have to flip to the back half. Since it's not complicated reading and there are a lot of pictures, it feels like there's a constant back and forth. The bulk of the advertisements are in the back half of the magazines and the ads confuse me.
Who were the audience of this magazines?
For periods of time, wrestling captures the interest of the general public. I'm not completely sure but I don't think the seventies were one of those times. Admittedly tastes change but the seventies were an often hardcore and bloody period of wrestling. The color photos on the covers were often gorier than the average Fangoria cover. There's the occasional mild swear, nothing too fancy, possibly still teenage friendly I guess. Some of the magazines have 'pen pals' or 'fan club' pages that are mostly kid orientated. Mixed amongst the X-Ray spec or junk jewelry ads are ads for muscle building, learning deadly arts like karate, correspondence courses, franchises. Nothing too weird there, something for the young adult perhaps. Then there are the 'personal viewing' movie projectors, ads that ask you if you're 'half a man', and some rather adult 'companion' dolls. The ads for these are pretty way-hey-hey, especially next to those X-Ray specs ads. In a few years, ladies wrestling would devolve into 'apartment wrestling' and the less said about that the better.
Wonder how many kids got busted reading these and protested 'ma, it's just a wrestling magazine' and meant it? Until they turned twelve at least.
Sheesh!
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