In attempting to broadly explore social media, let’s take a look at some bizarre magazine titles. I got the idea from tweep Jody Echakowitz who tweeted about a publication called the Midnight Cowboy Trucking Network which turns out to be a radio network sponsored by ABC and Disney. I have no idea if it’s still going, but the name leaves much to the imagination that is not Disney-esque.
Another one I found was Modern Drunkard whose tagline is “Standing up for your right to get falling down drunk since 1996.” I doubt if the ink ever hit paper, but this spoof makes for some mildly amusing online reading. Modern Drunkard is also a book sold at Amazon! Then there’s “A Bear’s Life” which aims to celebrate “the masculine community.” Don’t want to go there. At first glance, Sheep! The Voice of the Independent Flockmaster looked legit. With a URL like sheepmagazine.com and sister publication Dairy Goat Journal, it had to be, but then I saw a cover line “Cattlemen take Ewe Turn” and wondered. We can’t overlook Bombproof your Horse magazine.
A company once called Bacon’s used to publish a thick directory of magazines – 3,000 at its peak if I remember correctly — for PR people. Years ago, I thumbed through it and remember a few noteworthy titles (Bacon’s is now Cision Globel Media Intelligence).
Rather intriguing, The Cheese Reporter is indeed still very much legitimate. It’s about cheese. I remember the Broom and Mop News from years ago, but could not find it on the web today. However, I discovered a Broom and Mop Tech News section in something called Standardization News put our by the Amercian Society for Testing and Materials better known as ASTM.
Moving on from magazines, I also discovered Amazon sells a dictionary or encyclopedia of just about everything: ghosts, paranormal, unsolved mysteries and cryptozoology for starters. Searching “strange names of magazines,” Amazon mostly returns books about magazines, unfortunately.
So let’s start the discussion. What’s the strangest magazine your ever seen or heard about? It can be real or a spoof. Keep it relatively clean.
5 comments On Strange Magazine Names
Some of these definitely belong under the “What were they thinking?” category! Thanks for the chuckle.
“Critter” and the companion title “Varmint”
Both were gun and bullet mags for people who like to shoot either variety of sentient creatures. The difference? You can eat a critter, e.g. raccoon. You can’t eat a varmint, e.g. rat.
I also found one on Amazon I didn’t mention called Fate – paranormal focus. Are Varmint and Critter still published. They should be. Bet they’re worth something!
John, no story on strange magazine titles would be complete without a nod to… Strange Magazine. http://www.strangemag.com. The current lead story: how three men – a retired Catholic Priest and two veterans – dressed as clowns and broke into a nuclear missile launch facility in 2006. There’s got to be a punchline in there somewhere… 🙂
Dean,
How could I have overlooked Strange magazine in a blog post about strange magazine titles!? That lead story sounds like it should be in Scary magazine.
Best..JD
Sliding Sidebar
Blogs and Sites TDR Likes
Subscribe