"Scurvy" Sullivan Sets of the 1970s and 80s.
 

Greetings Friends,
Growing up as a priapic adolescent in the Britain of the late 70s early 80s the only material approaching hardcore then legally availabvle were the the David Sullivan stable of magazines (eg Playbirds, Whitehouse, Lovebirds etc).
These mags were always on the point of hardcore, but never actually got there, but what really distinguished them were the sheer tackines, nastiness and awfulness of the photo-sets (God, how we were starved f hardcore in the good ol' uK of that time to lust after this gaudy rubbish).
Not to put too fine a point on it, the birds were distinctly ropey to say the least (always gave the impression of jaded old brasses), the men featured were just plain horrible, the dicks were droopy and ugly, (as were the tits), the pussies were tangles of unkempt undergrowth, the set decoration was the height of bad taste and 70s tackiness and the photographers had absolutely no taste at all.

But by Jingo, it formed such a strong impression on my forming erotic mind, that I still find this crap strangely fascinating and erotic.
As I am not in possession of a scanner, can some kind soul reading this give the group an illustration of exactly what I mean by featuring Playbirds/Whitehouse at its best/worst?

sure sulivan produced a lot of crap but you obviously didnt come across rosemary england a true beauty who appeared in most of sulivans mags i for one thought she alone was worth the cost of any of his mags

I feel sorry for kids today. one click on the mouse and its all there. none of the build up of excitement or the furtivness of trying to sneak playbirds,park lane etc, passed your mum. the anticipation could make me shake.

While I absolutely agree with Noswol about the charms of Rosemary England, she did also appear in other magazine: one of my favourite Fiestas had her as the 'Fiesta Favourite', i.e. the centerfold, and she looked fabulous.

However, I also agree with Foxbark's main point, which is that the Sullivan mags somehow had a nasty atmosphere about them; they were not fun to read and just not enjoyable. Their pictures were very explicit for their time, but somehow, not really sexy.
Of course there were exceptions where they featured a very sexy girl. Another thing that irritated me, was that series of most girls was incredibly short, often only 3 or 4 pics. I like to work up with a girl over a series of pictures, and generally in Whitehouse, Private etc you couldn't really do that.However they did often have one stunning image.

I generally opted for the Rustler group of magazines. They had plenty of issues too, but I found them better wank material.

While I agree with Foxbark's general points about the Sullivan magazines from the 70s to the early 80s, particularly about their explicitness, the sleazy feel of the photos and of the models, who as noswel notes mostly looked like old brasses excepting Rosemary England, they hold no place in my heart nor in my trousers. I found the Sullivan mags just too nasty to buy and too squalid to wank over. A matter of personal taste of course.

I heartily endorse Shwenk's preference for the G*S*P stable of mags, of which Rustler was the best-known but which included a number of other mags including Rapier/Raider and the Journal of Sex/Love.

Rustler and the Journal of Sex, particularly the Journal of Sex, in their early issues included vibrator penetration and full-on penis in vagina penetration. These magazines were available in most newsagents, at least where I lived in Manchester, and were the first magazines containing hardcore that I ever bought.

The models in the Rustler stable of magazines were usually young and pretty, were usually well-lit and competently photographed, there were usually four or five pages of photos of each individual girl and, to bring things down to earth, although there would be two or three 'tasteful' photographs at the start of each set there would also be several photos of the girl spread-legged with open wet cunt and open cheeks being presented for the viewers' delectation. And sometimes these wide open photo-sets were the more explicit photos of sets that had appeared in much softer girlie mags like Mayfair.

In their early issues the Rustler stable of mags delivered what the Sullivan mags merely promised.

And the covers didn't scream to the newsagent 'look at this sleazeball wanker' in the way the Sullivan magazines did.

Lots of sets of photos from the seventies Sullivan mags and the seventies Rustler stable of mags are available here at VEF in the seventies threads for those mags under their respective names. I would post the links here myself or even post the Sullivan photos for you Foxbark but I'm temporarily limited to posting from my phone.

Sullivan took over the Gold Star mags and a lot of the photo shoot sets were shown in both Rustler and Playbirds etc

The business relationship between Sullivan and the Gold Brothers' distribution company went back to before Sullivan published magazines and was just selling photo-sets.

In the later seventies and earlier eighties, the time that Foxbark was referring to in his original post, Gold Star Publications' stable of girlie mags and Sullivan's stable of girlie mags had different cross-title editorial policies and conspicuously different production values.

When the Gold Brothers sold their titles to Sullivan there was a collapse in the quality of the former Gold Star magazines and that quality was never recovered.