Magazine covers: eyes on stalks

[chris chunt]

Mayfair mag sep 74

According to the text she's called Elaine Selwyn and is a trainee teacher from Henley on Thames.

My arse is she .

I'd say these are American from the previous early 'fall ' or autumn and they're just the tamer shots from a US top shelf mag .

She is that redhead that they go crazy for and the backgrounds have an American feel to them

Anyway whoever she is I've got a pristine copy of this mag and have regularly enjoyed a good retro knob twaddle over her .

Great looking nudie 70s chick .
Whoever she was

[Viklas]

Originally Posted by howmer

So many to choose from, but this one always struck me as one of the sexiest covers PH ever produced... MOD Edit: Link Removed, was disabled… Laurie L'Oranger, it's the pose that makes it!

[Pinkpapercut]

First, credit to chrisaudiman who posted this cover in the short VEF Carol Heaps thread and probably scanned it too. I've mended it a bit as there were punch-holes in it.



I went on a series of courses back around 1989 and 1990 to learn the basic skills for running a small business, all held in a venue in a run-down part of Manchester. A hundred or so yards away was a failing newsagents, essentially the last surviving shop in the area except for a Chinese Chippy, and leaving the venue I'd usually nip in the Newsagents for a can of pop.

I noticed that the Newagents had only two flourishing lines - cigarettes and a well-stocked top shelf. Nothing outrageous, just an extensive selection of girlie mags from the Razzle/Fiesta end through Men Only and Penthouse to the Rustler/Whitehouse end - for non-Brit members that's girl-next-door non-explicit girlies to 'wide-open' mags like 'Hustler'.

So, I'd pop in on the way home for a can of cola and perhaps a bag of crisps. I was reluctant to buy or even browse any girlies partly because cash was tight and partly because at the time I could most easily go in the shop, after 4pm, the couple who owned the shop would have their schoolgirl daughter staffing the counter with them or sometimes on her own, and I thought buying a girlie mag from a schoolgirl creepy. It was only after a lot of visits that I realised the dad and even the mum were comfortable letting the girl handle 'girlies' and put them through the till for customers that I suppressed my discomfort.

I mention this because the issue of Escort above was the only issue the girl put through the till for me and so I can remember the moment I selected and bought it very clearly.

The cover grabbed my attention partly because it was Carol Heaps and partly because it was a back view of her fully dressed but pulling her knickers off over her foot. You didn't often see knickers being taken off on the covers of British Girlie mags back then and 'knickers coming off with her back to me' promised just one thing to my single-track mind - BUM

Carol Heaps didn't have a big modelling career but from the first moment I noticed her I thought 'What a cute combination of girl next door and pocket Venus.' and more than that I thought 'what a luscious bum she has', something that I suspect photographers also thought, given how many of the photographs from her short career focus on her lovely arse.

You'll notice from my avatar and my signature that I'm very much a bum man. Seeing that cover of Carol made me think that the next photos in the sequence would focus even more on her bum and hopefully would be inside that particular edition of 'Escort'.

I had a quick flick through the magazine in the shop, holding the magazine away from the counter so that the photos wouldn't be visible from there, and was delighted to find there were a couple of excellent photos on the fold-out and in the middle of the mag of Carol bent over, the cheeks of her arse apart showing her back door to Paradise.

With my eyes lowered I paid my money for the mag and a coke to the girl on the till and left shamefaced and blushing



As soon as I got to my flat it was 'Escort' open, eyes pinned to that third photograph, cock in hand, and me imagining deeply pumping Carol's rump, something I've done many times since over the nearly 30 years since Carol posed for that set.

For me the two main attractions of 'Razzle' and 'Escort' were the jolly 'girl next door is up for it' feel to the photosets and that the magazines were as happy to publish a model posing with her bum cheeks spread wide showing her arsehole as they were to publish photos of a model showing her tightly shut clam. Raymond magazines in general used to be an arse-man's wonderland.

If you're not familiar with Carol Heaps, click through to her short thread via the link below - there are a lots of photos of her thrusting her lovely bottom at the camera, some not very explicit shots of her twat, and, from Private if I remember correctly, some hard lezzie photos and a nice set of her being shagged in the open air.

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/showthread.php?t=23568

I expect there were never any photos of her being shagged up that lovely bum but if you're like the me you can look at these photos every now and then fantasize of taking a pleasurable drive up Carol's Cadbury Carriageway.

[Girlfan]

Back when Club was the classiest mag around (those days are long, long gone, I'm afraid - is there still a "classy" mag on sale in the UK?), I bought this copy on the strength of the Adele Stephens cover alone. It dates from 1993 I think:

[Sharkhunter]

Originally Posted by Girlfan

Back when Club was the classiest mag around (those days are long, long gone, I'm afraid - is there still a "classy" mag on sale in the UK?), I bought this copy on the strength of the Adele Stephens cover alone. It dates from 1993 I think:

An old favourite that I still have in my collection. The thing about cover shots back "in the day" was that they were taken and/or selected as cover shots. PG-rated, but with that frisson of excitement that got your sexually active mind racing. I imagined Adele slowly dropping that bra, releasing her bouncy tits.

These days cover editors have no imagination with their selecting an random shot and putting dots or stars over the model's nipples. Ugh.

There are no classy mags left in the UK anymore, and Club was pretty much shoved out into the wilderness at the end of 2009. The only, and I mean only, magazine worth buying these days is Hustler's Barely Legal. No fake tits and no tattoos for a start.

[Girlfan]

Originally Posted by Sharkhunter

There are no classy mags left in the UK anymore, and Club was pretty much shoved out into the wilderness at the end of 2009. The only, and I mean only, magazine worth buying these days is Hustler's Barely Legal. No fake tits and no tattoos for a start.

What a shame. I absolutely loved Club - and, indeed, to a greater or lesser extent, all of the Raymond stable in the 80s and 90s. My magazine buying days ended a little earlier than yours, Sharkhunter, round about 2002, but for precisely the same reasons. I do miss the frisson of holding a brand new girlie magazine in my hands, but I wouldn't touch most of them nowadays. Such a pity, they were a big part of my life back in the day.

[Sharkhunter]

Originally Posted by Girlfan

What a shame. I absolutely loved Club - and, indeed, to a greater or lesser extent, all of the Raymond stable in the 80s and 90s. My magazine buying days ended a little earlier than yours, Sharkhunter, round about 2002, but for precisely the same reasons. I do miss the frisson of holding a brand new girlie magazine in my hands, but I wouldn't touch most of them nowadays. Such a pity, they were a big part of my life back in the day.

I think there is a pattern for us old school magazine hounds, Girlfan. I started "reading" top shelf magazines in the 80s and buying them in the 1990s. I actually did stop around 2000ish, when Club appeared to be fishing for the lads' mag demographic. I am sure you and others will remember the "Max Power" collaboration effort, and the particularly lame cover with a model sitting in a toilet cubicle - a complete miscalcuation based on the editor's harebrained idea that Club readers, like lads' mag readers, were into party girls that ended up passed out in nightclub toilets.

However, it was around 2002 where I perked up again - well, I perked up at the sight of Sophie Moone aka Stella. Despite not having bought the title for a couple of years, I handed over my cash. With my 1988-1999 collection safely tucked away, I had never intended to go beyond having a few wanks over this new purchase. The plan was to dump a few warm white streams over Stella and throw it out when I couldn't open the pages anymore.

However when I got home, to my great surprise I saw babe after babe after babe. Better still, Stella was the regular girl. Yes, I had a wank. Plenty of wanks. But I gave up on the original plan and kept the magazine. The following month I picked up the next copy, which was just as good - with Natasha Marley on the cover. Needless to say I was hooked again, and for me Club had returned to its place as my magazine of choice.

For me, the editor had the right attitude. No fake tits, no tattoos. Even those models who had tattoos, such as Natasha and Zuzana Zeleznovova, would appear with their ink beautifully photoshopped (the only situation where I agree with using technology).

So yes, I kept on buying the magazine... And to satiate my OCD-driven desire for completeness, I sought out back issues of all those I had missed between 1999 and 2000. Even the toilet seat issue. They were not as good as pre-1999 or 2002-2009, but in reality (compared to today at least) they were not too bad.

By 2009 my Club collection stretched just over 20 years. Every issue. I really thought it could last for ever, a beacon of tattoo- and fake-free quality in the rising mire of magazines published for those published to suit more modern tastes.

Then came the change of editor, and a number of disasters. Tattoos were starting to creep in. Not just little flowers or butterflies, but massive ugly sleeves and bullshit novels scrawled on thighs, tits and shoulders. Then the silicone-enhanced models started to get a sighting. Then the printer and distributor changed, which resulted in the magazines being printed on inferior quality paper.

I sort of persisted, as 75% of the models were still great to look at. However when the hideously enhanced Sasha Cane became the regular model, I saw it as a signal for us older and more established "Clubbers" to take a hike. I gave up again, this time for good.

Having seen just the covers of more recent issues, I knew I had made the right decision. Thankfully I found that the editors of Barely Legal are making an effort (even down to photoshopping tattoos) so I was able to keep buying a regular magazine title.

[Girlfan]

Great post, Sharkhunter. I echo all of your sentiments entirely. My "career" is a little longer than yours, as I suspect I'm 10 years or a little more older than you (I'm 55). I started "reading" in the latter half of the 1970s, and bought my first magazine in the Autumn of 1980. You're tempting me into trying "Barely Legal", though the title does put me off - it sort of screams "Dirty Old Man" a bit, so buying over the counter would be even more daunting than buying something like Club. If I id buy, that would be my first over-the-counter magazine purchase for around 15 years, I think.
Seems like we've lived through the golden age of girlie mags, and also their slow and agonising death. All very depressing, so let's cheer ourselves up with this splendid Men Only cover from 1990:

[Sharkhunter]

Originally Posted by Girlfan

Great post, Sharkhunter. I echo all of your sentiments entirely. My "career" is a little longer than yours, as I suspect I'm 10 years or a little more older than you (I'm 55). I started "reading" in the latter half of the 1970s, and bought my first magazine in the Autumn of 1980. You're tempting me into trying "Barely Legal", though the title does put me off - it sort of screams "Dirty Old Man" a bit, so buying over the counter would be even more daunting than buying something like Club. If I id buy, that would be my first over-the-counter magazine purchase for around 15 years, I think.

Spot on. Coming on 47 now, and still have the same tastes as I had those many years ago. Yeah, the title does make one sound like an old university professor scouting out the new intake at freshers' week, but the content is much like Club used to be. I am way past trekking down to the newsagent these days though; the internet is a great way around that. There are a couple of well established websites that sell all of the leading titles.

I have not made an over the counter purchase since I bought my last copy of Club at the end of 2009.

Seems like we've lived through the golden age of girlie mags, and also their slow and agonising death. All very depressing, so let's cheer ourselves up with this splendid Men Only cover from 1990:

Oh yes. What a cover that was. Had my eyes out on long stalks, for sure. Something else was longer than usual too. What a cover shot that is. It oozes sexiness, and promises far more with that flash of underwear than the naked save for starred-out nipples look does today.

[Pinkpapercut]

Bobbie (Jennifer Eccles) on the cover of Knave Vol 9 no 8, I think 1977



Back in the later 1970s I was studying graphic design at Manchester School of Art and used to walk back into Manchester town centre to catch my bus home. More or less on St Peters Square there was a large bookshop and newsagents that had one of the broadest selections of books, newspapers, alternative comics and - most importantly for me - girly magazines available on any local high street, running the gamut from soft cheese cake mags to full-on open cunt and arse mags plus the odd bit of continental hardcore now and then

I wasn't a fan of 'Knave', I found it a pale imitation of Men Only, which at the time was, along with Club International, my favourite girly magazine.

But the evening I went in and saw this Knave cover it stood out to me from the broad selection on the top shelf - I noticed it immediately, it stood out from the rest of the mags like a pair of bared Double Ds in a Convent. 'Bobbie' the girl on the cover (better known as big tit porn star Jennifer Eccles) just cried out 'knead my firm young titties' from that cover.

As I've mentioned in posts above I'm a bum man rather than a tit man but there have always been some models, some girls whose tits impress me. 'Tits' is too small a word. Titties, Knockers, Bristols, even Boobies are all nearer the mark.

'Bobbie' attracted me for another reason - she, and her bristols in particular, reminded me of a delicious fellow student known with good reason as 'Big Mandy'.

As usual with my 'eyes out on stalks' purchases I couldn't wait to get home to my student bedsit and have a wank over 'Bobbie'. And once through my door I didn't wait, I sat on my bed, whipped out one of the hardest hard-ons I've ever had, pumped away like fury over the photos of 'Bobbie' and squirted with such force that my spunk hit the ceiling above me and then dripped down over the duvet cover.

Sadly I never got off with Big Mandy but I regularly returned to the Knave set of 'Bobbie' and knocked many a one out imagining I was feeling up Big Mandy's tits and then shagging her brains out.

I've realised looking back over my posts in this thread that quite a few of my 'Eyes On Stalks' purchases were motivated by covergirls who reminded me of girls I knew and desired in real life.

Please note that the cover above and the set immediately below were posted by member mayfair1975 in the VEF Knave 1960s-1970s thread so if you like the photos please click through and leave thanks.

Originally Posted by mayfair1975

If this set of 'Bobbie' causes stirrings in your trousers there are more photos from the shoot in The Old Hacker's post in the Jennifer Eccles VEF thread including a few of her fingering open her twat-lips.

Originally Posted by Sharkhunter

The thing about cover shots back "in the day" was that they were taken and/or selected as cover shots. PG-rated, but with that frisson of excitement that got your sexually active mind racing. I imagined Adele slowly dropping that bra, releasing her bouncy tits.

These days cover editors have no imagination with their selecting an random shot and putting dots or stars over the model's nipples. Ugh.

My 'back in the day' was before your 'back in the day' so I started my girly mag life with different expectations and in the 1970s and very early 80s when I was a committed porn hound in the first flush of girly mag buying I can assure you that although cover shots were deliberately chosen and intended as cover shots, back then the covers of many if not most mainstream girly mags were relatively explicit, by which I mean never mind girls in their bras or with nipples dotted out - the 70s cover girls were often tits out, nips on show, bum full on, cameltoes, the girl sometimes plainly fingering herself through her knickers, more or less see-thru knickers with crotch full on to the camera, tufts of pubic hair sometimes peeping out of knickers, and so on.

All on the cover, mainstream girly mags all on the top shelf of many a local family newsagent. Despite these fairly explicit cover photos the covers managed to look classy because the photographers were skilled and the designers of the magazines were prepared to put effort into the design of the mags. At one point in the 70s Men Only was one of the best designed, high production value magazines in the world and that's including mainstream non-girly, non-porn magazines.

From 1980 onwards UK covers became increasing prudish, as did the photos within, at least at the Men Only/Knave end of the shelf. as did British society, an effect I think of the combination of the prudish Thatcher government on the Right and joyless and easily offended second wave feminists on the Left.

Originally Posted by Sharkhunter

There are no classy mags left in the UK anymore, and Club was pretty much shoved out into the wilderness at the end of 2009. The only, and I mean only, magazine worth buying these days is Hustler's Barely Legal. No fake tits and no tattoos for a start.

How many girly mags and even hard-core mags are there left in the whole world, classy or not? They were falling like dominoes already when I bought my last wank mags in 2009 and those mags were so poor compared to what I'd known and to what I was able to find for free online that I decided never again to buy a wank mag.

Every two weeks for a good long part of 2000s, a time when I wasn't in a permanent relationship, I used to go into the centre of Manchester to scope out the new wank mags and videos, UK and US. I'd had a previous habit of doing this in the early to middle 90s and the decline and reduction of titles was already very visible monthly throughout that time.

In my youth I'd bought UK mainstream girly mags that ranged from soft through explicit posing to full on fucking. These magazines often had moderately explicit covers of the sort I mention above. In the 80s I mostly bought magazines like Escort and Razzle for the 'fun girls spreading' aspect or I bought C*C*C full-on hardcore mags.

Escort in the 80s did have a run of - for me - eyes on stalks covers that were as good as or even better than the photos of the cover girl inside



but as the years passed by even Escort covers eventually became polite and the magazine's contents began to feel seedy and joyless.

The topshelf mags had become too tame for me, far more tame than they had been for most of the 70s and far less stylish, the girls far less elegantly dressed, far less explicity posed in the tamer end of the mags, and posed in far more predicable ways.

By the 90s the only mainstream girly magazines that I bought regularly were Men's World and the US version of Club and I bought those only because I was a Jo Guest completist.

I can't remember any top shelf purchases that I've made since the turn of the 90s that were motivated by 'eyes out on stalks' covers in conventional newsagents. There were plenty of covers that did have my eyes out on stalks but they were bought from specialist back street outlets specialising in niche tastes such as oriental girls, public nudity, bottom-spreading or the rash of 'Barely Legal' type mags that suddenly proliferated after the US Government insisted that models provide two age-related IDs after the she-who-must-not-be-named under@ge modelling/porn scandal (talk about the Law Of Unintended Consequences).

I realise I'm coming over as a grouch on this subject; in a nutshell, I'm saying that the decline of eyes on stalks covers started a very long time ago. The web sped up the decline but it had already begun by the early 80s as can be confirmed by looking through the VEF threads for the various UK girlies.

Right, that's my grouch over.