Playboy Special Edition

Playboy Special Editions

A Playboy Special Edition cover feat. Christi Taylor
Executive Editor Stacy S. Collins[1]
Categories Photography/Erotica
Frequency 2 issues per month
Publisher Playboy Publishing
First issue 1983
Company Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
Country  United States
Language English
Website www.playboyse.com

Playboy Special Editions (formerly known as flats, then Newsstand Specials[2]) are a spin-off series of Playboy magazine devoted entirely to softcore nude photographs of the Playboy models that are found sporadically scattered in the monthly Playboy magazine.

Unlike the monthly magazine, which features a variety of articles, opinion columns, and works of fiction, the only texts found in the Special Editions are captions of the photographs and readers' letters. Approximately two issues are published each month. In addition, the models that appear in the Special Editions are not necessarily former Playmates of the Month, though such Playmates also appear in them.

Early issues, beginning in 1983, featured approximately 100 pages of old reprint and outtake photos of Playmates with no specially commissioned photos. Issues from the early 1990s began to include a number of "one-shot" models purchased in bulk from glamour photographers. By the mid-1990s, Playboy had established a unique identity for the line by mixing new shots of recent Playmates with new models, some of whom soon became as popular as the Playmates themselves.

Contents

History

Playboy magazine began supplementing its monthly edition in the mid-1960s with irregularly published special editions devoted to, for example, its cartoons or the Playboy Clubs. The first edition, The Best from Playboy in 1964, was nothing like the present-day specials. Its 120 pages contained a sixteen-page Jayne Mansfield pictorial, but was otherwise filled with articles, including the celebrated 1962 interview with Miles Davis. A 1972 Little Annie Fanny special is highly sought after by Harvey Kurtzman collectors.

In the 1970s, perhaps in conjunction with the appearance of Oui, the special editions would feature somewhat more explicit photography or situations than Playboy itself would run at the time. One release, 1976's Noelle, was quite notorious in its day for its racy content.

In 1984, Playboy published the first volume of its flagship Special Edition, Book of Lingerie, which featured 110 pages of photos of Playmates from the last decade (reprints and outtakes, with no specially commissioned photos). The magazine sold extremely well, and a second edition, in 1987, proved the market was there for the Newsstand Specials, as they were formally called at this time, to begin a regular, formal sales cycle. Each Newsstand Special would have a two-month shelf life, with two titles published each month.

The greatly increased demand for new photos to fill the 24 editions published annually—reprints from the early 1970s having little erotic value to readers twenty years later—required Playboy to look further than their own archives to fill the page count. Newsstand Specials of the late 1980s and early 1990s would often feature previously unpublished outtakes from Playmate pictorials, but also a number of "one-shot" models, possibly posing under a pseudonym or unnamed entirely, bought in bulk from glamour photographers. Sometimes these would resurface in other magazines; outtakes from a 1992-93 shoot with a model named Simone Burkhard which first appeared in Playboy's Girls of Summer '93 were published in Perfect 10 some five years later.

By the mid-1990s, Playboy had formalized its model process to help give the Newsstand Specials their own unique identity. Commissioning regular shoots with Playmates from the last two or three years provided an ongoing source of new photos which increased the models' popularity and won them new fans, but the editions also found new talent popular enough to warrant multiple appearances. Models such as Alley Baggett, Patricia Ford and Sung Hi Lee rarely or never appeared in the monthly Playboy, but were featured in the Special Editions dozens of times.

By the end of the 1990s, the label Newsstand Special had been phased out in favor of Special Edition, and a host of regular publications had joined Book of Lingerie (renamed simply Lingerie) on the shelves. One edition each of Playmate Review, Nude Playmates and Girlfriends, among others, are published annually. College Girls is published three times a year.

By 2005, the Playmates had actually found themselves completely squeezed out of Lingerie. Its 100th edition was the first to feature no Playmates at all; Playboy has such a bank of available, popular models that it no longer needs the Playmates to sell some of its Special Editions.

Since the October/November 2008 issue of Lingerie, Playboy Special Edition switched its bookbinding process from perfect binding (flat format) to saddle-stitching (stapled format), thereby definitely abandoning the moniker flats.[3] Following negative feedback from readers, perfect binding was restored as from the March/April 2009 issues of Hot Housewives and Sexy Girls Next Door.[4]

List of Special Editions

There are several long-running series of Special Editions, as well as short series and one-offs.

Book of Lingerie/Lingerie

Playboy Special Editions' most popular series is Lingerie (formerly known as Book of Lingerie), which is published on a bimonthly basis. The first issue was released as Book of Lingerie in 1984. It became bimonthly as from November 1988 and had its name changed to Lingerie as from September 2002.

Book of Lingerie

Lingerie

Playmates

Calendar Playmates

Celebrating Centerfolds

Centerfolds of the Century

Classic Centerfolds

Facts & Figures

International Playmates

Nude Playmates

Playmate Review

As its name implies, this series features only the Playmates of the month who appeared in the 12 Playboy magazine issues during the past year. The cover of the issue depicts the playmate who is the current Playmate of the year.

Playmate Tests

Playmates

Playmates at Play

Playmates in Bed

Playmates in Paradise

Playmates in the Spotlight

Playmates of the Year

Pocket Playmates

Sexiest Playmates

Twenty-One Playmates

Video Playmates

Wet & Wild Playmates

College Girls

The models featured in this series are usually selected from the student population of American colleges and universities.

At first, the magazine was published only in the fall to roughly coincide with the beginning of the school year. Each year, the magazine includes a feature on students of an athletic conference, usually from a BCS conference. For instance, the 1997 issue (pictured) featured the Big 12 but also students from other schools.

The 2006 issue caused some controversy at Baylor University, which has a religious affiliation. Baylor declared that associating with the magazine would be a violation of the school's code of conduct.[5]

College Girls

Voluptuous Vixens/Vixens

The Voluptuous Vixens / Vixens series features models with prodigious breasts.

Voluptuous Vixens

Vixens

Nudes

Nudes

World Wide Nudes

Features

Barefoot Beauties

Bathing Beauties

Big Boobs & Hot Buns

Blondes, Brunettes & Redheads

Casting Calls

Cover Girls

Exotic Beauties

Fantasies (For Men and Women)

Fresh Faces

Girlfriends/Girls with Girls

Girls of Summer/Sexy Summer Girls

Girls of Winter/Winter Girls

HardBodies

Hot Housewives

Hot Shots

Natural Beauties

This series features "natural" models in a tacit acknowledgement that some models are unnatural (i.e. have breast implants and other cosmetic surgery).

Nude Celebrities/Sexy Celebrities

Playmate Search

Real Sex

Sexy 100

Sexy Girls

Sexy Girls Next Door

Sisters

Supermodels

The Year in Sex

Wet & Wild Women/Wet & Wild

Women of the World/Girls of the World/Sexy Girls of the World

Working Women

'One-shots'

There is a variety of Special Editions that are only single issues.

'Personalities'

List of Playboy Supplements

The Playboy Cartoon Album

The Best from Playboy

Playboy's Holiday Album

Playboy's Girls of the World

Playboy Bunnies

The Girls of Playboy

Eve Today

Playboy's New Holiday Album

Ecstasy

Sexy Ladies/More Sexy Ladies

Fashion For Men

'One-shots'

See also

References

  1. ^ Playboy Special Editions Message
  2. ^ a b Playboy Special Editions FAQ
  3. ^ Playboy Mailing List@Yahoo! Groups: Staples are back (Warning: Age-Restricted Area)
  4. ^ Playboy Special Editions MySpace Blog
  5. ^ "Playboy back at Baylor". Waco Tribune. April 21, 2001. http://www.uh.edu/ednews/2006/waco/200604/20060421playboy.html. Retrieved 2007-01-26. 

External links

Key people
Christie Hefner (former Chairman and CEO) · Hugh Hefner (Editor-in-Chief, CCO and Founder)
Business
groups
Playboy Magazine · Playboy Special Edition
 
Miscellaneous
Annual Revenue: $215 million USD (FY 2010) · Employees: 547 (full time) · Stock Symbol: NYSE: PLA, PLAA · Website: PlayboyEnterprises.com