Rolling Stone ... publisher Jann Wenner dumped a veteran managing editor and put in place Ed Needham, who ran the American version of FHM (For Him Magazine). That's one of the so-called "
lad mags," the British invention that has taken the magazine world by storm lately.
FHM, along with Maxim, Stuff and a handful of imitators, focuses on booze, babes and partying. They're the print form of beer commercials, and they care little for the distant '60s, for that generation's values or its crusading journalism.
—Joel Brown, "Rolling Stone now gathers lots of moss," The Boston Herald, September 22, 2002
Britain's only feminist monthly, Everywoman magazine, celebrates its 10th anniversary this month with a bumper birthday issue. ...
Occasional sense of humour failures, such as the vexed article about the new lad mag Loaded, are compensated for by the variety of voices and serious writing full of sense and stimulation. Everywoman's claim to be the voice of the modern women's movement in Britain is justified.
—Emma Brooker, "All that's new on this month's newsstands," The Guardian (London), March 6, 1995
So we need more sophisticated ways of nailing down the modern male animal, and two publishers have obligingly supplied them. Two new mags have just reached the news-stands: Attitude and Loaded.
Ironically the lads' mag, Loaded, comes from IPC, who already provide that section of the gay population who don't buy Just 17 with their constant diet of Take That pictures through the recently launched Now.
—Simon Fanshawe, "Whatever happened to the normal lads?," Evening Standard (London), April 20, 1994
