Madcap

A US man's magazine of which I know next to nothing - there seems to be very little online about the publication.  Madcap started in 1962, with a single issue.  Its publication schedule remained intermittent until 1966, when it settled into a quarterly schedule, which it maintained until it ceased publication in 1982.  Well, sort of - from 1967 it was retitled 38-26-34 and the fiction content was phased out, with the magazine becoming more of a conventional 'Girlie Magazine', with covers gradually becoming more explicit.  What seems to be clear from the 'Adults Only' on the cover, the suggestive photo covers and story titles, Madcap was intended to appeal to a more 'mature' readership than regular men's magazines, which tantalised their adolescent audiences with the promise of sex and depravity between their pages, but never really delivered.

Interestingly, the 38-26-34 version carried the sub-title 'The Way Out Magazine' until the late seventies, implying that, along with its fixation on big-breasted women, it was continuing the off-beat approach to its material that its original title had indicated.  It was also, doubtless, an attempt to connect with the 'way out' youth culture of the late sixties.  Anyway, this cover from Volume 1, Issue 4, from 1964 is pretty typical of those of the Madcap era. The story and article titles give a pretty good idea of the content and its target audience.  By today's standards it would undoubtedly seem incredibly tame - as I've noted before, even yesterdays smut seems quaint.