213. June 1975 Cover Date Error

April 4, 2010

Q: I have two issues that are identical except for inside front cover ad, and the date on the cover. One says June 1974 the other says June 1975. What’s up with these two issues?

A: Both issues are for June 1975. About half the copies had the wrong year on the cover. They caught it before they were all printed. In general, the subscribers got the one with the “1974”, while the “1975” issues went to newsstands and stores. I never noticed that the ad on the inside front cover was also changed. I don’t know what the story with that is. I used to work in the magazine biz. I think it’s possible they had different rates for newsstand and subscription sales, hence different editions printed with a few ads swapped out.

Comments

Thanks for that info! I was a subscriber and when I got the "1974" issue I was puzzled, then a week or so later I was at the bookstand and saw the "1975" issue and bought it to fill out my collection. With the "Information Highway" not available to me yet, my limited attempts at solving the mystery, were in vain. So after 35 years being safely tucked away in the family's old bomb shelter, they have been resurrected. In large part due to the appearance of P.J. O'Rourke on the CNBC special "BOOMERS" By the way, I know advertising in print media varies regionally, but I don't know if it did then or if it would have been different because of distribution differences between subscription and newstand deliveries. The inside cover ad in the "1975" issue was "TRAMPS" cigarettes - "BUY 'EM OR BUM 'EM" and the "1974" ad was "Viceroy. Where excitement is now a taste" (both were Brown & Williamson products)

—Ken

April 5, 2010 7:22 am

Some issues marked "1975" have Tramps ads, some have Viceroy ads. I own a Viceroy copy, while the "1975" immortalized on the Lampoon DVD-ROM has a Tramps. (Both cigarette brands are by Brown and Williamson. I surmise that the company bought every inside back cover that month, and devoted a certain number of them to the fledgling Tramps brand, an arrangement unaffected by and irrelevant to the "1974/1975" error.) Speaking of ad swaps and limited ad buys: the Lampoon ran ads for NYC radio stations in copies circulated around the city, but elsewhere filled these pages with ads for Lampoon books, subscriptions, and t-shirts.

—Dell

April 8, 2010 1:14 am

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