Publishers see a growing appetite in Asia for the scantily clad
While soft-porn titles Playboy and Penthouse have been keeping ogling men happy since the 1960s, it was only with the arrival of Loaded, Maxim and FHM in the 1990s that men's magazines made their way down from the top shelf.
The new breed of brash titles coincided with the birth of the dubious phenomenon of the 'New Lad', who drank and bullied the politically correct 'New Man' into oblivion. The rash of lads' mags that followed offered breasts, bums, sex and more sex alongside less lascivious male interests such as gadgets, cars and grooming. In so doing they found a massive audience.
The magazines proved an instant hit with
20- to 30-something men with wads of cash to spend and an urge to enjoy life - the kind of blokes who enjoy a few pints and a curry on a Friday night with their mates, going on boozy stag nights or playing video games.
Other magazines such as Details, Esquire, GQ and i-D pitched themselves at the more style-conscious, sophisticated male, interested in fashion, film, grooming and the good life.
Maxim has proved the most successful of them all, now selling 4 million copies worldwide, with editions produced in more than 20 countries.
The appetite for titillation and scantily-clad girls transcends borders and is seemingly insatiable. Despite 20th-century feminism, this appetite has also become more widely accepted than ever - and not just in the west.
While Britain and the United States are the heartland of lads' mags, publishers have identified Asia as the future. The evolution is taking place across the region, from China to South Korea, unleashing toned-down but discernibly more libertarian western attitudes on traditionally conservative, yet curious, readers.
Hong Kong is viewed by publishers as a critical market because it provides a useful litmus test for the taste of Chinese readers and hence a trial site for magazines preparing to launch in mainland China with its 1.3 billion population - potentially the world's most lucrative market.
Esquire already sells more than 300,000 copies a month in notoriously censorious China, and FHM and Maxim are looking to hit similar figures. With its burgeoning urban populations of moneyed single males with cash to splash on cars, clothes, gadgets and women, the future of men's mags in the mainland looks bright.
