The Last Australian Issue of FHM

Yep. The May 2012 issue of FHM (For Him Magazine)—which is available in newsagents now—is the last issue to be published in Australia. Without a doubt the Internet has killed the PG-rated eye-candy men’s magazine. From memory Ralph Magazine stopped publishing some time early last year; or it could have even been the year before.

For anyone wondering what the last issue of Australian FHM looks like following is a picture taken with the crappy camera on my Motorola Defy smartphone (on the table in my motel room).

Not quite up to the standard of my Pentax K-5. Slightly out of focus with a lot digital noise and pixel averaging going on, but not too bad for a crappy two year old 5MP camera phone.

I am not sure what the status is of the UK and USA editions of FHM but I would guess that if they have not already stopped being published then they soon will be.

Why is this?

Basically the Internet (or the Interweb, as the popular name seems to be these days) has killed the soft eye-candy men’s magazine. With R rated magazines there might be foul language, depictions of strong violence, or totally naked ladies inside; or all three. FHM does not even rate an R rating. In fact FHM magazine is probably more like PG. You are not even going to see any bare female primaries (breasts) in FHM magazine. But, depending on your tastes, you might get to see some attractive females in bikinis; but in many issues you won’t even get to see that.

I recall reading somewhere once that you see more exposed female flesh in a Cleo or Cosmopolitan woman’s ‘fashion’ magazine—and they were probably right.

So why has FHM Australia decided to stop publishing? Basically they are not selling copies, which means they are not making money.

You see, anyone with a computer of some kind—which includes smartphones and tablet computers—can connect to the Interweb and thereby access unlimited never-ending volumes of high quality (i.e., high resolution) R, X, XX, and XXX content as stills or videos; and it is all free and can be downloaded and saved for further review at a later date.

It is estimated that on Tumblr alone, which is only one of hundreds of web hosting sites, there are over 100 free-content eye-candy sites of varying ratings created every month. For a tiny sample of these sites you can check out the index pages that can be found at the Just Boobs site (here). Each of the index pages at Just Boobs provides links to nine eye-candy sites that are mostly rated R or X. If you can’t find an index page at Just Boobs here is one here.

Magazines like FHM can’t compete with ‘free’ and they can’t compete with the unlimited amount of quality eye-candy that can be easily found and downloaded.

So, before I close out this post, what can I share with you from this latest and last issue ever (probably, unless eye-candy magazine make some kind of comeback) of FHM in Australia? Maybe, from page 87, “Everything you thought you knew about Women is Wrong”. After talking to a ‘study group’ of women about these 10 topics FHM reveals the truth about what women think  . . .

For the drill down information behind any of these points you will need to buy your own copy of the ‘last Australian FHM’ magazine. Go on. Do it. Let’s make this last issue of FHM a runaway sales bonanza. Okay. Yeah, I know. If all of my 30 or so Australian readers all bought a copy of the magazine it would not even cause the tiniest little blip on the sales numbers. Oh well . . . I bought one anyway . . .

[All images link to the FHM Australian Web site]