The 70s era tabloid National Informer and its sister publication National Informer Weekly Reader are always in poor taste. But Weekly Reader really outdoes itself in this issue published today in 1972. One example: an article about the Japanese porn industry quotes two actresses named Melike Fukki and Sukyu Titti. And there’s much more, all bad. It was supposed to be in fun, of course, but that’s always the excuse for racist humor: “Oh, you don’t think that’s funny? That’s because you’re too fuckin’ sensitive, you baby. Loosen up!” Well, we don’t think we’re particularly sensitive, and we still have to cringe. What we wonder is whether Weekly Reader editors, if any are alive today, cringe a little too when they think of the things they wrote. We have fourteen more scans below for your…er, enjoyment? 

Nothing says happy holidays quite like National Informer Weekly Reader, which in this December 24, 1972 issue treats us to some festive recipes and expounds upon the pagan roots of modern day Christmas. But of course Reader’s mission is always to show feminine skin and it does that with typical zeal, all while using terms like “brown sugar” and “comely wench” without so much as flinching. Of all the articles, our favorite is the one promising to teach men to “deliver an extra inch” during sex via the use of proper positioning. But strangely, it isn’t actually the man that has to do all this contorting, a fact made clear by Reader’s description of a doctor at the Swedish (of course) Institute for Sex who teaches a woman to grip her ankles while standing so she can be penetrated from behind. As the experiment progresses, she becomes so excited that the doctor has to hold her in place while the man finishes up. We have to give Reader editors credit—turning a fictional medical experiment into voyeur porn could be tricky for lesser talents, but they hole it like a three-foot putt. Later in the issue we’re introduced to a 425-pound model supposedly named Fran Fullenwider. Heh. There’s one other thing that’s fuller and wider—the raft of bullshit National Informer Weekly Reader constantly floats our way. But like all good masochists we love it. 

Today we’re back to our favorite sleazy tabloid National Informer, with its cover pronouncement that abnormal sex can’t be beat. By abnormal, the editors mean with mental patients or the developmentally impaired. Not only is it fun, but it helps them get better—or so Informer claims. Mental impairment seems to be a theme in this December 1969 issue, as there’s another write-up about a retarded teen sexpot (their words, not ours) who can barely count to ten but is a dynamo in the sack. You have to wonder whether a short bus ran over Informer editor Moritz Shonfeld’s dog. How else to explain he and his staff’s savage glee at exploiting the handicapped? Even Informer’s normally harmless resident seer The (not so) Great Criswell gets in on the act, writing in his column: “I predict that since we landed on the moon, Mongoloid idiots have increased in birth numbers, that the medical world will term them as ‘Mongoloid idiots’. This is one trend that our Miracle Men of Medicine cannot fathom or prevent.” You know what else can’t be fathomed or prevented? How National Informer manages to get hilariously worse with each issue. But we have many more and we’re going to post them all. So now who’s mentally impaired? Click keyword "National Informer" below to see our entire collection to date.

No, you aren’t seeing double. Below is a National Informer Weekly Reader that hit newsstands the same day and year as its older sister publication National Informer, above. We were trying to decide which one to post, but then figured why choose? Older sis is great, but younger sis is irrepressible in her own right. Hopefully, these images and those above will get your weekend pointed in the right direction. Just follow the vibrating funky finger. By the way, did we mention we’ve officially changed our nicknames here at Pulp to Black Bomber and P.S.G. Pumpometer? The old lucha libre nicknames were good, but the new ones are better for the band, though they're both a mouthful. Heh.

Our copies of National Informer span a time during which the paper was transitioning from typical tabloid to sex magazine. In our issues from 1966 to 1968, you get alarmist political journalism, which by the 1970s becomes drooling quasi-smut, as we see in this issue that first hit newsstands today in 1972. Of course, this shift from commie-baiting to masturbating meant abandoning a rightward leaning readership for a leftward leaning one. Clearly the move was meant to boost readership, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t Informer’s fault, though. All the old school tabloids were taking a beating. Even the venerable National Police Gazette, which had begun publishing lifetimes earlier, in 1845, died during the seventies. But Informer had a shorter history, a smaller audience, and a lower budget. In a tabloid sea where old battleships like Gazette and Confidential couldn’t turn quickly when the weather changed, Informer was a mere speedboat. Turn it did, and quite easily. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy had obliterated America's already battered pubic hair barrier in 1971 and Informer followed in its wake. But more explicitness did not bring more readership, as far as we can tell. National Informer and its sister publication National Informer Weekly Reader were dead by 1974. 

In the same way a donut is just a delivery system for sugar, certain tabloids were simply delivery systems for softcore smut. Some, like National Informer Weekly Reader, were so brazen about it you can’t help but laugh. For instance, on the cover of this issue published today in 1972, you see young Cindy (no last name), who wants to be an astronaut. Her story, written by Durr T. Olman, is completely straight-faced all the way until the last paragraph, when it ends with this gem of a quote: “By the time they (Women’s Lib) get around to making them accept female astronauts, I hope to have my education completed so I can qualify. Already I know the alphabet, I can write my name, and do addiction and subtraction!” Cue the rimshot and muted trumpet: waah waah waah. This tabloid is bad. And we don’t mean bad as in good. Even the naked women can’t save it, mainly because after the first few pages they disappear. But guess what? We bought twelve—yes twelve—of these puppies. So get used to National Informer Weekly Reader and its parent publication National Informer, because you’ll be seeing a lot more of them.