This issue of Rampage published today in 1969 features an unidentified cover model claiming that men drool all over her body. Particularly the lower half, we suspect, since she’s wearing no pants. Inside, the mag’s intrepid journos go on an orgy hunt and—amazingly—find one; pseudonymous scribe Pitt Falls describes how insurance agents have a gay time balling housewives; and rape is conflated with sex. That’s nearly always the unfortunate case with these (male-written) vintage tabs. Those stories are pure farce, little slices of sleaze fiction, and we assume close to 100% of readers understood that, but then again, you never know.

Anyway, in this issue you also get the (not so) Great Criswell, who serves up yet another slate of incredibly off target predictions. Specifically, he tells readers that Armenia will be a superpower by the year 1980, that a new war will break out on the Korean peninsula, and that Esperanto will become the official language of international newspapers and magazines. Well, in the prediction business you have to swing for the fences, and really, you only have to connect about 25% of the time to maintain your status. So what was Criswell right about this time around? He said taxes would go up. Crack! That one’s waay out of here, folks!

The Great Criswell, who also called himself The Amazing Criswell, usually appeared in the pages of National Informer, a fact that tells us Rampage is a creation of the Informer Publishing Co. of Franklin Park, Illinois. But the problem with Rampage is it feels exactly as if National Informer or National Informer Weekly Reader were left out on the counter to grow stale, then warmed under a heat lamp and served on a paper plate. The fact that it’s tamer is a good thing, in real word terms. But in pulp world we’re looking for the uniquely outrageous. Rampage promises but doesn’t deliver. But we’ll reserve our final judgment until we have a look at the other issues we bought. Meantime, check out the scans below.  

You never want to go too long without a little National Informer in your life, so we’ve brought you another issue of our all-time favorite tabloid, this one published today in 1972. It’s an almost all-sex issue, with articles about fetishism, group sex, lesbian sex in prison, male contraceptive pills, hookers flying the friendly skies, and advanced stimulation methods to drive your partner wild. Mixed in there, in a place where you’d easily overlook it, is a great paste-up photo of Richard Nixon playing chess with Fidel Castro. Chess had something you could almost call mass appeal in the U.S. back in the 1970s, and Castro was a chess aficionado who once hosted a tournament in Havana that drew Mexican Grandmaster Filiberto Terrazas, American Grandmaster and world champ Bobby Fischer, and Soviet-Armenian Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian. So, in the context of the times, the Nixon/Castro composite isn’t as random as it seems. We’ve blown up the photo below, and included other pages of interest. 

Published forty years ago today, this issue of National Informer hits the usual notes, as far as low-end tabloid journalism goes, i.e., erotic fiction printed with a few photos and labeled journalism. The only potentially interesting story—Cannibal Delicatessen Serves Human Babies to Customers—turns out to be about a deli that merely serves food shaped like human body parts. Not that we advocate cannibalism, but at least trying to deliver on the story advertised would have tested the creative and literary abilities of the editors. As it is, they’re coasting through this issue. Apparently, they couldn’t even find good handout photos, as the usual collection of nudes is rather small. Perhaps all the crooked modeling agents and porn producers were on vacation in December 1971. At least you get a nice, if unidentified, cover model dressed in stripes to match the masthead. That’s good feng shui or something, right? We’ve scanned a few pages of this issue, and they appear below. National Informer will return. 

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? 

Adultery, prostitution, spouse swapping and incest all make their regularly scheduled appearances in this June 1972 issue of National Informer, and the editors also tell us about a new scientific study proving that people with big noses have higher sex drives. Amongst their supporting evidence is this bit: “Anthropologists point out that in many animals, like the dog, the nose plays an important role in presexual activities. The male dog will sniff the female’s rear before mounting her.” With ass-sniffing imagery firmly implanted in our minds, we move on to the highlight of this issue, which concerns the appearance of a new strain of antibiotic-resistant V.D. Apparently this new clap must involve stinging insects flying out of the urethra, because in the accompanying photo the nurse is wearing what looks like a bee-keeper’s helmet. We’re still trying to figure that out. Maybe we'll consult those anthropologists from the big nose story, who for some reason are experts on dogs, so surely must know bees. While we consult, check out the rest of our scans below. 

For your pleasure this Monday, we have another National Informer. Perhaps you thought we had run out of these gems, but fear not, sweet reader—we have not, and there are plenty more where these came from. In this issue published yesterday in 1972, Informer’s in-house seer Mark Travis puts his self-proclaimed 85% accuracy rate on the line with a raft of bold new predictions. He tells us Earthmen (his term, not ours) will land on Mars by 1980. Um, no. He also predicts that, by 1980 again, Antarctica will be used as a deepfreeze for the world’s food supply. And he also predicts that half the U.S. population will be on welfare by the year… you guessed it—1980. We don’t know what his fetish was with that year, but in a way, these were clever predictions—since his job was results-based, he couldn’t be fired for at least eight years. But our favorite prediction of his actually deals with the immediate future: “I predict several small children will be carried away by eagles in our Western States next summer.” 85% accuracy? Perhaps not. But at least Travis was entertaining even when he was wrong. Elsewhere in Informer you get peeping Toms, swinging mistresses, sex advice, and some rather curious ads. See all that, and more, below. 

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.

The adult tabloid National Informer is in full bloom in this issue published today in 1972. By now they’re up to volume 22, issue 20, which is simply amazing considering virtually nobody remembers this paper (or at least, nobody admits remembering it). But that’s one reason Pulp Intl. exists—to bring near-forgotten publications like Informer back to the light to embarrass an entire generation now pretending to be upstanding senior citizens, as well as to teach a new generation about vintage sexual aids like the Black Bomber, the Universal Rectal Unit, the Vibrating Funky Finger and, grandmother’s favorite little helper, the P.S.G. Pumpometer. Now that we’ve done our job, we gotta run. We’re late for band practice. We know—you had no idea we were in a band. That’s because we just formed it. Just this instant. You didn’t seriously think we’d let a name like Vibrating Funky Finger go to waste, did you? Next stop—top of the charts! 

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.