1990 was twenty years ago. Ten years ago.
(This was originally posted in 2019, but with a crappy scanned version of the magazine. Finally got round to revisiting it properly.)
This is the preview issue of LM given away with Crash, Zzap & whatever the Amstrad one was called. Tone is a bit different from the proper issues, but it’s kind of a gateway issue.
From the publisher of Crash & Zzap 64, LM magazine was an attempt to create something that might be later thought of as a (men’s) lifestyle magazine, but in 1987 there wasn’t an audience (of advertisers) to sustain it. LM quickly folded after 4 (well, 4.5) issues.
But that’s how it ended, how did it begin? A risky move for Newsfield, opening an office in that there London compared to the joys of Ludlow but someone had a vision, and there was an audience of readers engaged even if they were jumping in from their sister titles. There were almost 270,000 copies of the trial issue 0 printed (which is a surprising number considering how infrequently they would show up on ebay, but I guess loads ended up in the rubbish) and most if not all were bundled with it’s label mates at Christmas which was a smart move for a February launch. I’ll get round to issue 0 at some point in time as it’s not to hand just so instead some waffle about the first issue follows.
