Mid - Late 90's was an interesting time for the muscle magazines. A big push was the death of MM2K, MuscleMag making huge gains with the girly issues, and the development of the old Testosterone.net .
99 -2000, Muscular Development had a period they tried to be a sports/wrestling/lifestyle magazine.
The issue that killed off MM2K mostly -
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From there a lot of steroid guys jumped to Peak training Journal, Ironman (which was rebranding itself), and a magazine called Pump.
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And just because I found it now, Dan Duchaine rates the muscle mags circa 98 -
Sandwich: I’m going to name off a list of the current bodybuilding magazines out on the market and I would like to get your uncensored opinion of each of them: Muscle Media.
Duchiane: Well, it does have a role, now. It’s kind of like "Muscle and Kindergarten" now. Its very scaled back from what it used to be. The kind of reader that’s reading it now are very - they aren’t stupid - but in terms of the subculture, they are very unsophisticated as far as what they expect for information. They are easy to please, I think.
Sandwich: Okay. MuscleMag International.
Duchaine: You know, it just dawned on me the other day that at $5.95 an issue, and the amount of time I flip through it, I really don’t have to buy it ever again. There is nothing really worthwhile that will help me out. The gossip is not really skanky enough to be interesting, although I must tell u, as much as the guy hates my guts - and the feeling is mutual - but the only thing that I really look forward to in the whole fucking magazine is "Muscle Beach." That idiot, Steve Neece’s column. I do like that. He really has a handle on the dregs of society! Hee-hee-hee-hee-heh (laughs).
Sandwich: What about Ironman?
Duchaine: Well, Ironman, I think now…you know, yeah, I’m gonna like it a lot, now that I am writing for it, but even before I started writing for it, the big turnaround [for them] was when they had Dharkam in there, which is Michael Gundill. They had Derek Cornelius, and maybe Bruce Kneller had an article in there. It really, for me, I really enjoy the magazine a whole bunch more than I used to. And I really think Ironman is what Muscle Media used to be, and all they are lacking is a real big sense of humor. If they did that, they would have a real winner. I even think, graphically, its better. I think Michael Neveaux can find and photograph the best of the fitness women of all the magazines.
Sandwich: Okay, what about Muscle and Fitness? What do you think of that one?
Duchaine: Never read it. I really never read it. The only reason I would read a Muscle and Fitness is to see who, as far as nutrition companies out there, had the bucks to place ads in there. It gives you a very good idea about what a company is doing, financially, if they can sustain a big ad campaign month after month after month.
Sandwich: FLEX.
Duchaine: I think that’s the best of the muscle magazines, period. Artistically, graphically…their photographs are just great. And I must tell you, for some odd reason, some of the most interesting science stuff makes its way into FLEX. I don’t know how they did it! Once in a while they have a great, really important article. I don’t think most people realize how important some of those articles are in there. But, because they are in between all those photographs and training routines, but they are quite good. Jerry Brainium does some of his best work in FLEX. Some of his articles are quite, quite good.
Sandwich: I agree. FLEX has really been very good lately. What about the other new magazine, PUMP?
Duchaine: (sighs and pauses) I think they should go all the way. Its like Muscle Media, but with ten tons of tits. I think they should really skank it out even more. I think they should be the first nude bodybuilding magazine. That’s what they really wanna do, so just go for it and do it! The thing is, I am quite friendly to the editor, Jason Mathas. We worked together in the mid-80’s with Modern Bodybuilding. He got me back in the public eye after I left FLEX. He’s a hard worker, and you don’t realize how hard it is to get a magazine up and running. As much as everyone expected Testosterone to be THE magazine, here it is a year since they started and they haven’t gotten one issue in print, and PUMP has three issues. That’s an achievement in itself; that they had three issues out, ya know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could say one hand there is mine, but when you see what Ironman is doing, they learned everything they could from the guys at PUMP and it turned their magazine around. And if Testosterone, as much as people hate what they are doing right now: promoting more products and right in your face, that may be their salvation. I mean, people don’t do these terrible things of these infomercial articles and ads unless it works. And it works.
Sandwich: What about PEAK, by Steve Colescott?
Duchaine: Yeah. I always say that PEAK is like a non issue because it’s a vanity magazine. I think Steve likes to publish a magazine just to show everybody how wonderful he is, and how a magazine should be. But, in the real world, his magazine wouldn’t make it. Its just too esoteric. You can pull that crap with a newsletter, and I tried to do it, and it went out of business! So obviously that formula doesn’t even work in a newsletter. So, yeah, I like reading PEAK because its slanted toward the real "upper end" of readers, and there is not many people like that. I find some of the articles very interesting, but if it really interests me, I would predict that 80% of a potential reader would not read the article because its too in-depth.
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The whole interview is here, I don't want to interrupt this thread copy and pasting it, but it's a good read. Dan was in the twilight of his years then, and answers a decent amount of interesting questions. The Sandwich was a Misc.Fitness.Weights troll reportedly named Josh Brown. He got published by some of the big magazines in 98, 99, but I don't think he wrote anymore after that. Shame, he was good at it -
https://brotherhood.is/steroid-news/6593-school-dan-duchaine-interview.html .
