Larry Flynt Publications
Larry Flynt Publications, or LFP, Inc. is an American independent business enterprise that owns, manages and operates the adult entertainment businesses founded by American entrepreneur Larry Flynt. Founded in 1976, two years after Flynt began publishing Hustler magazine, LFP was originally established to serve as the legal business entity i.e. parent company of this magazine.
''Hustler'' magazine
In March 1972, Flynt created the Hustler Newsletter, a four-page, black-and-white publication of information about his Hustler Clubs. This item became so popular with his customers that by May 1972 he expanded the Hustler Newsletter to 16 pages and in August 1973, to 32 pages.As a result of the 1973 oil crisis the United States entered an economic recession; Hustler Club customers tightened their spending and Flynt had to find financing to pay his debts or go bankrupt. He decided to turn the Hustler Newsletter into a sexually-explicit national magazine. He paid the start-up costs of the new magazine using sales taxes collected in the clubs.
In July 1974, the first issue of Hustler magazine was published. Although the first few issues went largely unnoticed, within a year it became highly lucrative and he was able to pay his tax debts.
The magazine struggled for the first year, partly because many distributors and wholesalers refused to handle it as its nude photos became increasingly graphic. It targeted working-class men and grew from a shaky start to a peak circulation of around 3 million. In November 1974, Hustler showed the first "pink shots", or photos of open vulvas. Flynt had to fight to publish each issue as many people, including his distribution company, found the magazine too sexually explicit and threatened to have it removed from the market.
Shortly thereafter, Flynt was approached by a paparazzo who had taken nude pictures of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis while she was sunbathing on vacation in 1971. He purchased them for $18,000 and published them in the August 1975 issue. That issue attracted widespread attention, and one million copies were sold within a few days. As a millionaire, he bought a $375,000 mansion.
Other magazines
After 1976, Larry Flynt Publications began publishing many pornographic magazine titles as well as mainstream ones. Other pornographic magazines included:- Hustler's Taboo, which specializes in fetishistic material, such as the depiction of sexual bondage and urolagnia.
- Barely Legal, a primarily softcore magazine focusing on models between 18 and 23
- Hustler XXX, a more generic hardcore offering
- Hustler Beaver Hunt, featuring amateurs and reader-submitted photos
- Hustler's Leg World
- Asian Fever, focusing on Asian models
- Hustler's Chic Magazine, started in 1976 and aimed at a more upscale clientele than Hustler.
- Hustler's Busty Beauties is a softcore magazine which specializes in photographs of women with extremely large breasts.
Rip magazine was a music magazine covering heavy metal music. It was the first non-pornographic publication produced by LFP, and was edited by Lonn Friend, who had previously edited Hustler and Chic. Writers included rock journalist Judy Wieder, Mick Wall, and Andy Secher.
It published 14 bi-monthly issues of TurboPlay Magazine dedicated to covering TurboGrafx-16 and TG-CD hardware and software. It was a spin-off publication of Video Games & Computer Entertainment, a popular multi-platform gaming magazine of the late 1980s / early 1990s. Every issue of TurboPlay was 32 pages in length and a yearly subscription cost $9.95. L.F.P. published three bi-monthly issues of DUOWORLD magazine before it was canceled. DuoWorld was very similar in format to TurboPlay, but with a focus on the newly released TurboDuo console.
Tips & Tricks is a video game magazine published by LFP. For most of its existence, the publication was devoted almost exclusively to strategies and codes for popular video games. It began as a spin-off from VideoGames magazine, which in itself morphed out of VideoGames & Computer Entertainment. ''VG&CE and VideoGames, like Tips & Tricks, were published by LFP following the purchase of ANALOG Computing, ST-LOG and other computer magazines from publishers Michael DesChenes & Lee Pappas in the late 1980s.
LFP published Big Brother Skateboarding Magazine from 1997 until 2004 when the magazine ceased publication. Big Brother Skateboarding Magazine is notable for being one of the precursors to Jackass along with the CKY videos.
As the 21st century approached, magazine sales further declined. Together, the company's 31 periodicals had a monthly circulation of between 2.5 and 3 million. This was a far cry from the 1970s, when Hustler alone sold that many copies each month. Because of this LFP focused on turning its magazine and video titles such as Hustler, Barely Legal, Busty Beauties, Beaver Hunt, and Asian Fever'' into profitable websites.
By 1998, estimates LFP was doing $135 million in annual sales with 51,112 periodicals published and 7,812 movies and or video tapes produced.
Hustler Video
is a pornographic film studio owned by LFP. In 2003 Hustler Video bought VCA Pictures, which maintains a separate brand identity within the LFP conglomerate. Hustler Video has produced several top-selling and award-winning films, such as Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, Snoop Dogg's Hustlaz: Diary of a Pimp and Who's Nailin' Paylin?.In 2010 when AIDS Healthcare Foundation lodged a complaint against the Hustler Video group for not requiring the actors to wear condoms and thereby contributing to the spread of HIV, Michael H. Klein, the President of LFP responded by saying the company would not back down from shooting raw sex videos.