The Lads Mag

Loaded, first published by IPC in 1994, is a British magazine for men that is considered to be the "original lads' mag".

Loaded was founded in 1994 by James Brown, a former deputy editor of the music weekly New Musical Express. In its early days, the magazine's readership was once memorably described as "50% Sun readers and 50% Guardian readers". Brown has described the irreverent comic Viz as an inspiration for Loaded (and he later bought the comic when he founded the company I Feel Good).
Loaded captured the lad culture of the 1990s like no other magazine; its glorification of British male "rogues" (Liam Gallagher, Oliver Reed, Paul Gascoigne etc.) was only outstripped by its fondness for titillating photoshoots with nubile C-, B-, and occasionally A-list celebrities. However, early covers led on male icons for film and TV - Gary Oldman was on the first cover.

The Loaded style has been cloned numerous times, most obviously by Emap's FHM, which became the biggest-selling men's magazine in the US for Dennis Publishing.

In January 2004, IPC launched the weekly Nuts, announced as the world's first men's weekly, and Emap quickly followed with Zoo.

FHM or For Him Magazine is an international monthly lad's mag. The magazine began publication in 1985 in the United Kingdom under the name For Him and changed its title to FHM in 1994, although the full For Him Magazine continues to be printed on the spine of each issue. Founded by Chris Astridge, the magazine was a predominantly fashion-based publication distributed through high street men's fashion outlets. Circulation expanded to newsagents as a quarterly by the spring of 1987.

After the emergence of James Brown's Loaded magazine (regarded as the blueprint for the lad's mag genre), For Him firmed up its editorial approach to compete with the expanding market and introduced a sports supplement. It then went monthly and changed its name to FHM. It subsequently expanded internationally.

Like Loaded, FHM arguably relies heavily on the appeal of photographs of scantily-clad women. Unlike many magazines, FHM prints photographs of women already famous for reasons other than their beauty—such as actresses and pop singers. FHM is typically stocked in the lifestyle rather than adult section on newsstands

The magazine is printed on high quality glossy paper and the photography is of high technical quality. FHM became one of the best-selling magazines in Britain during the mid to late 1990s, selling 700,000 copies per month by 1999, which was a fall by 9.6%. Towards the end of the decade the lads' culture in which the magazine thrived began to die off and publishers turned to celebrity-oriented titles to boost overall sales.