Loaded magazine, launched in 1994, was the original ‘lads mag’ and 90s publishing phenomenon. In its early days, the magazine’s readership was once memorably described as “50% Sun readers and 50% Guardian readers”.
The Loaded style has been cloned numerous times, most obviously by Emap’s FHM and Maxim, which became the biggest-selling men’s magazine in the US for Dennis Publishing. Loaded also influenced women’s monthlies, with Emap launching Minx, “For girls with a lust for life”. In January 2004, IPC launched the weekly Nuts, announced as the world’s first men’s weekly, and Emap quickly followed with Zoo.
Loaded won the prestigious PPA Magazine Of The Year Award two times in a row, in 1995 and 1996. In 2007, Loaded was voted 49th in Industry website goodmagazine.com’s Top 51 Magazines of All Time list, for the “Smartest, Prettiest, Coolest, Funniest, Most Influential, Most Necessary, Most Important, Most Essential, etc.”