Nuts and Zoo: does anyone know the difference?

There was an interesting documentary about weekly lads mags on Channel 4 last night, which showed that if you launch two similar magazine products into the market place at the same time - as IPC and Emap did in 2004 with Nuts and Zoo - they will eventually morph into one another in order to survive.

I wasn’t aware that when Nuts launched, it had the cheesy ambition of being a magazine that “sons and their fathers” could read, complete with geeky spreads on fighter jets and motorbikes. And I didn’t realise that, from the outset, Zoo was much ruder.

While Nuts won the initial circulation battle, Zoo began to overtake thanks to having lots of bare breasts, swearing and “gruesome incident” photography inside. Very quickly, the then editor of Nuts, Phil Hilton, realised that in order to survive, he had to abandon the wholesomeness and copy the Zoo formula. Which he did, unapologetically.

While subtle differences remain between the two products, Sex in the 00s: Nuts and Zoo showed that they are now, essentially, the same.

It also showed that IPC, the publisher of Nuts, has morphed into a peddler of internet amateur soft porn, with an unrepentant willingness to publish on the Nuts website these bizarre headless shots of women flashing their tits. And it showed Paul Merrill, the editor of Zoo, to be the David Brent of magazine publishing, with boasts about getting pissed and forgetting what happened the night before, unironic use of the phrase “size of tittage” and penchant for getting the “work experience girls” to “count up the nipples” on show in the magazine each week. Nice guy.

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