First Issue Review – Boys’ Toys
Whilst many will continue to ask whether men are indeed ‘from Mars’ and women ‘from Venus’ there are a worrying number of 16-30 year old boys who firmly believe that they are from the world of F1 racing, Bond-esque gadgetry, stunning (and one day “available”) women and Premiership football.
There is nothing new in adolescent aspiration and hero-worship – it’s always existed – but it’s a different ball game altogether when the aspirants are single, up-for-it males with significant amounts of disposable income.
Latching onto the success of Loaded and FHM, editor Kirsty Robinson has put together the latest magazine to address this audience. Boys’ Toys, we’re told in the first editorial, is about the ‘Millennium Man’. If you happen to be one of these Millennium Men you’re lucky, because before settling down (or reaching “gameover” as BT would have it) you have “every right to revel in the fact that you’re unreliable and savour each moment you’re accused of being self-indulgent. You’re also well within your rights to continue the pursuit of all things incredibly sexy and ridiculously expensive”.
The “incredibly sexy and ridiculously expensive” things included in the first Boys’ Toys issue range from the latest digital camera and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) palmtops through to more adventurous pursuits such as vertical sky-diving, Formula 1 racing and superbikes. Despite the high ratio of adverts to editorial in the magazine as a whole, each item is consistently presented with a colourful and arresting style.
The editorial topics are all familiar territory: sex (how to get it, how to do it), personal hygiene (how to get it so you can do it), morality (should I have sex with my best friend’s mother? – depends whether she’s clean), money, work, film, fashion, gadgets and music.
What is innovative about Boys’ Toys, however, is the way in which it tries to piece together seemingly disparate anecdotal pieces into full, whole articles. Thus, for example, in a four-page article, entitled ‘You Only Live Twice’, we hear of five people’s career-changes. Nothing strikingly original here. Indeed there is no consistent strand emerging from the five accounts other than that of a job change, or rather a dramatic job change (from Educational Administrator to Monk). As a typical example of Boys’ Toys, ‘You Only Live Twice’, is in true docu-soap fashion, alluring bubble-gum. Very readable, and possibly tasty, but bubble-gum nonetheless. It washes over, around and quite often beneath you, rather like Saturday morning in the local barber’s – which is where copies of Boys’ Toys may well end up.
It is difficult to see Boys’ Toys surviving for long, even as a bi-monthly. The core market for this title is mostly 18-24 year olds. Unlike its leading competitors, FHM and Loaded, where the core market extends upwards towards 30+ year olds, the readership churn for Boys’ Toys will be much higher. Few readers are likely to ‘grow’ with this particular title.
Kirsty Robinson ends her first editorial by saying: “So, if you daydream about high speed car chases with a Bond girl in the passenger seat, dream on. In the meantime, stick with Boys’ Toys and you’ll at least be heading in the right direction”. No matter how short the ride.