Vintage Quick Magazine, Jack Benny Cover

Quick magazine was a “news weekly” published by Cowles Magazines, Inc., part of Cowles Media Company (now a subsidiary of McClatchy Newspapers Inc.). The pocket-sized publication (4.5 X 6 inches and 64-68 pages, plus covers) were available at newsstands each Thursday, where folks were encouraged via cutesy back covers to “carry it in your pocket or your purse… and read it wherever you are”.

Quick was started by Gardner Cowles Jr. (called “Mike”) in 1949 and, despite a circulation of 1.3 million, the magazine was ended in 1953 when it was decided that Quick’s subscribers could be transferred to Look, where the circulation numbers would help Look maintain a lead in the big battle with competitor Colliers.

When I first spotted a handful of copies of the vintage magazines I knew none of this. But the the small size appealed to my rationalizing collector self (”Hey, we won’t take up much room!”) and the covers (front and back) were cute. But, flipping through the pages, it was the glimpses of odd “news” items which beckoned the most seductively…

Vintage "Of The Week" News Bits

Like in the July 31, 1950 issue, the “Shoe Shine Man Of The Week” (Toni Tomasulo, who apparently had landed in New York back in 1892 with just 20 cents and earned a name for himself with his Broadway shoeshine stand), the “Labor Union Of The Week” (the Burmese Royal Family Association, formed in Rangoon, Burma, to negotiate higher allowances for the elderly descendants of King Mindon (Burmese princes and princesses), and the “Freckled Kids Of The Week” (Joe Cassidy and Frances Brucato — who were winners of the New York Children’s Aid Society’s annual freckle contest).

These “Of The Week” dealios had me wondering if such awards were really handed out each week. Sadly, no; tagging on “Of The Week” is just a cute way of profiling a quick item — just like bloggers do today. But still, I kept flipping through the old little magazines, squealing over each page — sometimes over each paragraph. It reminded me of being a little girl in our local drugstore, thumbing through the magazines until Mr. V would creep up on me and say, “If you want to read it all, you’ll need to buy it!”

Memories of Mr. V. can still make me jump, so I had to buy the four vintage mags; blame him for my latest collection.

At least these vintage weekly magazines are small and there’s only four years of them to collect. If the four year run was complete years, I only have 204 more issues to go.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 4:32 am and is filed under collecting fyi, flea market finds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.