Throughout the many years that I have been collecting and buying vintage men’s magazines, titles from Pennine Magazines have always been there, but never in significant numbers - just the odd one or two copies in amongst collections of other books.

Most of you who collect, or are interested in, digest size glamour books from this period will be familiar with the titles that Pennine Magazines published in the early 1970’s, but I have yet to see a full collection of any of their titles.

The first book on the scene was, I believe, Nylon Surprise, which hit the newsstands right at the end of 1969, or possibly January 1970. Nylon Surprise was very quickly followed by Nylon Flash, Satin Flash and Smooth Satin. These four titles were the main stay of Pennine Magazines. There were four other titles that were introduced about 18 months to two years later: Exotic, Terrific, Fantastic and Dynamic. They are not that easy to date accurately, as they have very little written information in them. I have done my best to give some idea of their numbers and when they were published. Books were stated as being published monthly, with some odd numbering going on from time to time. For example, I have a couple of Nylon Surprise editions that are numbered the same but are completely different books; I also have a Satin Flash that is numbered as 12b, so who knows what was going on! It just makes it difficult 50 years later for the collector, but I don’t suppose they were really that interested in that then. I have only ever seen numbering of the main four titles into the late 30’s, which would suggest they only ran for about 3 years - as we already know the market for books like this, and of this size, was starting to change, with many titles just ceasing to exist in the 1970’s.

Pennine Magazines all followed the same format regardless of their title, which was generally that the same model would be used throughout the book. These single model editions would then be interspersed with a two-model edition; unfortunately they have no text or information about the models used.

Content is very much stockings and suspender based, with no full nudity. The suspender belts and knickers were very typical of the 1970’s - more lightweight than the 1960’s or those seen in Ben’s Books, if you know what I mean! The models seen in Pennine titles were mostly unfamiliar and a great many of the books have adverts for models to fill their pages. I suspect unknowns were cheaper than faces that were more familiar to us at that time, but that certainly is not to take away from any of the girls that graced the pages of these books.

Pennine also published specials, with these being advertised in their other titles; Super Girls, King Size Girls, Big Girls and Plus appeared, all featuring models with large or over large boobs.

Other titles from Pennine included Exciting Cinema and Sexy Laughs, which I know very little about, other than that Sexy Laughs ran to at least five volumes, which - assuming 12 books to a volume - would indicate that they were still around into the mid 70’s.

I will continue to look out for new numbers, and have digitized all the copies that I currently have, making them available for all to enjoy. New copies will be added as and when I come across them. Again, could I ask if you have more information or can help update my information, then it would be good to hear from you. Please make contact via the contact page.