alternatehistory.com

By now I'm sure everyone has seen/heard that Playboy will discontinue nude photos after the March 2016 issue, ending 63 years of that tradition. As we know, the magazine debuted in 1953 and the first issue wasn't even dated since Hugh Hefner was unsure there would be a second issue. But we all know how that went.

So: how early could the magazine possibly have debuted and survived to become as successful as it was? (The present tense doesn't seem to apply any longer since the internet essentially made its hard copy softcore irrelevant.) Could it have started in, say, the late 1940s? (When you answer, bear in mind that in 1947, a rather lame novelty song called "Shaving Cream" was considered borderline pornographic, and it had all the sophistication of slightly daring middle school kids.)
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