History of Mad - Circulation Peak

Circulation Peak

Al Feldstein joined Mad in the same year that Time described it as a "short-lived satirical pulp". By the time he left 28 years later, the magazine was commonly cited as one of the three greatest publishing successes of the 1950s, along with Playboy and TV Guide. The magazine's circulation more than quadrupled during Feldstein's tenure, peaking at 2,132,655 in 1974, although it had declined to a third of this figure by the end of his time as editor. When Feldstein retired in 1984, he was replaced by the team of Nick Meglin and John Ficarra, who co-edited Mad for the next two decades. After Meglin retired in 2004, Ficarra continued to edit the magazine.

For tax reasons, Gaines sold his company in the early 1960s to the Kinney Parking Company. Kinney was in the process of becoming a conglomerate, including acquiring National Periodicals (aka DC Comics) and Warner Bros. by the end of that decade. Though technically an employee for 30 years, the fiercely independent Gaines was named a Kinney board member, and was largely permitted to run Mad as he saw fit without corporate interference.

By early 1978, Mad was obliged to include a UPC symbol on its covers. The magazine responded by devoting the entire front cover of issue #198 to a giant UPC bar code, saying they hoped it would "jam every computer in the country" for "forcing us to deface our covers with this yecchy UPC symbol from now on." For more than two years, subsequent issues labeled the normal-sized symbol with a series of humorous captions, such as "Closeup of the gap in Alfred E. Neuman's teeth" or "Hair of man watching horror movie."