Playboy Launches Free Online Archive

Spank It Like It’s 1974

Fans of classic Playboy playmates like Jayne Mansfield, Jean Bell, Dorothy Stratten, Madeleine & Mary Collinson, Jenny McCarthy, and Pam Anderson who don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on Ebay can rejoice.

Playboy magazine has just launched a free online archive that features 53 digital back issues of the magazine, one each from the years 1954 to 2007, just as they appeared on the newsstand— advertisements, hi-fi stereo reviews, Norman Mailer stories and all.

Nothing has been this free since the Whole Earth Catalog.

Hopefully this unprecedented move will prompt Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione to post similar archives of the entire run of Hustler and Penthouse so we can gawk at nude Monique Gabrielle, Traci Lords, and Melissa Wolf.

If we’re lucky, we may even see the complete run of Nugget online in the near future.