What was the first video game magazine to ship in a polybag?

[SynthMilk]

Got curious about this the other day when I came across a few eBay listings for early 90s EGMs that were still sealed in their original bags.

Any idea which issue and/or publication kicked off the polybag trend?

Also curious whether people tended to hold onto the bags to safely store the mini strategy guides, trading cards and AOL discs they contained, or if you just tore it off and tossed it away as soon as you got home.

[kitsunebi]

As any comics collector will tell you, polybags are absolutely NOT a safe way to store a collectable.  The cheap plastics used in polybags are very toxic towards paper and are not recommended for long-term storage.

Ironically, things still sealed in polybags can still fetch a premium price, but it's a given that the contents inside probably won't be as well preserved, so I don't think anyone would ever pay a premium price for a polybagged issue they intended to open.  They buy a sealed copy to have a sealed copy.

Actually, with comics, most collectors nowadays remove all polybags from their collections and rebag them in mylar.  Getting a comic professionally graded can add significant resale value to a sought-after comic, and comics-grading services will not even grade a bagged issue.

[SynthMilk]

Great advice, Kitsunebi!

I'm going to assume the info re polybags extends beyond the low quality bags the magazines were originally shipped in and also applies to current polypropylene storage bags like the BCW brand ones on Amazon.

I bought some "archival-grade" mylar sleeves from Bags Unlimited a while ago but wasn't super happy with them.  They're very stiff and some of the thicker mags that would fit easily into a same-sized polybag would cause the side seams of the mylar bag to split (can't recall if I got the 2 mil or 4 mil version -- the 2 mil ones might fare a bit better in this regard). The seams are also kinda rough looking/feeling.  Especially after inserting a magazine you're very aware that the bag was assembled from two separate pieces. I can see how these issues wouldn't be a big deal with comic books given the more standardized page count/thickness, but with the 90s gaming mag sizes varying so much (even within the same publication), it's a bit frustrating that the more flexible (and significantly cheaper) polypropylene bags don't get the job done preservation-wise.

[SynthMilk]

Did Japanese gaming mags ever fall in with the polybag trend?  Seems like every western publication went that route at least occasionally in the mid-90s, but I can't recall ever seeing a bagged (by the publisher) Japanese gaming mag.

Were all those "perfect attack" mini strategy guides I see floating around on eBay originally glued into the issue (PC Engine Fan, MegaDrive Fan, etc.)?

[kitsunebi]

I've never looked into mylar for magazines, but I imagine it would be difficult to find an accurate fit for something that comes in such a variety of sizes.  All of my mags are destined for the recycling once they've been scanned, so long-term storage isn't a concern of mine (granted, I've already had them for quite a while).  At any rate, I don't consider magazines collectables, like some people do.

Yeah, I've never seen a Japanese mag in a polybag, but I honestly never really look.  I go into a bookstore exactly once per year to buy a new daily schedule book I use at work, but otherwise...nope.  I read comics every day...but only digital ones.  All of the Japanese mags I own were bought from Yahoo auctions, not brand new at a store.  Stapled mags tend to staple the extras in at the center of the mag.  Squarebound mags just sort of have the extras...inserted somewhere...but not attached with glue.  So maybe they originally had a bag?  Or maybe they just trust people not to steal stuff or let the insert drop to the floor if they browse in the store.

I've seen some stuff like the thick manga weeklies/monthlies that have some sort of extras stuffed into the middle somewhere and are then wrapped crossways with a type of ribbon to keep them from being opened and dumping their contents, so that's another possibility.  And I've seen some mags that come with really unique extras like T-shirts and the like, which are sold in boxes. 

[Areala]

16 hours ago, SynthMilk said:

Got curious about this the other day when I came across a few eBay listings for early 90s EGMs that were still sealed in their original bags.

Any idea which issue and/or publication kicked off the polybag trend?

Also curious whether people tended to hold onto the bags to safely store the mini strategy guides, trading cards and AOL discs they contained, or if you just tore it off and tossed it away as soon as you got home.

This would be difficult to answer, since polybagging magazines was normally only a thing for shipping them through the mail, and even then, not all publications did it. Normally magazines were polybagged on the newsstand if they contained something the publisher didn't want to get lost/stolen, like a 3.5" floppy or a CD-ROM, or if the contents were not appropriate for all-ages. You most commonly saw this with PC magazines of the era, where you could pick from the regular issue or pay a few dollars more to get the one with the disk/CD. I usually paid the premium for the CD.

As to who did it first? My subscription issues of Nintendo Power from the late 80s always shipped in polybags, but they were the only gaming mag I had a subscription to back in the day so I don't know if EGM and GamePro were doing that first. I picked up some newsstand issues of EGM and GamePro back in the late 90s and early 2000s that were polybagged, because they came with a poster or a mini strategy guide, but this was not the norm.

*huggles*
Areala

[JHD]

It is not a video game magazine, but I randomly received a copy of the British publication Dragon User magazine in 1983 or 1984 that came in a poly bag.

Around the same time, I subscribed to some science and technology magazine that also came in a polybag.

I do not recall seeing anything on the newsstand so packaged, but there were no video game magazines in the early-to-mid 1980s. 

 

 

 

[SynthMilk]

Thanks for the info! I wasn't aware that some magazines used polybags just for the subscribers and then lo and behold a gaming magazine I picked up on eBay arrived the other day in its original bag with "2nd Class Mail" printed on it.

When I started the topic I was mainly thinking of the bags with copious amounts of hype text obscuring the actual cover design ("Collector's Issue!", "Free Trading Card Inside", etc.) that would typically be used to pack in supplemental print items, discs, and third party marketing material. Looking back on it, it seems like America Online discs were offsetting rising print costs for the whole magazine industry (at least the tech/nerd adjacent ones I was interested in) from about '96 onward. lol

Interesting to learn that some magazines in the early/mid 80s were also occasionally bagged up from the printer.