After the Baby Boom, a Kids Magazine Blast

When a New York publicist recently invited reporters to the breakfast launch of a new magazine, she noted in advance that the mystery start-up would not be aimed at children. After all, so many publications for kids--and parents--have been hatched during the past year that a new entry might have generated more of a “So what?” than a “Tell me more.”

In fact, the industry newsletter Folio: First Day has dubbed 1993 the “Year of the Children” as major publishers seek to capitalize on the baby boom of the 1980s.

Family Adventures, created by the editors of Hearst Magazines’ Sports Afield, reached newsstands last month with travel and quality-time ideas. The premiere issue describes horseback outings in Wyoming, offers picnic recipes and instructs parents how to “lost-proof” their kids with a lesson in compass use.

Nickelodeon magazine, a humor book from the cable network targeting children 8 to 12, is scheduled to premiere June 15. Details about the editorial focus have been guarded, but cover No. 1 appears to reflect an irreverence within. It shows Ren and Stimpy, the hot anti-Establishment cartoon characters, in what is billed as a “Summer Swimsuit Issue.” Additional stories promise “The Truth About Trolls” and a take on “Annoying Car Songs.”

Outside Kids--a joint venture of Outside magazine and the Welsh Publishing Group, a leading children’s publisher--will also bow next month, hoping to bring coverage of the outdoors, environmental issues and team sports to those 8 to 14.

Family Life is the latest start-up by Jann S. Wenner, the father of Rolling Stone magazine (and of three youngsters). It’s aimed at parents with children 3 to 12 and scheduled to launch Aug. 10. “These are what I call the years of childhood,” says editor-in-chief Nancy Evans, who persuaded Wenner to back her idea for the magazine with an investment that he says may approach $6 million.

Popular Science tested PS4Kids last fall, complete with pullout trading cards of dinosaurs. While word of a spring rollout was premature, a spokeswoman stressed that PS4Kids was not conceived as a one-shot deal and may be fully launched in the fall.

Why so many new child/parent magazines now? Because the number of children in kindergarten through eighth grade has risen steadily since 1985, exceeding 33.7 million in 1991, according to the Census Bureau. Chasing after their allowance dollars is an array of advertisers that includes producers of video games, kid flicks, breakfast cereals and clothes designers.

If the newly crowded field is a guide, then publishers are sure to pursue the youngsters as they get older. In fact, the future already has become more crowded. That recent breakfast for the new non-children’s magazine announced the launch in August of Quake, Welsh Publishing’s first entertainment magazine geared for teen-agers--specifically the 15-year-old girls sought by cosmetics manufacturers and apparel makers.

Amending Ike’s

Medical History

“Amending America” (Times Books), Richard B. Bernstein and Jerome Agel’s scholarly history of attempts to alter the Constitution, enlivens its account of the 25th Amendment (on presidential succession) with a startling anecdote. It seems that Dwight D. Eisenhower’s run for the presidency in 1952, when he was 62 years old, succeeded without full revelation about his health.

Historian Richard B. Morris told the authors in 1988 that he had been yanked from the path of a moving truck by Eisenhower when the former general was president of Columbia University after World War II. “You idiot!” Ike screamed at him. “Don’t you realize that I have a heart condition? You almost gave me a heart attack!”

The book notes: “Morris believed that he could not reveal this story in 1952, even given its relevance to Eisenhower’s fitness for the presidency, because he felt that he owed his life to Eisenhower.”

Later, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack while president.

B Matter

Buzz, the magazine that subtitles itself The Talk of Los Angeles, completes the swallow-up of a competitor with the May issue. A box on the cover announces: “Incorporating L.A. Style.” Now, Buzz is also looking east, issuing invitations to a New York “literary salon” (translation: party) later this month with L.A.-based novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle, author of the new “The Road to Wellville” (Viking). . . . Amid a recent round of key departures from Entertainment Weekly (including general editor Steven Redicliffe, who became the new editor-in-chief of Parenting), staff writer Mark Harris has been promoted to senior editor in charge of movie coverage.