| | |  | Best Sellers | Home » » National Lampoon | | | | | | | Description: | | National Lampoon Monthly Magazine Collection.
A total of 246 original magazines from 1970 through 1998.
NATIONAL LAMPOON began as a publishing venture in 1970, led by comic geniuses Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and magazine publisher Matty Simmons.
The magazine quickly established itself as the most shocking, subversive, and unpredictable mass-circulation magazine ever, offering comic perspectives never before captured in print.
From revolutionizing the magazine industry to launching the careers of some of comedy's most honored performers and writers, NATIONAL LAMPOON has forever changed the face of humor ¿ and American culture.
From movies to books to radio to TV to the web, the NATIONAL LAMPOON has been breaking the barriers of humor and good taste since its inception. | | | Features: | |
• A total of 246 original magazines from 1970 through 1998.
• NATIONAL LAMPOON began as a publishing venture in 1970, led by comic geniuses Doug Kenney, Henry Bea
• The magazine quickly established itself as the most shocking, subversive, and unpredictable mass-cir
• From revolutionizing the magazine industry to launching the careers of some of comedy's most honored
• From movies to books to radio to TV to the web, the NATIONAL LAMPOON has been breaking the barriers
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 7.5 inches | | Product Width:
| 0.0 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.3 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.2 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.6 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.5 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.35 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 48 reviews |
| | | System Requirements: | | | Platform:
| Windows Vista / Windows NT / Mac / Windows 2000 / Windows XP | | Media:
| DVD-ROM | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 48 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
105 of 106 found the following review helpful:
 Half of a productDec 07, 2007
By TomK1
"tomk1"
National Lampoon at this point is an icon. To people of a certain age, they remember the counter-culture magazine that pushed the boundaries in every conceivable direction. For younger people, the name is associated with cheesy titillation movies. The magazine itself was usually funny, and had a bit of an underground cachet about it.
Well, they've brought it back in the form of a bunch of PDF files that take about 7 gigabytes on a DVD-ROM. It's basically every page of every issue, including (thankfully!) the ads which tended towards stereo equipment, male "protection", beer & liquor, and cigarette ads. [personally, I love the old stereo receiver ads because they had a couple that I wanted to buy, couldn't afford, and by the time I could, they didn't make them anymore!]
It works fine on a windows PC, and I'm guessing it would work fine on a Mac, provided you installed the Adobe reader.
But there are two problems. First, the scans are only fair. It looks like in some cases the magazines themselves were damaged, but even when that didn't happen, the quality is no better than you or I just scanning a magazine at home. However, what really spoils this collection is that there was no attempt to turn this into something that was searchable and indexable because each page is simply a photograph of the page with no attempt at OCR or transcription.
And while it doesn't spoil a trip down memory lane, it does make you wish they'd spent more money, asked for $10 more and given us something that would be a lot more fun.
As it is, for those who remember, it's a trip worth every penny of the $33 Amazon is asking for it. But it frustrates you because it could have been so much more.
71 of 71 found the following review helpful:
Quality art and writing marred by lousy scansDec 10, 2007
By Thomas Lundin
I was really excited to finally have a collection of these classic issues in their entirety.
It would have been even better if they were readable.
Some scans were cropped too tightly, and cut off text or parts of a photograph. Other scans had crummy exposure, resulting in dark photos and filled-in, unreadable reverse type. Some scans went the other direction, rendering black print as light gray. And still other scans are inexplicably blurry.
It's not just the photos and drawings that suffer, either. The scans were done at too low a resolution to capture the small type in some of the articles and ads, so you'll have a hard time reading those.
Quality control on the final scans is nonexistent. No attempt was made to correct density levels or colors on any of the scanned pages -- or even to match densities on double-page spreads. The result is an annoying mish-mash of too-light or too-dark pages with wildly varying brightness, contrast, sharpness, and color density. By what amounts to sheer luck, some of the pages look, eh, not bad.
A few of the scanned magazines had leftover bind-in ad inserts attached to them, and these inserts were inexcusably scanned as pages in and of themselves. Sheesh!
Clearly, this is a slapped-together project straight out of an automated scanning farm. It might have been better if the publisher of this compilation had outsourced the scanning of these magazines to some offshore outfit that could have hand-corrected the images as they came off the scanner. It probably would have only cost pennies per magazine to vastly improve the scan quality.
Bottom line, this collection is a great concept with a deeply flawed execution. It's a disappointment. The artwork, photography, and writing in the old National Lampoon magazines was of the highest caliber -- it's hard to find anything published today that's as sophisticated and incisive. Too bad this DVD compilation doesn't live up to that standard.
36 of 38 found the following review helpful:
MUCH BETTER THAN NOTHINGNov 06, 2007
By Kurt A. Benbenek
"Kelly Bluebook"
Having had great difficulty finding reasonably-priced original National Lampoon Magazines, I was looking forward to this product which claimed to have EVERY ISSUE scanned. The deluxe glossy packaging is better than expected, including the famous "We'll Kill This Dog" dog on the cover.
As for the DVD-ROM itself, it initially WOULD NOT stay in my disc drive (I use an Apple iMac - OS 10.4) - there was obviously something wrong with the disc...however, after several tries the DVD-ROM stayed in my computer...though the disc continues to resist staying in my drive...in other words, it dosn't seem to like Macs
It seems best to use the Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer supplied on the disc...when using Apple's PREVIEW program to view the PDFs I got ugly "National Lampoon" watermarks on all of the scans. However, when using Adobe Acrobat everything was fine and the watermarks are now gone.
As for the scans, they're decent but definitely look like they were taken from actual old magazines and not the original magazine lay-out "boards" - sometimes words are cut-off and the general coloration of the scans is brown-ish and a little dark
But ultimately the important thing is the comedy material of the magazine and that holds up very well. It's especially nice to see the many cartoons, satirical ads (and the real ads, too which are included)
Overall, it's a package worth buying and a good value.
Several other Nat Lamp projects are NOT included (High School Yearbook, Newspaper parody) - but it looks like these side projects are all being released separately in book form.
12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
 Great magazine--lousy scan jobMar 01, 2008
By S. Kelly Parker
It is great to be able to reread the humor of the past, even to the issue with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter duking it out on the cover for the November 1976 election issue. The ads for cigarettes, rolling papers, and turntables and stereos are classic. The articles are hip, and the use of nudity and total irreverence was challenging then and makes you wish for something that intelligent now.
On the other hand, the books were scanned by morons who could care less about what they were doing. There are pages missing. There are pages upside down and crooked. The Funny pages are yellowing. The sharpness and brightness of the pages is missing. There is no index or way to search the pages. You want to read Nuts? Flip through issue after issue to the Funny Pages. The scanned originals look like they were stored in somebody's garage for about 20 years. Amazing there aren't stains on the pages with FotoFunnies!
Even the simplest of picture editors--like Microsoft's--can adjust color and brightness to improve an image. Gitcorp obviously paid someone (who could not care less) minimum wage to grab a book, slap it on a scanner, press go, then do the next page. Absolutely NO attention to what they were doing or quality whatsoever. The real shame of this is that whoever has the copyright has no reason to care either--there's no other way you're going to get to read all this stuff.
So, buy the disk. Marvel at the total politically incorrect humor--from cartoons of a naked 13-year-old to spoofs of Ebony and MRs. Agnew's Diary. Then add your opinion of Gitcorp and its scanning techniques.
14 of 15 found the following review helpful:
 Acceptable, with reservationsMar 07, 2008
By D. R. Davidson
"dougied"
First subscribed to NatLamp August 1970, magazine was great until it jumped the shark in the mid 80's, had every issue until the basement flooded in 1991 and destroyed my entire collection. I cried. Been waiting for this DVD for a loooong time. Only slightly disappointed. I was not really aware of the sheer number of advertisements in each issue, this DVD has them all. There is a National Lampoon "watermark" running across every page when displayed, not sure if that can be turned off but I find it very distracting and it interferes badly with some of the pages that didn't scan too well to begin with.
Loved seeing the "Trots and Bonnie" comics again, had forgotten how funny "True Facts" really was, and reading Chris Millers many pre-"Animal House" stories was icing on the cake.
Would have liked to have had a "search" function, for the price this is a decent piece of work. 4 stars.
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