Playboy Archive & Bondi Digital

Update: This post was made a few months ago and this morning The New York Times comments on both the Playboy and the Rolling Stone DVD archive coming soon from Bondi Digital.

Since posting the following, I have seen the packages and they are impressive.


In October, I found myself in a cold gloomy basement antique store in Omaha, Nebraska. It was a fairly large room with variable content including a collection of magazines and books. The books were not special - although there was one first edition I knew was worth over $100 except that some moron had made a square cut in the dust jacket. The magazines included hundreds of Playboy magazines and I wish I had taken a photo of them as they were impressive and in much disarray. No doubt many old geezers like me spent time in that area.

At around the same time, I met David Anthony of Bondi Digital who was just wrapping up an agreement with Playboy Publishing to digitize the entire run of Playboy magazines. It is an exciting project and they hope to have the first products in stores for Christmas. They will approach the project by creating decade long sets of the magazine which will be available on discs packaged in large format book like packages. Each package will also include a booklet reflecting on the content on the disc which will be an exact replication of the print product - cover to cover. The content will be searchable and there will be an index.

"This digital archive is a first in the mass consumer magazine andmen's category," says Hugh M. Hefner, Playboy Founder, Editor-in-Chief and Chief Creative Officer. Playboy magazine has a tremendous legacy. With ourloyal readership, which has always shown a real interest in our archival issues, we knew this would be the perfect opportunity to offer Playboy fans what they have wanted for years."

Given this initiative (it follows Bondi's work with The New Yorker Archive) those interested in Playboy (and you know who you are) will not have to skulk around in basements anymore to find missing issues. By the end of next year the full set should be completed to the eternal enjoyment of all Playboy 'readers'.

Rolling Stone Post