“Dynamite” Magazine (1974-1992)

If you grew up in the 1970s, you remember this magazine. I remember ordering an issue with Superman on the cover through the Scholastic Book Club, or maybe I had a subscription. I thought the image on that cover was this:

But no such cover exists. So I have either the image wrong or the image right but the magazine wrong. This was the Superman cover at the time (1981) that I remember getting it:

(Yay, Greatest American Hero. No, the other one.)

What I did not know till now is that Dynamite outlasted my childhood. The second-to-last cover featured Beverly Hills, 90210, a show that hit big during my college years.

Dynamite came back into my mind (and my possession) because I bought a few back issues for research for a project. One issue had an interesting line in an article about Robin Williams (RIP stranger-friend)—interesting in that you can’t imagine that line running in any children’s periodical today. I’m sure it will pop out at you:

“…pretended to put a hamster into a microwave oven!”

I also noticed several covers featured performers from shows not aimed at kids, notably Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live.

Lastly, one of the issues I got was practically nonstop with references to disco—another topic that would’ve meant little to most elementary school kids.

But then that was also the era of spotty parental supervision in the neighborhood, no bike helmets, Fluff-stuffed white sandwiches and Twinkies for lunch, and other defunct dangers for kids. What’s a little sexually charged dancing, racy humor, and animal cruelty between bites of your trans fats?