- 11/18/2003

Scotsman.com
By: E. Glenford Prescott

St Vincent will issue a series of international postage stamps next month commemorating Playboy’s 50th anniversary and depicting the magazine’s most memorable covers, officials said on Tuesday.

The six stamps will range from the magazine’s 1953 cover of Marilyn Monroe to the January 2004 Gold Anniversary cover, said manager Edward Beache of the St Vincent Philatelic Bureau, a government agency.

One of them shows a woman wearing heavy lipstick provocatively licking a stamp, according to a photograph supplied by Playboy.

“We usually market events and individuals whom we think can help to promote St Vincent and the Grenadines,” Beache said.

St Vincent stamps have also honoured Elvis Presley, Princess Diana and John Lennon. The stamps, which go on sale on December 1 to coincide with the 50th anniversary, will cost 33 pence each but consumers can only purchase them in sheets of six for £2.

The Philatelic Bureau will print a first run of 10,000 sheets, Beache said. The agency’s seven agents in the United States have not yet expressed interest in the stamps, Beache said.

First assembled on a kitchen table in 1953, the magazine and trademark bunny logo have grown into a cultural icon.

The first December issue, which featured a nude Monroe, didn’t have a date because Playboy patriarch Hugh Hefner said he feared there would never be a second edition. He had to borrow £350 to start the first.

Fifty years later, Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises Inc has grown into a vast multimedia empire that includes ventures in television, videos and the internet. The magazine has held steady with a circulation of 3.2 million in recent years, while other racy monthlies, including Penthouse, have struggled with an upsurge in men’s magazines such as Maxim.

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