Lads' mags in children's sight: the game is ON!

After canvassing your views, we're extending Let Girls Be Girls to cover the issue of lads' mags on display where children can see them in newsagents, supermarkets, stationers and petrol stations. Have a look at our press release and survey results here. We're contacting all the major retailers to ask them to sign up, and will keep you posted about how that goes. If you'd like to cull some copy from the press release to compose your own letter to your local independent newsagent, please feel free, and post here to let us know what you've done.

Some of the retailers have asked us for examples of individual stores that are presenting problems, so if you've seen material inappropriately displayed in a specific branch, again, please post here and we'll pass the information on.

it doesn't take much circulation to keep a magazine going though.The newsagent in our town has several different vintage tractor magazines - yes, not just one, several. Even if all the dps and dses of MNers stopped buying them I am sure that would still leave a good deal more readers than your average vintage tractor mag gets and they somehow manage to keep going

I wanted to ask something but didn't want to cause a fuss. I know that mags/papers etc should be hidden as the ladies in them are usually half dressed and pouting. I just wondered if anyone else has thought that maybe mags with men on (Men's Health for example) should be toned down too. Those guys are naked (and supposedly showing guys how they are meant to be) but they're still nearly naked and is it double standards? Ignore me if I'm rambling, but having looked at my son's mag (he's 17) I just wondered if it portrays an iamge that's maybe unreachable for teens/men?

Just wanted to add that our local newsagent has those boxes on the mags and they're also on the high shelves. The Sun/Sport however is just on the general newspaper stand and I have mentioned it as my when my son was younger (about 7) he did used to stand and stare.

how i love the liberals. i did have a small chuckle at rowan's claim that mners can start a fight in an empty room, in the middle of a fabulous barney about statistical significance. that lot don't actually care what they are arguing about, really, do they?

<fwiw, i'm more of a qual girl myself. the quant side is apparently full of desperately numerate weirdos who wouldn't recognise causation if it hit them in the face with a damp haddock> hey ho.

not in the uk currently, so can't contribute to the 'where' discussion, but rah rah, anyway.

In my experience, WHSmith and Tesco do not give a monkey's. Smith's told me a couple of years ago that they adhere to their own voluntary guidelines of not displaying lads mags at a height below 1.2m so that children won't be exposed to them.

I went onto the Department of Health website and found an age/height survey and found that the average 6-7 year old is now over 1.2m tall. I sent this information to WHSmith and asked what they defined as a 'child' but they kept answering really vaguely and in the end refused to answer anything in writing and offered to speak to me on the phone instead (weird!). I offered to come and meet them in person as their office isn't far from where I live but they declined that offer too.

Tesco are also rubbish.

The Co-op at least tries to display them on the top shelves but I only know of one Co-op that covers them up.

And credit where it's due to Sainsbury's and Morrisons who listened to their customers and covered them up. I avoid Tesco and WHSmut now and only shop in Sainsbury's. It's not much to ask, is it, for a retailer to move some poorly selling magazines to a top shelf and cover them up! (Although I am bemused as to why Sainsbury's doesn't cover up FHM.)

A few years ago, when WHSmut made the decision to bring back Playboy, its then MD said that the cover of most lads mags are the same as Playboy. Yet they put Playboy on the top shelves, covered up, and the rest at the height of your average 6-7 year old. I asked WHSmut about that too but they declined to answer!