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  #1  
Old 05-05-2005, 01:42 PM
Darkhorse Darkhorse is offline
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Ever notice how different magazines pimp certain companies products more than others? Here is a list of the magazines and their underlying supplement companies. You newbies don't be fooled! :eek:

MuscleMag International and Oxygen
This is the worst example of self promoting I have ever seen. MuscleMag is controlled by MuscleTech. Anytime you see an article in MuscleMag about a supplement it is a MuscleTech product. How people can buy into this magazine and its monthly editorial content directed solely at selling MuscleTech supplements is beyond me. It's so obvious you would actually have to be brain dead not to realize it.
Don't be fooled in the slightest by what looks like articles in this magazine. They are not articles at all. They are "advertorials". They are strictly ads written to look like articles in order to give them an appearance of legitimacy.
Oxygen is the female oriented counterpart. Same thing just aimed at women.

IronMan Magazine
Ironman was the last magazine to fall. And fall hard it did. Now each month that Ironman comes out you get a monthly thrashing of MuscleLink ads disguised as articles. Ironman runs a very close second to MuscleMag in their deceptive promotional practices. Any Ironman article about nutrition or supplementation is nothing more than and ad designed to induce you to buy their products.

Muscular Development
Muscular Development is Twinlab's mouthpiece. This magazine is not near as bad as Ironman and MuscleMag, but nevertheless, the nutrition articles are in there to help sell TwinLab supplements. It's also used extensively to bash other products that TwinLab does not sell. Like Androstenedione.

Muscle & Fitness and Flex
Both Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines are owed by Joe Weider and thus are selling vehicles for Weider supplements, Metaform, MuscleTribe, and numerous other companies owned by Weider.
Actually the Weider magazines don't fall into the same category as MuscleMag and Ironman. Other than plastering photos of Weider products in all the articles, they do not take as blatant an approach as the others. Still you must read the articles with a jaundiced eye.

Muscle Media
This is the magazine that started the new generation of "advertorial" supplement promoting. Their first supplement was Met-Rx. Muscle Media promoted Met-Rx through articles in issue after issue. It was that promotion that made Met-Rx such a popular product.
After a fall out with the owner of Met-Rx, contracts were not renewed. Along came EAS. Muscle Media then became a promotional vehicle for EAS which it remains today.
Its promotional approach has toned down considerably in last couple of years, but is still the primary promotional tool for EAS supplements.
As you can see, every magazine is tied to a supplement company. Your chance of getting objective, non biased information about supplements doesn't exist through today's magazines. What you are getting is information designed to sway your opinion in favor of the magazines underlying supplement. That's what it's all about. They might try to make it look different, but the bottom line is today's bodybuilding magazines are primarily designed to sell the supplements that the magazines are financially connected to.

Pretty f'in sneaky huh? You're under the impression you're reading an informative article on a new supplement when what you are really reading is an ad that is made to look like an article. How can you possibly expect to get the "real" truth when what you are getting is an ad?
How can this be legal? Well, truth be known, it's not. The FTC is looking into this facade and by all means should be. There is no doubt heads will roll.
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Old 05-06-2005, 01:00 AM
verbatimreturned verbatimreturned is offline
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this is a pretty good observation, but im sure they are paid lots of money when they do things like this from the companies they support
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Old 05-06-2005, 01:04 AM
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Dr X Dr X is offline
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I did know this, pretty much why I don't get there stuff. Thanks for putting it out there.
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Old 02-08-2006, 05:59 AM
joshua joshua is offline
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Magazines are all driven by advertisers, making those advertisers angry results in loss of revenue $$ for the magazine, eventually leading to the magazine going under. It's no surprise that magazines vaunt the products produced by their advertisers. It happens with every type of magazine, the car mags I buy are all full of articles vaunting the virtues of aftermarket parts, of course parts produced by the same companies with ads plastered throughout the magazine. No matter what type of magazine you buy, you must always read the articles and "take it with a grain of salt".
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Old 02-08-2006, 06:09 AM
Darkhorse Darkhorse is offline
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Damn, this thread is almost a year old. I'm actually glad it resurfaced for all the new faces here.

Great job!
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Old 02-08-2006, 11:59 AM
EricT EricT is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by joshua
No matter what type of magazine you buy, you must always read the articles and "take it with a grain of salt".
Or don't buy them in the first place.
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Old 02-10-2006, 07:20 AM
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I don't bother wilth any of those mags
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