Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years

I have the older version of MAD, which is not from the same company. Kudos for this version in every respect but one (and I may be in error). First, the old program suffers from a pain-in-the-(insert word here) interface, with no flexibility. This new version is all PDF. Transfer to your PDA and have fun!!!! It has some pretty good extras, like the covers of the paperbacks, which happened to be the only way we could get to see early stories like Starchie. I gave this 5 stars because of the ease of porting this from one PC to Mac to PDA. Now the big downer: As far as I can tell, there are no audio files. No Gall in the Family Fare? the audio parody of Archie Bunker? Aw, c'mon! Is that such a big deal? In the 7 CD version there are very few sound files, so it's not a space issue. Lastly, from a former printer, the register is not always great, as if they used poorly printed pages here and there. Print colors bleed. However, buy this one; it will not get any better. Find someone who has the old audio inserts or the original programs. Or, maybe I missed it, but dagnabit! I sure looked for them boogers. [Added] After more looking, they actually show the vinyl record and its reverse side, which is blank, but do not have the sound files. I don't really care about the extras like Spy animations that were not part of the original issues, especially when they leave out a key essential as a vocal version of a classic parody that WAS part of the originals. It's a great value. It's the most flexible of releases. Those who remember Broderbund's obscenely overly done protection will feel great relief. Put out a great product and people will buy it. Buy this.

If you've ever heard the phrase "phoned it in", you're in the right general area. In fact, photos taken with a phone from a few years before this product was released would be better than the extremely poor quality scans in this collection. Not only is the quality low (some text is actually illegible) but the images aren't even framed well, cutting off bits of pages here and including parts of other pages there. It's like some kid in a great rush pirated copies of Mad magazine he found in the trash, using a scanner from an ancient technology museum. It's a massive waste of money and a huge disappointment - avoid.

Loaded immediately into XP computer. Wouldn't load into Vista laptop. But for all the VIsta users that wish upon a star they could buy and use this product . . . Here's all you do. 1. Buy the disk and put it in your disk drive. 2. Right click on a blank space on your desktop and choose NEW, and FOLDER. (create a new folder) You see the new folder with the bottom blinking waiting for you to name it. (don't name it yet) 3. Copy the DVD contents by clicking the START button, then COMPUTER, which will bring up a list of your drives. Find the one with the Mad DVD in it (it does show up) Right click on it and choose OPEN or EXPLORE (but not OPEN WITH AUTOPLAY) 4. When you see the disk contents, click the ORGANIZE tab in the upper left of your screen and choose SELECT ALL. This will highlight every file and you will see that. 5. Click ORGANIZE again and choose COPY. 6. Now reduce that window so you can see the new file you created when you started this and right click in the empty space where you will name the folder and choose PASTE. 7. Now go watch TV or eat dinner. It will load all the file for about an hour or so. 8. Now you don't need the DVD. Just open the individual decade / year folder you want or double click the file called START to use the browser. YOU'RE WELCOME The magazines bring back memories. Especially ALL IN THE FAMILY ( GALL IN THE FAMILY) and COOL HAND LUKE ( BLUE EYED KOOK) which me and my family saw at the drive-in for the first time. Timeless insanity! UPDATE: iPad users really wish they could just get this on their iPad and turn the brightly colored pages like a full page book and do the finger pinch and blow up any pages or parts they want to . . . Guess what . . . I just figured that one out too. Here you go. Download the CLOUDREADER App ( free ) in your APP STORE button on iPad. Hook your iPad to your computer which by now has the MAD Magazine already in a file. Open ITUNES and after your iPad updates, right click on the iPad wheelie thing on the left side of your ITUNES screen and when the APPS section appears use your mouse and scroll ( yea, grab the bar on the far right to pull it down ) down so that you see the same CLOUDREADER icon you put on your iPad. Click that, and it will open a window that lets you find via a SEARCH button, your MAD Magazine file (by whatever name you gave it when you finished putting it on your computer before.) When you find it and open it, all the little separate file names that you can't recognize by the code language that makes up an actual whole file, will be displayed. Right click on each one of these separately and click SELECT and you will immediately see them going into you iPad on both your computer screen AND your iPad screen. Once they are in CLOUDREADER just touch it and a comic book opens and behaves just like a comic book except you can pinch enlarge items. And you can SWIPE an entry and delete it if you wish. How about that? Took a while and some research but there you go and it wasn't hard after all. ENJOY!