| Product: |
Red |
| Date: |
09/03/02 (86 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: not that many
Disadvantages: viele, beaucoup, lots
Being the sucker that I am for anything that’s at all free and remotely interesting, I bought the latest copy of Red just to get my grubby little mitts on the complimentary copy of “The Girls Guide To Hunting and Fishing”. Now I haven’t started the book yet since I’m currently in the middle of another, but I took the magazine with me to the gym the other night to have a flick through while I was working out.
I have a few expectations of my magazines. I want them to be interesting. Light-hearted. Easy to read. Full of pretty pictures and useful tips. It’s for these reasons that I’m usually more of a Now or Cosmo girl, than a New Scientist one. Red, at first glance, looked like it would fulfil some of these criteria. The cover is most colourful (an odd mishmash of lime green, fluorescent orange, neon pink and glaring read along with the required black and white), and the content screaming from it seemed interesting enough.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? I cracked the spine, settled back on my bike and was quickly disappointed. Pour qoui? Well……
1. There were far too many adverts - a whopping 22 pages worth before the first article. And they didn’t stop there – after almost every page there was another, and towards the back there was another “nice” little (or rather large) collection of these. I realise they have to fund their freebies and pay their staff, but I’m sure there must be less annoying ways of doing this.
2. The interviews were (a) long winded and (b) with not all that interesting “stars”. I wouldn’t have though that this mag was aimed at those much older than me, but I guess it must be if Russell Crowe is expected to appeal to their audience.
3. There was far too much fashion – although the surroundings were nice (this month’s main shoot was in Florida’s Sea World) the cl
othes were awful and there were far too many of them.
4. The articles were again extremely long and, well complicated. If I want “in depth” or “gripping” I’ll read a book, not a magazine. This is definitely not one for picking up at the Doctor’s surgery – you’ll only be 1/7th of the way through a piece when they call your name. I swear, I spent more time reading the adverts than the articles.
5. The focus just wasn’t what I was after – it’s all very well if you’re a middle aged housewife looking to do up your home and find out about mental illnesses (!) but for the younger, singler reader, there’s nothing nice to learn. They made an attempt with their “65 ways to get healthy fast”, but these were still mainly recycled from other magazines or common knowledge – I hardly think “eat breakfast” can be counted as a wonderfully new idea.
The magazine is trying to hard to be everything – the sex bits from Cosmo mixed with the gossip from Heat and the Home Tips from Family Circle. The problem is, it succeeds at being the worse of these as a result, because it’s spread too thinly over too many areas if you see what I mean. It has all the necessary minor parts – horoscopes, problem pages, food, beauty and so on – but even these aren’t enough to save it, especially when it starts waffling on about how men can’t deal with emotions – because no one’s told us *that* before….
The good points? Erm. Maybe..nope…darn…oh I know, it gives out free gifts with the majority of issues. Which are always good, non? And the website – www.redmagazine.co.uk isn’t all that bad.
At £2.80 / month this magazine isn’t even cheap, so I’d not recommend buying it (unless it has a wonderful freebie stuck on the front). I just hope the book’
;s better.
Summary:
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