Huff, Puff, POOF!

While McCall's and the Ladies' Home Journal, the amazons of the women's-magazine field, traded perfumed poison-pen letters last week over rival circulation claims (TIME, July 28), third-running Good Housekeeping poked fun at both. The Hearst monthly, with a 5,074,816 circulation (v. 6,857,677 for McCall's, 6,838,282 for the Journal), took space in two major newspapers to print a whimsical, seven-column "fable" with a pointed moral.

In sprightly line drawings, a baby toad happens upon an ox and rushes home to tell Mamma about its wondrous size. Proud of her own size and disdainful of "being outdone by any living creature," Mamma Toad puffs and puffs until she resembles a huge balloon. Then: "With all her might she puffed to the bursting point--and burst into little pieces."

The moral was obvious, but Good Housekeeping could not resist a dig at McCall's campaign to boost its circulation to 8,000,000 by December and the Journal's race to keep up: "When a toad puffs to impress, she pays the penalty. When a magazine puffs to impress, it's the advertiser who pays." That moral was guaranteed by Good Housekeeping to make the battle of the slick-paper ladies even more frantic.

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