of children’s magazines know the y will lose their readers at some point. They believe it’s inevitable.
Not Germany’s Egmont Ehapa. Kids title YPS was originally launched in
1975 in Germany by G+J. Ehapa acquired the popular but fading magazine in 1999. It made the decision to close the title in 2000. Shortly thereafter, the publishers noticed there was a substantial community of former YPS readers on Facebook. So they figured they’d bring YPS back, not as a book for kids but as a magazine for former YPS readers, and in October 2012, the old title reappeared in an entirely new body.
The new YPS target group is men aged
25-45, and the magazine aims to remind its readers of their childhood with stories based on some of the old gadgets: how to find dinosaurs in Germany; how to become a secret agent at 35. The concept of the new magazine is to let the readers relive their childhood but without being childish.
The launch was accompanied by
a social media strategy that saw YPS’ Facebook fan page rise from 32,000 fans in April 2012 to 91,000 by the end of 2012.