Since the 1950s, teen magazines have helped young people — girls, especially — navigate the rollercoaster that is adolescence. By the late ’90s, they reached a sort of peak, with titles like Seventeen, Sassy, YM, CosmoGirl, Tiger Beat, Teen and Teen People flying off newsstands. But with the sharp rise of digital content between 2004 and 2010, teen media all but faded away. Tavi Gevinson then made a formidable attempt to bring it back in a modern, digital-meets-analog format with Rookie , but even that met its end by 2018. While growing up, Millennials managed to experience a bit of both worlds: print magazines and social media, landlines and iPhones, CDs and streaming apps. But for those born after Y2K, the world was digital-first. With (seemingly) everything in the palms of their hands, teens have had less motivation to pick up a glossy IRL, hence the medium’s sharp decline. At the same time, beloved youth-focused media titles remained part of the cul...
Warning: Spoilers for the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series below. After Sarah J. Maas announced the long-awaited sixth installment of her “A Court of Thorns and Roses” (“ACOTAR”) series earlier this year, it was only a matter of time before the beloved romantasy saga started making the licensing partnership rounds. Ahead of Tuesday’s release of “A Court of Splintered Harmony,” brands are catering to one of BookTok’s biggest audiences by stepping into the spellbinding world of Prythian with character-inspired fragrances, Bat Boy embroidered panties and even a Monopoly board. (Yes, really.) But these aren’t your typical licensing partnerships. Many popular book series first became blockbuster movies or fan-favorite TV shows before venturing into the lucrative world of fan merchandise, but with “ACOTAR,” brands are exclusively pulling from words on a page. While there is an official colo...