In the 70s, “Pif Gadget” was a popular French youth magazine. It emerged from the communist youth magazine “Le jeune patriote” and was the first magazine with a gimmick. “Pif Gadget” had a circulation in the millions - four times as high as the competition paper “Le Journal de Mickey”. The magazine owes its success to the comic stories penned by renowned authors such as Goscinny, Gotlib, Mandryka, Uderzo, Mordillo, Tabary and Hugo Pratt. This was followed by an internal editorial struggle for art and commerce, which was astonishing in view of the communist sentiments of the editors.
The German version “Yps” appeared as a West German children's magazine from 1975 and also reached millions of copies. Some gimmicks, such as the famous tadpole shrimp, still have cult status in Germany today. The documentation shows how modern and innovative “Pif Gadget” was back then. At the height of its success, the magazine was a perfect fit for its time: in the early 70s, the gimmick reflected the plastic boom at the time, while towards the end of the same decade, attempts were made to awaken environmental awareness among young readers. In the 80s “Pif Gadget” showed the first signs of age. The magazine was discontinued two years after the end of the USSR. The children's magazine disappeared from the market for years. “Yps” returned to the kiosk in Germany in October 2012 as a magazine for adults - with tadpole shrimp as a supplement.