Need to be 18 or over to purchase the Prog in WH Smiths

[Anzati]

Today I purchased the Prog from WH Smiths in Huntingdon, using the self service till, as I do almost every week. However the routine was slightly different today as when I scanned the barcode a message popped up saying approval was needed...apparently the Prog is age restricted and you need to be over 18 to buy it! Never had this happen before and I assume it was some database quirk...but I just wondered if anyone else had encountered this?

[Steve Green]

It'll be that Pete Wells pop-up centre spread that made it through before being pulped.

[amines2058]

It was only a small pop-up though wasn't it 

[Proudhuff]

Did it have a free magnifying glass? 

[Steve Green]

He'll get me at Thought Bubble...

[Proudhuff]

He had me at Hello....

[Buttonman]

The last Meg is definitely top shelf material - more F's and C's than the last forum get together!

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Yep, my boys ain't reading the Meg right now

[JayzusB.Christ]

Got to admit, I'm surprised the prog gets away without a 'not for sale to children' tag, what with the nudity, violence, graphic sex, swearing, gae bolgas through the nether regions and whatnot. 

[Grugz]

who's gay bolga? is he a mate of devlin's?

[AlexF]

I'm super glad that 2000AD / the Meg is still unsuitable for children; just hope there are still some child readers young enough to appreciate the subversiveness. It does seem as if it's way to easy to get sight of unholy sex and violence outside of 2000AD these days. I can't help but think that one huge secret of its early success was being able to replicate the tone of famous 18-rated films that 8-year-olds really wouldn;t have been able to see in 1977.

[Richard]

I want 2000 AD to be subversive, in the sense to opening children's eyes to political and religious opinions they differ to the ones they were brought up with, anti-heroes, cynicism and that sort of thing. What I don't want is for 2000 AD to have swear words in it so that parents ban their kids from reading them. Swearing is fine in the Meg (I really didn't agree with those letters in the latest issue deploring bad language while pretending not to mind it really). But while 2000 AD may mostly be read by adults these days, we'll all die one day (well not all on one day but you know what I mean), and so the comic can only survive if it continues to gain new readers from the generations below us. So it has to be accessible to them. It's no use us complaining that WH Smith keeps hiding them on the high shelves if the newsagent can just open one at a random page and point to a shit and a fuck.

[Jim_Campbell]

But while 2000 AD may mostly be read by adults these days, we'll all die one day (well not all on one day but you know what I mean), and so the comic can only survive if it continues to gain new readers from the generations below us. So it has to be accessible to them.

This. Absolutely, a hundred times, this.

Cheers

Jim

[JamesC]

It always seems unnecessary when the Prog contains adult material (I give the Meg a little more leeway).
There's absolutely no need for any swearing in the prog - that's why they invented Drokk and Stomm. There's even less need for graphic sex/nudity (actually nudity doesn't bother me greatly) and allusions to sexual violence are totally unacceptable in my opinion. The prog should be edgy but still just about on the right side of suitability for a 10 year old.

[Grugz]

remember the purple willies?