First published in 1931 Ballyhoo featured one-off cartoons of a scandalous of humourous nature, and parody articles and advertisements. The humor magazine became so popular (reaching a circulation of two million readers) it began to attract actual advertisers. The editors of Ballyhoo had been reluctant at first to accept advertisements but insisted that any placed ads in the magazine would need to meet the satirical style of the fake advertisements. As a result, many of the real advertisements became indistinguishable from the send-ups.

Ballyhoo would discontinue publication in 1939, with two efforts to restart the publication between 1948 and 1954. Ballyhoo‘s spiritual successor would be MAD Magazine, which would adopt Ballyhoo’s magazine-style format the year before Ballyhoo went out of print for the last time in 1954.

First published in 1955, MAD was the spiritual successor to Ballyhoo, a humor magazine (published on and off between 1931 and 1954) aimed at a college-age readership. Ballyhoo was one of the first periodical to publish trenchant parodies of cigarette advertisements. MAD continued this tradition and ridiculed such things as filters on cigarettes and tobacco industry executives who testified in Congress that nicotine is not addictive.