As magazine readers, we usually pick up issues based solely on their cover (occasionally, we skim the table of contents). In doing so, we tend to pick up some pretty awful stuff because, well, most of the unusual covers these days are being published by really bad magazines. You’ll note that evolution in Best Week Ever’s listicle of The 29 Most Controversial Magazine Covers Ever, which slowly goes from TIME, Life, Esquire and The New Yorker to Entertainment Weekly, Seventeen and Baby Talk.

Clearly, our magazine industry has lost its edge (must be the Internet’s fault), but we must admit how heartening it is to see that even The Economist (pictured) made the list by stooping to scandalous covers as a way of selling its high-brow journalism to an audience with shortening attention spans and reverse-aging senses of humor. Fancy writing and animal sex covers: now that’s a merger we can get behind!