Playboy was nearly called Stag Party, and its rabbit began as a stag.
In 1953 Hugh Hefner planned a men’s magazine called Stag Party, until Stag, an unrelated men’s adventure magazine, threatened legal action over the name. Hefner, his wife Millie and his friend Eldon Sellers ran through Top Hat, Gentleman, Satyr, Pan and Bachelor before Sellers suggested Playboy. The cartoonist Arv Miller had drawn a stag as its mascot, so he gave it a rabbit’s head.
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