Well gee-golly, ain’t that something!

Today, Playboy Enterprises has launched i.Playboy.com, a site that gives you access to every page from every issue of Playboy ever published. That sure is a lot of…articles.

Here’s the scope of what we are talking about here: 130,000 pages from over 57 years of magazines – every centerfold, pictorial, reporting piece, interview and even every advertisement.

In addition to providing users with access to all issues from December 1953 to present, the site will also feature exclusive videos and curated content recommendations submitted by members of the Playboy Commission, a high-profile panel of celebrated individuals from art, design, fashion, media and technology. Commission members will provide their own content suggestions from the Playboy archives for users to explore and enjoy each month, beginning in June.

The site, i.playboy.com, is optimized for the iPad, meaning you can navigate the service with relative ease and fluidity. Each magazine issue that you open has a content page with yellow highlighted areas that users can tap to jump quickly from section to section within the issue. A promotional video at the site tells users to “zoom in for more detail” by pinching the screen. I’m sure people will.

A subscription to the service will be offered for multiple time-frames. It will run users $8 per month if they pay monthly. A year’s subscription is $60 while a 2-year subscription is $100. You will save a substantial amount of money by going with the 2-year plan.

Here’s what Playboy’s content officer Jimmy Jellinek says about the new service, as quoted at the Chicago Tribune:

Jellinek is optimistic people will pony up the $8 per month or $60 per year for a service that’s “meant to appeal to that sense of collective nostalgia and affinity.” He calls the website “the world’s sexiest time machine” and “an anthology of cool” for a magazine he refers to as “the Mount Rushmore of literary greatness.”

In an age where the next naked girl in just a *free* click away, will people pony up the cash for Playboy online? The magazine has always had the reputation as “classy” pornography, which is more than can be said for much of the stuff on the web. Will the nostalgia factor create subscription sales? Are the interviews with famous people like John Lennon and articles by Jack Kerouac enough to draw people in?

I would think that every page from every Playboy issue ever published is quite an historical document in its own right, and that could drive enough interest to make i.playboy.com work. I mean, come one – when’s the last time you saw the Marilyn Monroe Playboy spread?

Does i.playboy.com interest you?