For me, growing up in the '70's and '80's, the tickling industry was pretty much non-existant. In the '70's, I started out as a foot fetish person, looking through Sears and JC Penney catalogs. They would sometimes have decent content. Also, my one sister sold Avon, which meant my mom would get the latest catalogs, which also had some bare feet content in them. Moving into the '80's, I started seeing a little bit more foot fetish/tickling content. Penthouse has their booklets of stories, with some being tied and tickled stories. By the mid '80's, Harmony and Cal Star were coming along with videos, and also the Tied and Tickled series of magazines. I remember going to an adult bookstore that sold the magazines, but also had video viewing rooms, where you could privately watch porn videos. You had to pay so many quarters for several minutes of viewing time. Once in a blue moon, there would be a tickling video to watch. However, to get to the tickling part of the video, you'd spend around $5.00 in quarters to get there, because the tickling scenes were in the middle of a 1-1 1/2 hour video. In the later '80's/early '90's, I would start to see Cal Star and Harmony videos being sold or rented in these same adult book stores. Then from there, it was the internet, Clips4Sale, forums like TMF, Tickle Theater, etc. that gave tickling more exposure to the masses.
