This was fun! There are plenty of funny and/or artistic old advertisements here, and I enjoyed it immensely. Even so, I would have preferred either a larger piece count or fewer images, some of there are quite tiny.
Shell Advertising Collection, Eurographics, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 14th, 2020.
I think this enthusiastic bobby is my favourite. If anyone knows what ICA stands for in this context, I would very much like to know. I assume it’s not the Swedish chain of supermarkets, and Google was not helpful.
Some of the ads are less than persuasive:
Some random men use Shell? Count me in!
The images used range from the very traditional, like this lovely image of Britain that looks decidedly 19th Century …
It says “See Britain first on Shell”, sorry for the crappy photo.
… to the more futuristic. I really like this abstract engine.
There are many ads that tell us who prefer Shell, above it’s motorists, there are also farmers, and below seamen:
But the most surprising thing I learned was that robotic judges who escaped from a horror movie also prefer Shell:
And what on earth is that tree trunk doing in front of the judge? I guess I’ll never know 🙂
Since I switched to posting twice a week in November 2019 after posting daily for a year, I’ve built up about 30 extra posts. I’m now going to post one puzzle a day in January, and in February I will go back to my normal schedule (definitely every Friday and mostly on Tuesdays as well).
Here’s a vintage Heye from 1988, my last puzzle for 2020, to start off with. Two pieces missing, but this was a joy to put together. The cut was probably the best I’ve ever seen in a Heye, with very distinct piece shapes.
Beach 2000 by Blachon, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 31, 2020.
I didn’t understand the title at first – I mean, there was a lot of of 2000-stuff in the late 90s, but this is from 1988. And then I noticed, the sea is not water, but oil:
So, a warning about what our beaches may look like in 2000 if pollution continues, I presume.
As usual, I’ll start the year with my stats for the previous year. In 2020 I completed 147 puzzles and placed 125 151 pieces, up from 2019, when I completed 113 puzzles and placed 101 494 pieces. A year ago I thought that I wouldn’t surpass my 2019 numbers before I retire, but I wasn’t counting on spending almost all my free time at home due to the pandemic.
The top three brands are still Ravensburger, Heye, and Clementoni:
Brand
Amount
%
Ravensburger
43
29 %
Heye
26
18 %
Clementoni
17
12 %
Jumbo
6
4 %
Tactic
5
3 %
Grafika
4
3 %
Peliko
4
3 %
Eurographics
4
3 %
D-Toys
3
2 %
Unknown
3
2 %
Piatnik
3
2 %
Ricordi Arte
2
1 %
Educa
2
1 %
Cobble Hill
2
1 %
Sunsout
2
1 %
FX Schmid
2
1 %
Schmidt
2
1 %
Gibsons Puzzle
2
1 %
Art Puzzle
2
1 %
Master Pieces
1
1 %
Art Stones
1
1 %
Paul Lamond Games
1
1 %
Pelikan
1
1 %
Endless Games
1
1 %
Galison
1
1 %
Serlachius Museot
1
1 %
eeBoo
1
1 %
Pomegranate
1
1 %
Talking Tables
1
1 %
Borussia Dortmund
1
1 %
Castorland
1
1 %
King
1
1 %
Where it says 1 %, it’s actually 0.68 % rounded upwards, which is why the total is 102 %.
Both Ravensburger and Heye have lost some ground, with Clementoni getting a few percent more than in 2019.
Here’s the breakdown according to piece count:
Piece count
Amount
%
1000
67
46 %
500
46
31 %
1500
10
7 %
368
5
3 %
759
5
3 %
300
2
1 %
2000
2
1 %
200
1
1 %
1200
1
1 %
77
1
1 %
3000
1
1 %
350
1
1 %
750
1
1 %
4500
1
1 %
190
1
1 %
49
1
1 %
600
1
1 %
Where it says 1 %, it’s actually 0.68 % rounded upwards, which is why the total is 102 %.
Here too, the top three is unchanged. The 368 and 759 piece puzzles are puzzles from the Escape / Exit series, and the 4500 piece puzzle is actually one section of the 18 000-piece Paradise Sunset.
It wasn’t just me who did a lot of puzzles in 2020, the number of views on this blog is up 500 % from 2019, and apart from December (which is always a big puzzling month), March, April and May also have really high numbers of views. Thank you to everyone who took time to read my blog!
In the past few years, I’ve been buying more puzzles than I’ve managed to complete. It slowed down considerably in 2020, but I still acquired 150 puzzles while completing 147 (the gap is bigger if you count pieces, 125 151 pieces placed and 159 756 acquired). Since I have very limited space, this has become a problem, and in 2021 I will need to buy fewer puzzles than I can get out the door. I would like to work on some larger puzzles, but I will probably start the year doing puzzles in the 500-1500-piece range just to get some puzzles completed quickly.
Puzzler1909 