This was a great puzzle, obviously. A puzzle and cats! While Schmidt has always produced great quality puzzles, I often felt that their images were a bit boring, but things have definitely improved in the past few years. Schmidt puzzles are also often a bit cheaper than Ravensburger and Heye, so good news all around.
As for the image, a wine glass near a puzzle is bad enough, but when you add kittens, it’s bound to lead to disaster. I’m surprised the puzzler has gotten this far. Curiously, the bottle looks unopened, even though there’s wine in the glass.
For my puzzle challenge, this is #17, my hobby.
Puzzler1909 
This image looks really familiar. I think Buffalo Games has released this puzzle too. It’s not on their site though so perhaps their licensing rights expired and now it is Schmidt’s turn.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think some of the licenses are geographically restricted, I know there was at least one Steve Read image that was available by Buffalo in the USA, by Schmidt in continental Europe and by Ravensburger (the UK branch) in the UK at the same time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are right and the fact some licenses are geographically restricted is something I never understood. For example, that dog unicorn puzzle. The particular image is not available at all in the USA but yet Ravensburger does have offices in the USA.
That’s interesting about the same Steve Read image being available with different puzzle companies at the same time. I had incorrectly assumed that an image could be licensed to only one company at a time.
LikeLike
Financially, the geographically restricted licenses make sense because then you can license the same license elsewhere and get payed again. Buffalo, for example, would not be interested in paying more for a worldwide licence, since they’re not active outside North America. I just want everything to be available everywhere, but that’s not how things work, unfortunately.
LikeLike
I’d like everything to be available everywhere too. I don’t fully understand how distribution works but I never understood why Buffalo didn’t pursue it (along with worldwide image licenses) so they could sell outside the USA. (From what I gather, Buffalo does not sell/ship to Canada or Mexico.) It just seems like a missed opportunity.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s impossible to know why they’ve decided to not expand outside the USA.
LikeLiked by 1 person