Category: Heye

Rocket Launch, 2020-01-13

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This was a really fun image with a banana rocket about to launch and lots of interesting details.

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Rocket Launch by Uli Oesterle, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 13th, 2020.

Kirk is canoodling with an alien as Uhura looks on in disgust. Scotty has forgotten to plug in the transporter.

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Yarn ninjas armed with knitting needles.

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Darth Vader is on babysitting duty.

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Yikes, looks like Lisa Simpson took some steroids and got into pro wrestling!

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And now for the bad news. The pieces were far too thin, so thin that the puzzle didn’t lie entirely flat. I tried to get a photo where you can see it, but this is the best I could do.

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The lesser quality was especially noticeable because I did the Funky Zoo puzzle right before, and that was fine. Below on the left a piece from the Funky Zoo puzzle and on the right a piece from this one. The difference is clear.

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It’s not yet bad enough to go on my do-not-buy-list, but it’s really annoying. The thing is, it doesn’t seem to affect all Heye puzzles. Rocket Launch is from 2016 and Australian Habitat (the Funky Zoo puzzle) is from 2018. Rocket Launch came in a triangular box and the Funky Zoo series comes in regular boxes. Not sure if that’s relevant here, but I will keep an eye on this situation.

Australian Habitat, 2020-01-10

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I felt like doing a puzzle from the Funky Zoo series and pulled one out at random. It turned out to be Australian habitat, topical in a sad way right now. I hope for much rain for Australia, and that the awful fires are soon over.

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Australian Habitat by Marino Degano, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 10th, 2020.

The puzzle is lovely, I really like this series. There are lots of fun details, as usual, although some of them start to look familiar. Not just the entrance and exit, and the fence in the background, but some people, too:

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Hello, last time I saw you you were cleaning Santa’s hut on the North Pole!
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These birds have enormous teeth!

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The World, In Progress

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The first puzzle that I started in 2020 is a 3000-piece world map from Heye. I haven’t done a world map in quite a while!

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It’s not an old map, but a modern map made in the style of old maps. The artist is Rajko Zigic, who has also done the Heye pirate map. The puzzle is from 2008, and it’s made in Germany (Heye moved production to Eastern Europe about 10 years ago). When I opened the box and spread out the pieces, I noticed a rather pungent smell, apparently from the glue used. I can’t remember ever noticing something like that before with Heye. I bought this new in 2008, so the smell was definitely from production. Anyway, in a couple of days it dissipated, so no problem, really, but strange.

Another thing I can’t recall seeing in a Heye puzzle before: pieces with one side without tab or hole. Educa still has this type of piece, but I can’t think of another major manufacturer that has these, at least not with a standard grid cut.

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With 3000-piece puzzles, I’ve usually spread out some of the pieces on pieces of cardboard to leave some room to work on the table, but this time, I decided to spread out all the pieces on the table. Pretty soon I got a piece of cardboard anyway, and I did the edges on that.

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While I really like having all the pieces on the table in front of me, that didn’t work so well with this image. After I had completed the edges and border, I wanted all the pieces within the edges to be more or less in the area they belonged, that means no random pieces. I still only have one piece of cardboard, though.

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I’ve done most of the non-map stuff, like compasses, ships and monsters, so when I get back to Dortmund I will get on with the more difficult part of the puzzle.

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New Heye Puzzles

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Heye has finally released their 2020 catalogue (the 2019 catalogue became available in November 2018), and there are some nice ones in there. I went to my local puzzle shop in Helsinki, and they already had some of the new puzzles. I got three:

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Submarine Fun by Uli Oesterle. I just realized, I already have three puzzles by Oesterle, but I’ve never done an Oesterle puzzle. Have to get on that ASAP!
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Monaco Classics by Loup. This one is a re-release.
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Another puzzle in the Life-series from my facourite, Marino Degano, to go with Dog’s Life and Cat’s Life.

There are two more puzzles that I absolutely must have, a new puzzle in the Inner Mystic series, and an adorable selfie monster from the Zozoville series:

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Happy 2000, 2019-12-27

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This is the best New Year puzzle I’ve ever seen. It was released in 1999 (as you can probably guess from the title), and I originally bought it 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I lost that puzzle (I still don’t know what happened to it), but earlier this year I bought another copy (still factory sealed). I’m not going into how much I paid, but I’m not sorry! I still loved every piece of this great puzzle, and I’m going to take better care of it this time. I wish Heye still used Jabo, he’s done some great images. I also see no reason why this puzzle shouldn’t still be in print, it would be great for any new year, not just 2000.

I did most of the bottle first, then onto the fireworks and the “Happy New Year” text.

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Happy 2000 by Jabo, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 27th, 2019.

There are lots of great details. Here are some unconventional spacecraft as well as the more familiar Enterpolice, with a pointy-eared pilot at the helm.

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Some devils are partying with fiery drinks …img_20191227_190628

… and the Rolling Bones perform.img_20191227_190636

Someone’s been abducted, but at least the aliens look nice.img_20191227_190657

The text and fireworks glow in the dark, but it’s incredibly hard to get good photos of that. This is the best I could do, the right half looks good, but it’s still blurry on the left.

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Happy New Year!

Castle of Horror, 2019-12-05

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I finally finished Castle of Horror, and, surprising no one, I loved it! I worked on this with no plan, and without anything resembling sorting, and it took me quite a while, but I enjoyed every minute.

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Castle of Horror by Loup, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 5th, 2019.

There are vampires everywhere…

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… and ghosts …

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… and witches …

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… some of whom can’t navigate very well. This is such a typical Loup detail 🙂

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This couple arriving makes me think of some many movies where clueless innocents end up in castles with vampires.

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Since this is Loup, there are of course some naughty scenes. This puzzle actually caused a bit of a stir in Finland about 10 years ago. A blogger spotted it in the toy department of a major department store in Helsinki and was horrified (“won’t someone please think of the children”). I think the image below was what set him off. Someone from the department store had to answer questions in the newspaper, but I don’t think they pulled the puzzle.

The situation only arose because sometime earlier, the department store stupidly moved all of their puzzles to the toy department, previously they had a separate section for puzzles for adults. I can just see it, “Why do we have puzzles in two locations? Puzzles are for children, anyway!”. I remember buying my 10 000-piece Garden of Earthly delights there, but sadly, it’s no longer a good place to shop for puzzles, at least if you’re over 10.

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I usually prefer to work with the image on the box rather than the poster, but I couldn’t find the box image this time (I don’t keep the triangular Heye boxes, but I cut out the image). The poster actually worked quite well when taped to my lamp 🙂

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Castle of Horror, In Progress

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I’ve been working on the Castle of Horror, and I’m enjoying it very much. Progress has been a bit slow, but I’ll get there.

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One brilliant detail is the elderly couple having their tea, completely unfazed by the mayhem going on all around them 🙂

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I watched the third season of the Crown, and it finally happened! Her Majesty is working on a puzzle while on the phone to her sister Margaret. As usual, you can’t see the image, but she appears to be working on a tray.

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Football, 2016-07-10

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This took me almost two months, must be my record for a 1000 piece puzzle 🙂 It was really difficult, Mordillo’s big nose characters are difficult to tell apart. I did this in honour of the 2016 European Championship, and ended up finishing after the tournament was over, on the day of the final. I did some other puzzles in between, of course.

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Football by Mordillo, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 10th 2016.

 

Protest!, 2017-12-30

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Protests in various languages by my favourite artist Marino Degano. This was originally released in 1994 as a 4000 piece puzzle called Pro and Contra.

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Protest!, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 30th, 2017.

There’s a bit of advertising here “Fun for hours on end – Heye Puzzle”, fighting peace protesters, and also a couple of football fans. Below on the left, a guy holds a sign saying Aux chiottes l’arbitre (To hell with the referee in French), and he’s wearing an Adidas shirt. From the colours, I thought of Bayern Munich first, but since the sign is in French, it may be a French team that I don’t know. The guy next to him is definitely a Juventus fan. Then there’s the lady holding up the Hamburg forever sign – may or may not be football-related.

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An elephant holds up a sign that says “You have to be completely insane to do a puzzle like this” in German 🙂

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