Another great Marino Degano image, this time a bouquet of flowers with lots of bugs.

There are references to a lot of football teams in this, and this is the first time I’ve seen a reference to Borussia Dortmund in a Marino Degano puzzle: a bee is holding up a BVB flag! On either side there are fans of AC Milan and Chelsea, and I think the Allez les Verts points to French team St. Etienne. The reds with the You’ll Never Walk Alone-banner must be from Liverpool, although the song has been taken up by many other clubs, and is always sung seven minutes before kickoff in Dortmund.

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Hippie bus and flower moonshine.

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Again, there are refrences to existing websites: cucaracha.fr is again a site by Marino Degano, in French and looks like it’s for children. Projektraumobjekt.com also exists, and it’s some sort of interior design business in Hamburg.

On the cockroach website, there was a link to website about the Historia Comica-puzzles, with lots of early sketches. Very interesting!

Unfortunately, this was again one of the worst Heyes with regard to quality. Thin cardboard and pieces that wouldn’t lie flat made it difficult to know whether a piece belonged or not. I wanted to do the edges early but had to give up on that, the quality just wasn’t good enough. The date on the bag is October, 2016.

Another Funky Zoo puzzle, one of my favourite series. These are always so much fun, and this was no exception. One thing I missed was the cleaning lady that has been present in all other Funky Zoo puzzles I’ve done. Maybe she’s on vacation, although it wouldn’t surprise me if she quit, given the working conditions 🙂

There were quite a few cats in this one 🙂

Someone’s been sent to sleep with the fishes:

As for the quality of the puzzle, I’m happy to report that it’s excellent. The date on the bag says October 2016, and I found none of the problems I’ve had with some 2015-2016 Heyes.

Another installment in Marino Degano’s Life series. As always, great fun!

A lot of fleas live on the cat, and they are trying to keep out the ticks and the mosquitoes:

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Some ticks try to get in wearing false noses to look like fleas:

The fancy part of cat, but on the right, the builders have stumbled onto an old burial ground, and all of us who have seen Poltergeist know exactly where this is heading…

The Stray Cats are playing:

After I had another less than stellar quality Heye right before I left for Dortmund, I consulted my database and found that I bought 38 (yes, really) Heye puzzles in 2016 (which is when both of my disappointing Heyes were produced). I brought some of the ones I haven’t done yet with me, and this is one of those. The date on the bag is September 2015. The pieces are indeed quite thin, but the fit is very good, and the pieces also lie flat. Given a choice, I would always like that extra mm of thickness in the pieces, but overall, this is fine.

By the way, the cat is wearing a QR code around the neck. My phone couldn’t read it off the puzzle itself, but when I read it off the poster it worked. It leads to a website by Marino Degano, where he’s shared some early versions for some of his puzzle art. There are also a couple of online jigsaw puzzles (all part of the Dog’s Life puzzle). Sadly, it hasn’t been updated since 2016.

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.

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.

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

 

This was the kind of puzzle where I loved every single piece. Every single piece! There are lots of interesting details, but overall it’s not too busy.

A snail has found a cool new house.

There are often football references in Marino Degano puzzles,  and here a group of penguins are supporting Juventus. They always wear the colours anyway 🙂

Some Very Important Penguins are having champagne.

Santa Clause is painting his igloo, but he doesn’t look too happy about it.