1990s – Re-marks – 1500 pieces

This puzzle was perfect for motivating me to get out of bed after my surgery. Collages are truly my happy place, and knowing this beauty was sitting on my board waiting had me up and puzzling much sooner than I thought I would be.

It was a good quality puzzle, though the loose fit sometimes was annoying to work with – moving completed sections could be quite a pain if you weren’t paying attention. Otherwise the image reproduction is lovely, though the finish is somewhat shiny. I know these things (the little problems in quality) about Re-marks puzzles, but am willing to put up with all of them because they have an excellent catalog of collage images that I want to assemble.

The image itself is great, but it isn’t going to spark a long post filled with memories of my childhood. During the 1990s I was a young wife and mother with 3 small children; by 1992 I had all of my children and spent the rest of the decade being immersed in raising them and keeping our home. Most of the things shown in this collage are things I am familiar with, but there just isn’t as much identification with any of them as is usual with these decade images. I had to really think about which smaller pictures to take so that I could talk about them.

In the end I decided that since I spent the 90s raising children I should chose one section that reminds me of each of my babies – cause I’m a mom, that’s what I do.

Our whole family enjoys the Harry Potter books and movies, but my daughter (a voracious reader her whole life) was the most taken with them. She still remembers sitting in the living room with me while I read this aloud to them. In the 2000s I was always the one who was tasked with taking her to the bookstore so she could be there at midnight when the newest book was released. I love that she’s a reader, it makes me unbelievably happy. ❤📕

Surprisingly, I had to make her stop reading many times – otherwise she would have stayed inside all day with her books. Eventually I made a bargain with her that for every hour of reading she had to go outside and play for at least 15 minutes. She hated it most of the time, but she needed fresh air and exercise too!

Ahhh, the Game Boy. My oldest son carried his Game Boy with him everywhere he went for several years. He has autism, and the lights and sounds, the tactile feeling of the buttons, and weight of the handheld game itself was always soothing for him when he became overstimulated. He is now and has always been a video game prodigy, always being better at every game than the rest of us. Patterns and repetition are comforting for many people who are neurodivergent, and video games provide both of those things – no wonder he was so exceptional at all those games – he kicked our butts whenever we played together!

It makes me smile to remember him as my cute little boy carrying his Game Boy like a security blanket everywhere he went. 😊

To infinity – and beyond! That was the rallying cry of my youngest son for quite some time, and boy were we ever sick of hearing it. He also has autism, and for quite a while only used quotes from movies to talk to us. When he was upset or angry he would say something someone from a movie said when they were upset or angry. *There was a TINY problem at school when he decided to quote The Princess Bride when he was upset. He screamed “I want my father back you son of a b*tch!” at the top of his lungs. Of course he would find the only cuss word in the whole movie. Yikes.*

We all had to be very up to date on which movies he was watching so that we could interpret what he was trying to communicate to us. Buzz Lightyear was a particular favorite of his, there were so many quotable moments. I heard a LOT of those quotes. Thank goodness he eventually starting using his own voice and thoughts to talk to us.

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This puzzle was an entertaining assembly from start to finish, if it looks like one you’d enjoy it is definitely recommended. 👍

I can’t even express how much I loved putting this one together, it was a trip down memory lane and I loved every memory and every piece that clicked together. To be honest the fit wasn’t great, but for this puzzle it was all about the image. Almost every small section brought back memories and I had the best time!

Get ready for a long post rambling on and on about the days of yesteryear and my memories of these things in the 1970’s. This puzzle is a fantastic image, and for those of us that grew up in the 70’s and 80’s this collage will bring a smile to your face. 🙂

Now if you’re a young’n, this will blow your mind; the way we used to get music much of the time was compilation albums like this one. If you couldn’t afford to buy all the albums this was a much cheaper way to get all the music you loved. No downloading songs or smartphones anywhere in sight. Times were tough! There was another way too, if you had lots of time to sit and listen to the radio with your boombox you could hit record when a favorite song came on and make yourself a mix tape! I used to do that especially around New Year’s when the stations would play the top 100 or so songs of the year. The trick was to wait until the DJ stopped talking. 😉

My parents loved Laugh-In, and watched it every week. I definitely didn’t understand all the jokes, but for a child it was perfect; lots of colors and camera movements, and skits that were very quick for our short attention spans. I loved it too, but at the time I didn’t know all the reasons why. Ruth Buzzi’s character Gladys was a favorite, as was Arte Johnson’s Tyrone. Great show!

I’m sure many readers will recognize some or all of these songs, but I am old enough to remember when they were playing on the radio – not as classics, but as new music! I used to have 45’s of My Sharona, Y.M.C.A, and I Will Survive. If only I still had them they might be worth a lot of cash! (45’s were small vinyl records with only one song [per side] that you played on a turntable)

I don’t have much recollection of Richard Scarry’s books when I was a child, but my children LOVED them when they were young. I read them to my kids a lot, and my youngest even had a rug in his room with a map of Busytown on it, he adored playing with it and lining up his cars along the streets.

This is the one of the smallest sections of the puzzle, but it holds the most memories for me. My sisters and I had this album (and 8 track), watched the television special, and knew every word and every song by heart. If you’re not familiar, it was created by Marlo Thomas and released in 1972; it promoted gender neutrality, basically saying that boys and girls could be anything they wanted regardless of their gender and achieve amazing things. It had an all star cast; Rosey Grier (former pro football player), Michael Jackson, Roberta Flack, Harry Belafonte, Mel Brooks, Dustin Hoffman, Kris Kristofferson, Diana Ross, Cicely Tyson, Alan Alda, Dionne Warwick, and many more. It was a fantastic album for kids and I can still remember all the songs and scenes more than 45 years later. 🤍

I could write a little blurb about almost every section in this puzzle, but I had to stop somewhere. The Carol Burnett Show was one of my favorites – I loved all things comedy as a child (and still do). Sesame Street was another favorite when I was very young – in fact I’m older than Sesame Street. Oh my! Today’s post was brought to you by The Letter “O”. O is for OLD LADY. 👵

I loved this puzzle more for the memories than anything else, but that doesn’t mean the assembly was bad. In fact it was quite the opposite. Even with the loose fit it was great fun with a great image, and brought back great memories!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you won’t be surprised by this – I absolutely loved this puzzle! Even though it’s 1500 pieces there was zero anxiety about starting it; it’s a collage puzzle about the 1980’s, what’s not to love? I remember every single thing shown, and even if I wasn’t a fan of The Police or never watched an episode of 21 Jump Street that doesn’t mean I didn’t love putting every single piece of this puzzle together. Many sections brought back memories that put a smile on my face, and even just looking at this picture of the puzzle makes me happy. 🙂

Since the last Re-marks puzzle I assembled had a stain over the image, I’m happy to report that this puzzle had no problems. The pieces were a good thickness and fit together well, and the reproduction had no issues other than being slightly shiny. There was only one piece shape, but it didn’t bother me much because there weren’t any large areas of one color (and most likely because I enjoyed the image so much). 1500 pieces with all one shape would normally be quite annoying for me, but it’s all relative; with a great image on the puzzle and good quality otherwise it wasn’t much of a bother at all.

My family loved The Muppet Show, and never failed to watch it every week. This was back in the time of only three tv channels – yes youngsters, you heard that right – only three! There was cable tv, but that was basically just HBO (and they didn’t make tv shows or movies, they only showed movies that had once been in the theaters). So on Saturday or Sunday nights we had only 3 choices, it definitely made deciding what to watch much easier that’s for sure! My dad loved Statler and Waldorf, mom loved Kermit, and I loved The Swedish Chef and Beaker (odd choice, I know, but I was an odd child). The show was fun and funny, and sometimes a little bit raunchy, and thinking of it brings a smile to my face.

These are two more things I loved. Spirograph kept me entertained for hours and hours and I used to make cards and gifts for my family with it when I was young. Mom used to get out her colored pencils and help me color the images in sometimes to make the “artwork” even more beautiful. Sometimes she would take a spirograph picture she really liked to work and make copies for us to color over and over.

As for Clue, we found the board game boring for the most part, but we absolutely loved the movie! Back in 1985 there weren’t DVD’s, but we did have a video cassette player and as soon as we were able to find the movie on VHS we most definitely had a copy. I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out, so I can tell you that we rented the movie and made a copy of it. 😇 The movie was so unusual with it’s many different endings, and we were a family that loved a great comedy. (How awesome were Madeline Kahn, Tim Curry, and Michael McKean? Just an awesome cast in general, and we adored this movie)

This was another great action/comedy movie, and we all loved it. I can’t see anything about this movie without saying “Hey you guuuys!” in my head, and sometimes out loud. My kids loved it too when they were younger, it’s just a great all around family movie. (Well, it was PG, so there were some not so family friendly moments, but in 1985 my sisters and I were teenagers, and I didn’t show it to my kids until they were ready 😉 )

If I were to reminisce about every section of this puzzle it would be a very, very long post indeed. There are things I would have to explain to the younger generations, and most of the explanations would draw blank stares and looks of disbelief. How in the world would you explain Max Headroom, or the popularity of the Trapper Keeper?! Ah, the 80’s. What a decade! It made for a thoroughly entertaining puzzle though. I’m giving it two pairs of Calvin Kleins, standing way, way up! 👖👖