The Circus Comes to Town by Jan Dedman – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
I wish I could tell you that this one was fun, but it actually wasn’t – at least not for me. I’m not even sure why that is, but it’s the truth.
Mr. Bob Puzzles are very good quality, and normally bright, colorful images are exactly my pile of pieces; this image, unfortunately, was not. The quality was excellent, it just wasn’t the right puzzle for me at the time I suppose.
Usually the border isn’t where I start on a puzzle this small, but because there was a band of white around the edge the pieces were easy to find and put together.
I found the whimsy pieces a bit disappointing; they didn’t match the image at all. Australia is always one of the pieces in a Mr. Bob Puzzle, but the other whimsies were just generic forms that I’ve seen before from this brand – and they had nothing to do with the circus. I suppose you could say the teddy bear could be a prize one wins from a game at the circus midway, but otherwise none of them make sense, at least not to me.
Again, I love this brand of puzzle and have developed a wonderful friendship with the founder of the company; and even though this was a very good quality puzzle, I just wasn’t feeling it today.
It has much more to do with me than the puzzle itself.
Ruby the Red Beaked Emu by Susan Janson – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
Isn’t this an adorable and very different holiday image? I love it! Ruby the emu is looking so proud of her red beak and the fact that she’s out in front of the “sleigh”, so adorable!
This puzzle has been laying around the house here for at least a year, maybe more. However long it’s been, I’m so glad it’s finally gotten assembled, cause it’s so damn cute. Santa has on a t-shirt and some holiday trimmed shorts with sandals. So sweet. 😊
We all know how Stacey feels about Christmas puzzles and their sometimes sickly sweet cookie cutter images (🤢); this one certainly isn’t one of those, and that’s part of why it makes me so happy! It went together pretty quickly, and was entertaining and just difficult enough to be interesting. Perfect!
The whimsies aren’t overly Christmas-y, but I’ll take ’em. Love the teddy bear. 🧸
Are you feeling in the holiday spirit yet? I’m not. But maybe all these little puzzles coming up will get me there. 🧩💚
Happy Hanukkah this evening to all those who celebrate! 🕎
Beneath the Waves by Lauren Altes – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
Please forgive the wonky pictures in this one, I have no excuse other than possibly exhaustion from all the travel. This is the first of the puzzles from our recent visit to Michigan, so get ready for a week or so of beautiful (mostly) wooden puzzles assembled by me and the new additions to my puzzle posse
Still, isn’t this a bright and beautiful little puzzle? It was so nice to sit and talk while my sister-in-law made dinner and I put this colorful mini puzzle together. (I did offer to help with the cooking, but sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is stay out of someone’s way – that was the case on this particular evening.)
It didn’t take much concentration, the colors and the whimsy pieces helped to make this one pretty simple to put together – but it was still nice to work with even as easy as it was.
It seems these were just a generic set of whimsies, they didn’t really match the artwork at all. But that’s ok with me, it was still lots of fun.
The artist, Lauren Altes, also did the artwork for the puzzle that Mr. Bob Puzzles was commissioned to do for the National Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia in 2021- Look After Your. I loved her sense of humor, the colors, the composition; it made for a fantastic assembly and for such a good cause too.
I’ll have to check the rest of my Mr. Bob Puzzles here at the house and see if there are any more by this artist, I enjoy her work very much!
Burn It & Outback Footy by Sue Janson – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
I love both of these images, although I think the Outback Footy side might be a bit of a challenge in a larger piece count – there’s a lot of brown in that one. This is another of the acrylic puzzles from Mr. Bob that I was sent to try out, and I loved both of them!
I wanted to assemble and write up a post about this as soon as possible so I wouldn’t forget to tell y’all something that had completely slipped my mind. While cleaning out my old emails and reading through some of them I came across a request Mr. Bob had for me regarding these acrylic puzzles – he asked me to run them through the dishwasher! 🧼
The puzzle you see above has been through a cycle of my dishwasher, and it emerged completely unscathed! This was buried in my old lady brain, I didn’t remember it at all until I was going through my emails. Mr. Bob wanted to show that these puzzles would last a lifetime, and through whatever punishment a person could throw at it. He told me he’d put one of the puzzles through a cycle of his washing machine (for clothes) and it came through with flying colors.
When I asked him if there were any other tortures he wanted me to inflict on these little beauties – in the name of puzzle science, of course – he asked if we had a cement mixer available! 🤣
It’s too bad they don’t seem to be going forward with their acrylic line, I think they’d have been excellent puzzles. They certainly would last for more than a lifetime.
After assembling this puzzle I did suggest that if they were going to produce the acrylic puzzles that it may be better to only make shapes with the whimsy pieces and not cut the extra lines into them. You can see from the pictures above and below that the extra lines cut into them make it more difficult to see the image underneath – at least that’s how it was for these aging eyes.
It would have been better to turn these over to the “Burn It” side so you could see in the milkshake that it’s more difficult to read the words underneath. But you can still see that the extra lines distort the image. If you can’t tell from the image at the top of the page, the sign on the ice cream cart says “Burn It to Earn It” – you gotta chase it to taste it apparently. That way you can burn off some calories before you take in more. 🍦🏃♀️
I had a wonderful time trying out these puzzles – love that you get two for the price of one, and appreciate just how sturdy and long-lasting they truly are.
*And I’m a little sad that I didn’t get the chance to try one of the larger 500 piece acrylic puzzles that they were working on. Mr. Bob was going to send me one to review – that would have been an amazing puzzle to assemble!*
100 Aussie Icons by Jim Tsinganos – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
While getting posts ready for when I’d be out of commission I realized I needed a few more completed puzzles, so I took this one off the shelf and put it together quickly – while I was finishing a cup of coffee. Truly a one coffee puzzle!
I put together this same image for a review over 3.5 years ago (as a much larger 515 piece puzzle), you can see it here if you’re interested. I remember having to ask Mr. Bob who all the icons were, being an uninformed American I had absolutely no clue. It’s a great image by Jim Tsinganos, and really fun to put together – whether it’s over 500 pieces or only 40.
These are the whimsy pieces. For my friend Kazza and any Aussie readers out there I made sure to put the country the right way up this time. My apologies for getting it wrong previously. I didn’t even think about it, just turned all the pieces over so you could see the extra lines in the figures and didn’t for one moment think about making sure it was right side up! So sorry guys, please forgive an aging Yank – it won’t happen again.
My Jigsaw Journal 