I was so excited for this puzzle when I ordered it recently on White Mountain Puzzles website. I am always a sucker for a good collage and they are the king of collage puzzle makers (at least IMHO). This particular puzzle features shows and pop culture items from a bygone era. In fact, I told my husband when I started the puzzle that I wish we could keep the technological and scientific advances we enjoy today, but go back in almost every other way to the era represented in the puzzle. When life was much simpler, and people actually liked each other. Being a good neighbor, citizen, and a Patriot did not mean you whipped out your assault rifle and started mowing people down just because they have an ax to grind. Unfortunately we live in a very different world today, but at least I can lose myself in the puzzle — even if it’s just for a little while.

Some of the items in the puzzle bring back memories while others are a little before my time. Dagwood in the bottom right corner was a comic I always enjoyed reading in the Sunday newspaper. He was always good for a laugh or two. I also loved seeing characters from The Flinstones — one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons. I get why Dino is pictured — he’s cute and adorable, but I was scratching my head why the other representation of the show was Betty and not Fred or Wilma. Betty, while I liked her, was not the “main star” of the cartoon by any means.

The part of the image that “puzzled” me the most though was the image on the TV screen just to the left of Betty. I had to finally ask Randy what show this represented as I had no clue. I did not recall seeing it before and it actually reminds me of something I would have expected to see in the way more modern TV show, Lost. LOL Randy laughed when I asked him and said it wasn’t from a show specifically, but when the TV network shut down at the end of the night with no more programming this screen would pop up and then disappear the next morning at whatever time the first show was to air. LOL I don’t recall every seeing this one, even though I do recall a bunch of colored vertical bars going across the screen at night when the broadcast had ended.

Unfortunately my next, completion photo, is not nearly as nice as the one above. I had literally just finished the puzzle and did the mandatory puzzle rub. I then made the mistake of trying to gently lift and reposition the puzzle just a little bit in order to get a better completion photo. In the process, I must have somehow pushed something together and this happened….

I was mad…I admit it….Screw you puzzle, I said….and back in the box it went with no attempt to re-assemble the section that buckled.