the pointless weblog

These two puzzles (a 12 piece proper puzzle and a 28 card domino set) were free gifts with the Humpty Dumpty Club, a book club for children run by Hamlyn Publishing in the late 70s. I don’t know who drew them, although they’re quite similar in style to the pictures in Roger and the Elephant, which was illustrated by Lesley Smith and written by John Kershaw.

The Zoo dominoes (which aren’t really dominoes at all) were just about my favourite thing when I was a child. I think the only way they coud have been improved is if they were arranged in a spiral, and also the spiral went on and on outwards forever.

If you click on the picture below you can see them all set out along their lovely squiggly-lined glory.

The Humpty Dumpty Club had a few more gifts available, but if I had any of them they’ve been lost somewhere along the line, except for the Roger and the Elephant book. I think I had the Zoo money box from the advert below, but I can’t be sure.

I also had a few books from the club, the best of which was Tiger-Pig by John Ryan.

And that’s all I know about the Humpty Dumpty Club.

These puzzles are all from the late 70s and early 80s. For some reason when we were little we had hundreds of puzzles, even though I’m pretty sure none of us liked them that much. I suspect they all cost about 10p from school fetes.

This beautiful Chriss Foss puzzle was always my favourite.

I also remember incessently making this Return of the Jedi puzzle. We had another one too, of Luke and Han and everyone on the bridge of the stolen Imperial Shuttle, but I don’t know what happened to that.

There was also this Star Wars puzzle in the loft, but I don’t remember that one at all. It is a beautiful thing.

There was a terrifying amount of really crap 80s TV and film merchandising puzzles, too. The Muppets I can accept, and possibly Tron, but Street Hawk? It’s a disgrace. The Street Hawk puzzle really is the most lacklustre piece of merchandising possible. I wonder if they still make this sort of stuff. I expect they do.

Much better than these are the Action! Adventure! puzzles. What more could a boy want than a picture of a battle ship being blown up? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.

There were hundreds more puzzles, too. Some of the more interesting or awful ones are in the gallery below. Also in the box I found these in were some terrible “3D” animal puzzles, where the 3D aspect was that the pieces were big lumps of plastic.

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Image Gallery

(click on the images below to view them fullsize)