Thanks to Mistplay for sponsoring this video! Download the app for free here: mistplay.com/puzzles and use my code PUZZLES50 inside the app for 50 extra points! Code expires 6/30/24. Limited quantities available & valid for new users only. One more note about this app - it will encourage you to spend money in the games to earn bigger rewards. This is not necessary and you can still earn rewards by playing for free.
This is true for anyone wondering. I downloaded Mistplay from the last time they sponsored Karen, and they're legitimate. You can earn the units completely free by simply playing games, and you don't have to spend money! I earned $35 in about a week by just casually playing different games to level 5 and then deleting them. I don't play as much now, but I did fall in love with ONE mobile game from my time doing it (Love & Pies) and I still play that for fun! Anyway if you're looking for a few extra bucks for something like puzzles, I second this sponsor and app.
The pink puzzle doesn’t match the photo on the box. Would be interesting to know why. I don’t think it’s just a print error. It might have been meant to be pink.
It could also be a situation where it would have cost way too much to scrap the pink ones and replace them so they went with what they had. I also believe during that time there was a cardboard shortage in both the USA and Britain so whatever cardboard they had, it had to be used wisely.
To me, no detail in the pink version makes me think something else. Take any photo and photoshop it to a single color and there is still a sign of detail throughout the image. The non pink images had detail in some areas but not others. I think they swapped images entirely myself.
@@timellington4887 Nah, you can see this picture in PS it need to be in CYMK and turn of yellow and black channel to get this pink, they definetly run out of ink 😂
Guys, this is such a weird coincidence. Right after I finished and uploaded this video, I was looking at photos of the Awful Optic and Red Eye puzzles because someone left a comment about them on a different video, and I realized those two puzzles also used the same die cut! Even though they were released by a company called Bandwagon and not by American Publishing. I have both puzzles, so I think I’ll have to solve them in another video and then do a full comparison between all of them. If anyone knows of any other vintage puzzles using this same die cut, please let me know.
Since you mentioned they changed the die cut a couple years later, could the second company have purchased the old ones? Or maybe The first company had a side hustle cutting puzzles for another company?
Man, these companies are hard to track down. This is compounded by the fact that there is a new company in 1992 called American Publishing Corp. At any rate, American Publishing was in Waltham/Waterville, MA (they are only 3 miles apart, so likely they just had multiple departments). They were acquired by what is now known as Bits and Pieces. Bandwagon Manufacturing, Inc was based in Boston MA, only about 12 miles away, founded around 1950. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they used the exact same equipment over the same time period.
I'll bet one of the two companies subcontracted the print run to the other one (or both subbed the printing out to the same 3rd company). The change to the 1968 cut may mean that American changed printing subs that year.
My only thought is that whatever happened (ink ran out, printer was set incorrectly, cartridges loaded incorrectly) that they must have accidentally printed SO many incorrectly that they couldn't afford to remake the product and just decided nobody would care/notice
Which Sherlock Holmes NEVER wore in any of the original stories. The deerstalker is not mentioned even. This is like "Beam me up Scotty" (Star Trek), or "Play it again Sam" (Casablanca) as something that just never happened.
In the height of the space race, a mole in the printing company, a forgotten Cold War spy, decided to leave his own mark on history. In a bold move to signal a secret moon alliance, he switched the color plates, resulting in pink puzzles. The message? The moon is neutral territory, and it's dressing for the peace party of the century.
I suspect that the reason why the cuts look the same but are actually a bit off, is that during the manufacturing process the circular cuts are made separately from the radial cuts. This would also explain why the radial cuts needed to be made a little bit longer than they ought to be, in order to accomodate for the puzzle shifting between the two cuts.
@@KarenPuzzles Does that mean you could extract an entire ring from one puzzle and it would fit into one of the others? Are the centre pieces interchangeable?
The pink version has the best detail and if it is an error all the better. If you find printing errors with money or postage stamps, they can be worth some serious money. Nice video,Karen.
I don’t think any other explanation is needed other than it was the 60s. A psychedelic moon may not have been the intent but once it happened the production team was like, “Man, a pink moon, how cool, let’s keep it.”
1967: "Boss, we made a mistake, half of the Pzzles are now printed in pink" "Ah, don't matter, we're gonna sell them anyway, nobody is ever gonna notice." 2024: "Why are some Puzzles pink?" Seriously, the images are truely different, it's not just a printingmistake.
I don't care too much about solving puzzles, but I watch all your videos because you are the most enjoyable and sympathetic person I have ever seen. Your happiness doing what you do is contagious.
Since I was alive in 1966/67 (LOL UGH, aging myself here), my best guess about the pink moon puzzle would be - they loved bright colors back then. I mean, everything was bright. Neon colors were the rage. Maybe that's why? Or, I like your idea of it being one guy in the room and he just said, "Eh, let's just sell them."
I wish I lived in the USA in the 60s, 70s etc and loved puzzles, especially solid color ones, so that now I could give all of them to you! The passion you have for vintage puzzles is super fascinating and I absolutely adore that you post about it too
I think the strategies and resources for solving puzzles have evolved since that puzzle was released. Until I discovered your videos, I had no idea how fast puzzles could be completed! One of the positives that the internet has brought us is sharing tips and tricks. Thanks for sharing your moon puzzles!
I don't think it was a mistake since they used a different photo for all the pink ones. All the brown ones have those three distinct craters, all the pink ones show a side of the moon that has a lot more craters. I think they just printed a second version, and printing only with one color is cheaper than with two. In the closeups it looks like the brown is made up of red and black, not magenta and black, so they didn't just forget or run out of black, it would be red then instead of magenta. When you are not printing regular full-color pictures, you can use whatever colors (spot colors) you like - in this case red instead of magenta. Still weird that they didn't change the preview picture though! Probably also to save money? Even today there are puzzles where the art on the box is not exactly the same as on the puzzle for no obvious reason (for example Coppenrath's Sherlock Holmes puzzle).
I was thinking the pink was a completely different image as well. I couldn't see enough similarities between the two, even accounting for the contrast differences.
100% a different image. Maybe they printed those different images as the same product so the mystery would keep people buying it and talking about it??
For the varying die-cuts, they could have been printing 4 or 6 puzzles "per sheet" with multiple dies that might have started or been intended to be "identical" but got warped over time with usage, or dented up a little bit even before install. If they're printing circles it seems way more economical to print many at once and utilize the space between the puzzles instead of having 22% of a square sheet be off-cuts.
Aha! That makes sense, it was pretty clear to me that they were very different pictures. And I remember hearing that the far side of the moon has a bunch more craters because of course, the meteors and stuff come from the space side, not the earth side.
That actually makes so much sense. To me, this feels like a marketing gimmick. All of the boxes are the same, but you'll receive either the normal moon image or the special magenta far side of the moon image. The space race was huge in pop culture in the 60s, and we only had access to images of the far side of the moon for a year or two at that point. Not sure why they would have chosen magenta, but as others have pointed out, it would be cheaper to print with one color and bright colors were trendy in the 60s.
Lol, he was mistaken. The pink puzzle shows a small portion of the near face of the moon. At 15:23: the 'Sea' (flat, uncratered area) along the right side is Mare Nubium. Tycho is the large crater with prominent central peak just to the left of center. The prominent pair of craters towards the edge at about the 5:00 position are Werner and Aliacensis. The other puzzle shows a portion of Mare Imbrium. At 10:39 Aristillus, Autolycus, and Archimedes are the triangle of craters at upper-left. The peninsula at bottom center is Laplace Promontory.
@@vanhouten64 I'm impressed by that amount of knowledge of the moon's features! I still think it might have been a marketing gimmick, but it's much less impressive than it would have been with the far side of the moon lol
This makes me wanna start looking for puzzles in the little events in my area where people sell all their vintage stuff. I actually know what to look for now when it comes to puzzles!
@evapunk522 I get a lot of great puzzles at thrift shops. Most are complete, or have "missing 1 piece" written on the box. It is fun to find treasures!
For the other proof of completion, I was thinking maybe people made rubbings of the finished puzzle. Like laying paper over it and then scribbling over it with a crayon.
I love your vintage obsession - it makes for such enjoyable videos! I was thinking, the magenta moon puzzle might be like that because of fading from light exposure. I feel like I’ve seen posters from the 60s-70s that were red and maroon, but faded to pink.
What a fun video! So interesting to hear that the pink was easier than the original version! Also, I won’t take any credit, but I feel so heard - thank you for changing the audio when you place the pieces. Rather than the loud “tok tok” ka-thunking of pieces down, you changed it to placing and pushing it down. Feels so much calmer and less percussive to watch 😊 Thanks again for this vid, Karen!
Moon! I don't know what happened there, but if i was boss in that puzzle factory, I would be like "You know what? I actually like pink way more! " 😅 I want to believe, their boss also was pink lover like me😂
When I used to commission printing (20+ years ago, just before we could get digital printing easily and cheaply), a one colour print was always cheaper than four colour printing. Goes through the press once, rather than four times...
And I suspect the not-pink moon is actually a two-color job, perhaps magenta and black, or magenta and a match color. Many print jobs in those days were two-color, using black and a match color.
Okay here is another spin, back in 1967, no one really knew what color the moon was, they used to tell us it was made of green cheese... So.... why not pink cotton candy.
Loved this video. The magenta reminds me so much of my first job, which was on a puzzle magazine. We only used black, magenta and cyan, and not overlapping, in order to make printing easier.
😊 I like the misprint copy. As far as the times go, people seem to be getting faster. You are a world class puzzler. Most people don't have a refined stratagy or the experience that you do. The numbers may have been accurate at the time. I haven't timed myself but I'm sure that I've never completed a 500 piece puzzle in under an hour. You have. I'm probably closer to several hours. Maybe I'll try it some time. Thanks for the great content.
I wonder if the reason the pieces don’t swap from puzzle to puzzle even with the same cut is that maybe they weren’t cut all in one go? Like maybe the moon puzzle was cut horizontally first and then vertically? That would also explain the weird extended nubs of lines!
Their was a blood moon (pink moon) in april 1967. So since the copies/pictures look different, and the pink ones doesn't seem to have tons of them, my bet is that the printing was not a mistake.
@KarenPuzzles True. It would have made sense since, in my theory, they went all the way into changing the design and the color of the puzzle, even changing the color of the box, but not the labeling. Maybe it is a marketing strategy, mystery type box? 🤔 🤣🤷🏻♀️
Maybe they meant to release it as a special pink moon version, but then someone screwed up and the two sets of boxes got mixed up. They couldn’t be bothered to open every single one to figure out which was pink, so they just sold them as they were.
Thanks for your content! My wife and I and 2 daughters did our first puzzle competition. Unfortunately, my grandson was invited to a birthday party so we were forced from family to adult class. This was the 2nd annual Roseville Raiders, MN puzzle competition. Great time.
Moon…I have a vintage jigsaw that I thought I had lost and so hunted out on the internet, only to find my original copy years later. I did them both side by side and it’s the same exact image with totally different cuts. One was produced in England and one in Ireland. Sadly my original that was my mums and I appropriated has 2 pieces missing. It’s still interesting to compare them though as the wording and info layout on each box is slightly different too.
I live in a small village in Norway, some weeks ago I was looking at puzzles in my local bookstore, and they had one of your puzzles. One of those on the shelf behind you. I was a bit astonished 😯. But I reckon they are in many countries around the globe.
I have a set of CMYK playing cards and immediately recognized the colour of the M suit :) At least for those, they made a deliberate choice to use single colours.
The puzzle images ARE different!! Take a look at 8:24 at the brown puzzle. It's moon surface is shaded in the exact same way as all of the box examples. Now compare it with the pink. It doesn't match! The texture, the lights and shadows, even the distinct 3 craters on the brown- none of it matches! It's not the same puzzle with different ink printing ... It's a different Moonshot puzzle all together!! The question is why did they package it in the wrong boxes with the wrong example image? And if this is true, is there a RARE version with the right package and image out there?!?
The pink moon does indeed look like its a completely different image. I took an embarrassing amount of time looking at the side by side and comparing topographic points of interest. In my (very) unscientific opinion, they aren't the same image. Like if you took the two photos into photoshop, lined the puzzle cut up exactly, turned the opacity for each layer down to 50%, they likely won't create a perfect match image between the two puzzles. Am i that much of a nerd to do that myself? Quite possibly. If you see an edit with my findings, youll know 😉
Yes, I got an email from someone who matched up both images to a picture of the moon and they are from different parts of the moon. It just gets stranger and stranger...
My 3yr old and I watched this video together and she says the red ones are Mars and the Pink one is a Mars Moon 😂 We love your videos and she has been requesting each night to "watch the puzzle doing princess" 🥰 she loves to fall asleep to watching your videos
Honestly, that pink moon puzzle is just so much more pretty than the darker one? If I was getting one, I'd absolutely want the pink version. The only strange thing is that they didn't promote it at all, so it probably has to be a printer mistake that no one cared/dared to admit?
17:19 They aren't the same image. The dark red image on the left shows part of Mare Imbrium in the northern hemisphere, the pink image on the right shows part of Mare Nubium and the cratered region south of it in the southern hemisphere. Totally different parts of the moon. (BTW how did you manage to align a circular image so close to the north/south direction? I totally expected to have to rotate them in my mind to find a fit on the map but nope - almost perfect) So not only did they run out of ink, they also lost the image. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser ...
@@amandar283There are a lot of craters in that image, but yes, Tycho is one of them and almost in the center (the one with the prominent central peak).
The lighter teal box has lighter red pieces. It looks like they ran out of darkening agent! LOL XD BTW! I'm obsessed with your content, Karen! Especially with the episodes where you have your Sherlock hat on :D
Maybe the pink puzzle was a promotional advertising run for a company, like Mary Kay, or some other company using pink branding. As for proof of completion, film cameras and Polaroid cameras were somewhat common then, as were mail-in promotions. All we had was snail mail and getting stuff in the mail was extra fun, especially for kids. Many toys had mail-in promotions, I joined the Gi-Joe club in the early 1970s by mail, still have the certificate.
I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the outlines featured in the video. How long did it take to reproduce them? With DIFFERENT COLORS for the lines cut. For the weird color puzzles being sold: maybe the quality control worker was color blind. 🌒
The two puzzles are showing different regions of the moon entirely. The one with the big flat region represents maybe a 1/20th truncation of the full moon. Likely because the craters on the moon are quite small compared to its apparent diameter - showing only a small circular section of the moon would make those craters pop more.
Maybe during a production run multiple inks were being mixed and spayed and a spray nozzle for some pigments became clogged. The QC person decided to let it slide because they were on a deadline or the materials cost to re-do was not feasible.
I dont think its a printing issue... the images are not the same. I just stared way too long at them side by side at 17:22 - they are different images.
The brown one is from the front of the moon and the pink one is from the backside (the dark side) of the moon Could this be some kind of "If you're lucky then you'll have bought the special secret version of this puzzle"?
Imagine the following conversation at the factory: Employee 1: The cutter is ready, the image is loaded and we have begun printing the first layer. Employee 2: Sorry I'm late! Here's the new image for the Moon puzzle Employee 1: What do you mean, "new image"? Employee 2: Didn't you get the memo? The design department sent the dark side of the Moon by accident. This one is-.... Wait, why is the printer already working? Employee 1: [panic noises while trying to cancel the printing process] Printer: "I can smell your fear, puny human!! I shall deliver way too many copies before I adhere to your command!! Muahahaha" * A little time and many missprints later * Employee 1: ... I'm going to get fired. Employee 2: Hey, don't worry, it's not that bad! At least you only wasted 1 layer of ink. And you know how sometimes people love missprints because they are rare? I bet these will be very popular! Employee 1: It's almost half of the production. Will that still be considered "rare"?? Employee 2: Buddy, I'm just trying to save your job here. Come on, let's box them up before the boss sees them
I used to run a 4 color printing press. The colors are ran in separate passes through the press. Looks like the Pink ones only made it through one pass in magenta. Quality control didn't catch it.
Because I’m a broken person, anytime I hear “moon shot,” the next few lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” play in my head… “Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, Punk Rock…”
OK so I actually used to work in Waltham, down the street from where American Publishing once was. It's in the Watch Factory building, which has since split into different apartments and businesses (it was originally America's first big watchmaking town, and there is now a museum about Watch City). The building was sold in 1961 to the First Republic Corporation of America. Also funny, we're talking about moon puzzles and this was on Crescent St. My theory is that the diehard fans of the watch factory were so mad that the building was sold that they stole as much ink as they could to shutter the publisher. Unfortunately, they missed some of it, mostly a big box of magenta, so the publishers just had to make do.
I think they were planning to do 6 different views of the moon in different colors, but didnt get enough sales of the first two angles and colors to justify completing the project. Or, they had 3 different factories assigned to 2 colors each, then 2 of those factories were liquidated suddenly for some reason. OR there were two factories who both got a series of moon surface images and possible ink colors during prototyping and there was a miscommunication on which image and color was the final version. I would hang the pink one on my wall.
April's full moons are named "Pink Moon" in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe that has something to do with this color difference. I spotted an American Publishing puzzle on Amazon priced at $6,389.75 with $41.98 shipping!!! It was the "Clown Blanc" 551 piece puzzle. (1984). Loving your videos. ❤ 😊 🧩
I would have guessed that the pink puzzle was exposed to sunlight for a long period of time to cause fading, but there's two reasons that theory fails. The first is-red pigment is the one that fades the fastest in UV, so magenta would have gone first, not last. The second is-you have found so many examples that show very similar fading so it is unlikely they befell the same fate. So.. now my theory is that, rather than having run out of cyan and yellow ink (how disorganized do you need to be to manage that?) I think that the cyan and yellow offset plates were damaged. These plates have to be created through a photographic/emulsive/etch process, so they would not have been easy to replace. if they got damaged in the printing process, maybe they just kept on printing with magenta only.
My first guess would have been that due to storage conditions the pink ones sun faded, but the lack of dots at all on the second one makes me think the mistake didn’t get caught fast enough that it would have been too much of a loss not to sell the pink printing ones. Honestly I like the pink one better 💅🏻
As far as the time it states for working a puzzles, they are talking about normal experts. Your more than that. Your one of the fastest puzzlers in the world, don't forget that bet of information! LVU
At that time 4 colors offset printers were very rare. Most part of machines had to print one color at a time, then wash the machine and use another color, and so on. Usually the 1st color is magenta. Probably they found a forgotten batch of puzzles printed only in magenta after printing the other 3 colors (cyan, yellow and black) and wouldn't worth print it again and then decided to sell it as it was, in magenta only.
my guess on the color difference is that the pink puzzle was stored in less than ideal conditions, which might account for the fading of the box as well as the discoloration of the puzzle pieces.
Idk...I don't think that is the case because from the photos you can see the pink puzzle coming in the dark boxes too. To me it looks more like printing error. That they run out the other inks or forgot to run then through more than once, since back then you could not print more than one color at the time.
Have the pink ones just been left out in the sun, or a brightly lit room? It look like that kind of colour fade you get when some of the inks used are more light stable than others.
I can only assume back in the day, nearly 60 years ago. The dies were probably made more manually, thats why the pieces don't interlink between puzzles. (moon)
They used a different photo to create the pink puzzle - the craters don't match. They all use the same die but they were cut manually back then so regarding 24:12 I wouldn't be surprised to find some that are rotated 90° or 270°.
Could the pink version have been a test release, to check the complexity, but then they choose another photo. And for some reason (stock liquidation) the pink ones got released too?
My over the moon theory (and now supported by other things you found out): this was produced off site, possibly by another company. American Publishing either didn't know, or didn't care, that many incorrect ones were produced and said "we have the stock, let's out it out there!"
Thanks to Mistplay for sponsoring this video! Download the app for free here: mistplay.com/puzzles and use my code PUZZLES50 inside the app for 50 extra points! Code expires 6/30/24. Limited quantities available & valid for new users only.
One more note about this app - it will encourage you to spend money in the games to earn bigger rewards. This is not necessary and you can still earn rewards by playing for free.
I clicked on your link but it’s not available in my country. :-(
This is true for anyone wondering. I downloaded Mistplay from the last time they sponsored Karen, and they're legitimate. You can earn the units completely free by simply playing games, and you don't have to spend money! I earned $35 in about a week by just casually playing different games to level 5 and then deleting them. I don't play as much now, but I did fall in love with ONE mobile game from my time doing it (Love & Pies) and I still play that for fun!
Anyway if you're looking for a few extra bucks for something like puzzles, I second this sponsor and app.
@@icturner23same here :(
The pink puzzle doesn’t match the photo on the box. Would be interesting to know why. I don’t think it’s just a print error. It might have been meant to be pink.
It definitely strikes me as a situation like: "We ran out of ink!" "I don't care, run it with the ink we have, we have shipping quotes to make."
It could also be a situation where it would have cost way too much to scrap the pink ones and replace them so they went with what they had. I also believe during that time there was a cardboard shortage in both the USA and Britain so whatever cardboard they had, it had to be used wisely.
To me, no detail in the pink version makes me think something else. Take any photo and photoshop it to a single color and there is still a sign of detail throughout the image. The non pink images had detail in some areas but not others. I think they swapped images entirely myself.
Are we doing puzzle conspiracy theories now? 😅
Thought exactly the same. Even the box had a lighter color and the impresion look like that for the lack of yellow ink 😂
@@timellington4887 Nah, you can see this picture in PS it need to be in CYMK and turn of yellow and black channel to get this pink, they definetly run out of ink 😂
Guys, this is such a weird coincidence. Right after I finished and uploaded this video, I was looking at photos of the Awful Optic and Red Eye puzzles because someone left a comment about them on a different video, and I realized those two puzzles also used the same die cut! Even though they were released by a company called Bandwagon and not by American Publishing. I have both puzzles, so I think I’ll have to solve them in another video and then do a full comparison between all of them. If anyone knows of any other vintage puzzles using this same die cut, please let me know.
Since you mentioned they changed the die cut a couple years later, could the second company have purchased the old ones? Or maybe The first company had a side hustle cutting puzzles for another company?
Looking forward to that! 🧩
Man, these companies are hard to track down. This is compounded by the fact that there is a new company in 1992 called American Publishing Corp. At any rate, American Publishing was in Waltham/Waterville, MA (they are only 3 miles apart, so likely they just had multiple departments). They were acquired by what is now known as Bits and Pieces. Bandwagon Manufacturing, Inc was based in Boston MA, only about 12 miles away, founded around 1950. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they used the exact same equipment over the same time period.
I'll bet one of the two companies subcontracted the print run to the other one (or both subbed the printing out to the same 3rd company). The change to the 1968 cut may mean that American changed printing subs that year.
My only thought is that whatever happened (ink ran out, printer was set incorrectly, cartridges loaded incorrectly) that they must have accidentally printed SO many incorrectly that they couldn't afford to remake the product and just decided nobody would care/notice
I also think they evaluated the damage, decided that the wrong puzzle still looked cute and wouldn't be badly received, so they went with it.
My guess is that they printed The Moon Shot puzzle with the colors or settings for the Purple Passion puzzle.
Maybe there were also blue versions of the puzzle out there, but you'd only find one ... once in a blue moon 😉
Love it when you get the Sherlock Holmes hat out.
I love a good puzzle mystery.
Which Sherlock Holmes NEVER wore in any of the original stories. The deerstalker is not mentioned even. This is like "Beam me up Scotty" (Star Trek), or "Play it again Sam" (Casablanca) as something that just never happened.
@@IGDZILLAgo away
@@IGDZILLA Every party has a pooper...
In the height of the space race, a mole in the printing company, a forgotten Cold War spy, decided to leave his own mark on history. In a bold move to signal a secret moon alliance, he switched the color plates, resulting in pink puzzles. The message? The moon is neutral territory, and it's dressing for the peace party of the century.
I suspect that the reason why the cuts look the same but are actually a bit off, is that during the manufacturing process the circular cuts are made separately from the radial cuts. This would also explain why the radial cuts needed to be made a little bit longer than they ought to be, in order to accomodate for the puzzle shifting between the two cuts.
That's a great point that I didn't think of. I think you're right.
@@KarenPuzzles Does that mean you could extract an entire ring from one puzzle and it would fit into one of the others? Are the centre pieces interchangeable?
The pink version has the best detail and if it is an error all the better. If you find printing errors with money or postage stamps, they can be worth some serious money. Nice video,Karen.
0:27 BARBIE’S DREAM MOON is simply the best! All of us are going to get Pink Boiler Suits.
I don’t think any other explanation is needed other than it was the 60s. A psychedelic moon may not have been the intent but once it happened the production team was like, “Man, a pink moon, how cool, let’s keep it.”
"Man, why didn't we think of that to begin with!"
1967: "Boss, we made a mistake, half of the Pzzles are now printed in pink" "Ah, don't matter, we're gonna sell them anyway, nobody is ever gonna notice."
2024: "Why are some Puzzles pink?"
Seriously, the images are truely different, it's not just a printingmistake.
I watched the Pink Panther movie last night, so with Pink Panther on the brain, it was one of his antics. Makes sense, since he was around in the 60s.
We need a vintage puzzle museum. That would be so cool!
Yes, we are looking at you, @Karenpuzzles ! 😂
I don't care too much about solving puzzles, but I watch all your videos because you are the most enjoyable and sympathetic person I have ever seen. Your happiness doing what you do is contagious.
Since I was alive in 1966/67 (LOL UGH, aging myself here), my best guess about the pink moon puzzle would be - they loved bright colors back then. I mean, everything was bright. Neon colors were the rage. Maybe that's why? Or, I like your idea of it being one guy in the room and he just said, "Eh, let's just sell them."
Age is just a number and random pains 😂
What you say is absolutely possible, but then the mystery becomes why they didn't print ALL of the run as a pink moon.
Love the "mystery puzzles" and when you get your detective hat out! Please bring us more of that. And more of your sister Katie!! ❤❤❤
4:15 omg I'm getting called out! I'm doing my daily Flow puzzles while watching/listening! 🤯
I wish I lived in the USA in the 60s, 70s etc and loved puzzles, especially solid color ones, so that now I could give all of them to you!
The passion you have for vintage puzzles is super fascinating and I absolutely adore that you post about it too
Me too and I dont even do puzzles. I like vintage history of anything.
I think the strategies and resources for solving puzzles have evolved since that puzzle was released. Until I discovered your videos, I had no idea how fast puzzles could be completed! One of the positives that the internet has brought us is sharing tips and tricks. Thanks for sharing your moon puzzles!
I don't think it was a mistake since they used a different photo for all the pink ones. All the brown ones have those three distinct craters, all the pink ones show a side of the moon that has a lot more craters. I think they just printed a second version, and printing only with one color is cheaper than with two. In the closeups it looks like the brown is made up of red and black, not magenta and black, so they didn't just forget or run out of black, it would be red then instead of magenta. When you are not printing regular full-color pictures, you can use whatever colors (spot colors) you like - in this case red instead of magenta.
Still weird that they didn't change the preview picture though! Probably also to save money? Even today there are puzzles where the art on the box is not exactly the same as on the puzzle for no obvious reason (for example Coppenrath's Sherlock Holmes puzzle).
I was thinking the pink was a completely different image as well. I couldn't see enough similarities between the two, even accounting for the contrast differences.
100% a different image. Maybe they printed those different images as the same product so the mystery would keep people buying it and talking about it??
For the varying die-cuts, they could have been printing 4 or 6 puzzles "per sheet" with multiple dies that might have started or been intended to be "identical" but got warped over time with usage, or dented up a little bit even before install. If they're printing circles it seems way more economical to print many at once and utilize the space between the puzzles instead of having 22% of a square sheet be off-cuts.
The husband points out that the pink one is an image of the Back Side of the Moon. :D which is kinda cool. I love the pink.
Aha! That makes sense, it was pretty clear to me that they were very different pictures. And I remember hearing that the far side of the moon has a bunch more craters because of course, the meteors and stuff come from the space side, not the earth side.
That actually makes so much sense. To me, this feels like a marketing gimmick. All of the boxes are the same, but you'll receive either the normal moon image or the special magenta far side of the moon image. The space race was huge in pop culture in the 60s, and we only had access to images of the far side of the moon for a year or two at that point. Not sure why they would have chosen magenta, but as others have pointed out, it would be cheaper to print with one color and bright colors were trendy in the 60s.
Lol, he was mistaken. The pink puzzle shows a small portion of the near face of the moon. At 15:23: the 'Sea' (flat, uncratered area) along the right side is Mare Nubium. Tycho is the large crater with prominent central peak just to the left of center. The prominent pair of craters towards the edge at about the 5:00 position are Werner and Aliacensis.
The other puzzle shows a portion of Mare Imbrium. At 10:39 Aristillus, Autolycus, and Archimedes are the triangle of craters at upper-left. The peninsula at bottom center is Laplace Promontory.
@@vanhouten64 I'm impressed by that amount of knowledge of the moon's features! I still think it might have been a marketing gimmick, but it's much less impressive than it would have been with the far side of the moon lol
@@DeannaDoomosaurhow could it be a marketing gimmick when nothing about the marketing alludes to it?
The misprint is a puzzle in itself =P
Love you, Karen. Keep up the amazing content !
Love your videos! I just found my first Eaton puzzle at the thrift store this week! I think I've found my new obsession lol
Love it! Which one did you get?
@@KarenPuzzles Nuts! (1984)
@@jessicablackI directly thought of the movie The Nut Job (2014) 😅
This makes me wanna start looking for puzzles in the little events in my area where people sell all their vintage stuff. I actually know what to look for now when it comes to puzzles!
@evapunk522 I get a lot of great puzzles at thrift shops. Most are complete, or have "missing 1 piece" written on the box. It is fun to find treasures!
Awesome, i found the Moonshot to be the coolest puzzle in last weeks collection video. Glad to see it so fast!
For the other proof of completion, I was thinking maybe people made rubbings of the finished puzzle. Like laying paper over it and then scribbling over it with a crayon.
That sounds way easier than trying to trace every piece!
The pink is honestly so pretty though
I know, I really like it! I wish they had designed a special edition of the box too 😂
And in the 70's pink was definitely in fashion :)
They used up all their other dot colors on the purple passion puzzles.
Occam‘s razor… it was that one guy who messed up and said I’m not fixing it so ship it!
I think it’s pretty lol
I love your vintage obsession - it makes for such enjoyable videos! I was thinking, the magenta moon puzzle might be like that because of fading from light exposure. I feel like I’ve seen posters from the 60s-70s that were red and maroon, but faded to pink.
I find your YT channel strangely soothing, keep it up! 😃
What a fun video! So interesting to hear that the pink was easier than the original version! Also, I won’t take any credit, but I feel so heard - thank you for changing the audio when you place the pieces. Rather than the loud “tok tok” ka-thunking of pieces down, you changed it to placing and pushing it down. Feels so much calmer and less percussive to watch 😊 Thanks again for this vid, Karen!
great NASA shirt! love the space cameo!! :)
9:36 definitely a good marketing tactic to keep people coming back!
I think even with only 200+ pieces , it still would have taken me more than the average time of 3 hours printed on the side of the can. 🤣
That pink and brown images are most definitely not the same image.
Moon!
I don't know what happened there, but if i was boss in that puzzle factory, I would be like "You know what? I actually like pink way more! " 😅
I want to believe, their boss also was pink lover like me😂
When I used to commission printing (20+ years ago, just before we could get digital printing easily and cheaply), a one colour print was always cheaper than four colour printing. Goes through the press once, rather than four times...
And I suspect the not-pink moon is actually a two-color job, perhaps magenta and black, or magenta and a match color. Many print jobs in those days were two-color, using black and a match color.
Okay here is another spin, back in 1967, no one really knew what color the moon was, they used to tell us it was made of green cheese... So.... why not pink cotton candy.
Loved this video. The magenta reminds me so much of my first job, which was on a puzzle magazine. We only used black, magenta and cyan, and not overlapping, in order to make printing easier.
😊 I like the misprint copy.
As far as the times go, people seem to be getting faster. You are a world class puzzler. Most people don't have a refined stratagy or the experience that you do. The numbers may have been accurate at the time.
I haven't timed myself but I'm sure that I've never completed a 500 piece puzzle in under an hour. You have. I'm probably closer to several hours. Maybe I'll try it some time.
Thanks for the great content.
I wonder if the reason the pieces don’t swap from puzzle to puzzle even with the same cut is that maybe they weren’t cut all in one go? Like maybe the moon puzzle was cut horizontally first and then vertically? That would also explain the weird extended nubs of lines!
Their was a blood moon (pink moon) in april 1967.
So since the copies/pictures look different, and the pink ones doesn't seem to have tons of them, my bet is that the printing was not a mistake.
Interesting! I would think they would have marked that on the box though, even if it was just a special edition sticker or something similar.
@KarenPuzzles True. It would have made sense since, in my theory, they went all the way into changing the design and the color of the puzzle, even changing the color of the box, but not the labeling. Maybe it is a marketing strategy, mystery type box? 🤔 🤣🤷🏻♀️
Maybe they meant to release it as a special pink moon version, but then someone screwed up and the two sets of boxes got mixed up. They couldn’t be bothered to open every single one to figure out which was pink, so they just sold them as they were.
Hey Karen! I’m loving the videos so far this year 😊 were you planning to do a recap video from puzzles from 2023?
I recommend this app for my 2 nieces and 1 nephew (Dakota, December and Daisy). Everyone including myself love jigsaw puzzles. Love the piece shapes!
Wow you put so much work into your videos! Moon!
We guess that someone had "pink eye". Love you're video's Karen and just subscribed. Keep posting!!!
Thanks for your content! My wife and I and 2 daughters did our first puzzle competition. Unfortunately, my grandson was invited to a birthday party so we were forced from family to adult class. This was the 2nd annual Roseville Raiders, MN puzzle competition. Great time.
Moon…I have a vintage jigsaw that I thought I had lost and so hunted out on the internet, only to find my original copy years later. I did them both side by side and it’s the same exact image with totally different cuts. One was produced in England and one in Ireland. Sadly my original that was my mums and I appropriated has 2 pieces missing. It’s still interesting to compare them though as the wording and info layout on each box is slightly different too.
If you look at 17:18, you can see they are totally different photographs.
I live in a small village in Norway, some weeks ago I was looking at puzzles in my local bookstore, and they had one of your puzzles. One of those on the shelf behind you. I was a bit astonished 😯. But I reckon they are in many countries around the globe.
Yes, Ravensburger sells their puzzles all over the world. I'm so happy it made it to you in Norway!
17:51 - The pink puzzle's image appears to be *stretched* ! (note the *oval* crater just 'northeast' of the center !)
The pink 'This is fine' meme took me out 😭
I loved that bit too!
I have a set of CMYK playing cards and immediately recognized the colour of the M suit :) At least for those, they made a deliberate choice to use single colours.
The puzzle images ARE different!! Take a look at 8:24 at the brown puzzle. It's moon surface is shaded in the exact same way as all of the box examples. Now compare it with the pink. It doesn't match! The texture, the lights and shadows, even the distinct 3 craters on the brown- none of it matches! It's not the same puzzle with different ink printing ... It's a different Moonshot puzzle all together!! The question is why did they package it in the wrong boxes with the wrong example image? And if this is true, is there a RARE version with the right package and image out there?!?
Omg! These puzzles are way older than you...I was around in 1967, remember seeing the moon landing...holy cow! Getting old!
The pink moon does indeed look like its a completely different image. I took an embarrassing amount of time looking at the side by side and comparing topographic points of interest. In my (very) unscientific opinion, they aren't the same image. Like if you took the two photos into photoshop, lined the puzzle cut up exactly, turned the opacity for each layer down to 50%, they likely won't create a perfect match image between the two puzzles. Am i that much of a nerd to do that myself? Quite possibly. If you see an edit with my findings, youll know 😉
Yes, I got an email from someone who matched up both images to a picture of the moon and they are from different parts of the moon. It just gets stranger and stranger...
The snowflake puzzle graphic is amazing!
My 3yr old and I watched this video together and she says the red ones are Mars and the Pink one is a Mars Moon 😂
We love your videos and she has been requesting each night to "watch the puzzle doing princess" 🥰 she loves to fall asleep to watching your videos
That's so cute 😭
In 1967 I was in second grade - Mouse Trap and Candy Land stand out in my memory as something we spent more time on than jigsaws!
Honestly, that pink moon puzzle is just so much more pretty than the darker one? If I was getting one, I'd absolutely want the pink version. The only strange thing is that they didn't promote it at all, so it probably has to be a printer mistake that no one cared/dared to admit?
Quite a big rabbit hole with vintage puzzles, you have fallen into.
Moon ^.^ This was such a fun video, thank you Karen! :)
You could do a rubbing of the puzzle for proof, like they do for petroglyphs.
17:19 They aren't the same image. The dark red image on the left shows part of Mare Imbrium in the northern hemisphere, the pink image on the right shows part of Mare Nubium and the cratered region south of it in the southern hemisphere. Totally different parts of the moon. (BTW how did you manage to align a circular image so close to the north/south direction? I totally expected to have to rotate them in my mind to find a fit on the map but nope - almost perfect)
So not only did they run out of ink, they also lost the image. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser ...
Very strange!!
Isn't the pink one of the Tycho crater?
@@amandar283There are a lot of craters in that image, but yes, Tycho is one of them and almost in the center (the one with the prominent central peak).
In regards to the times on the tin / box you must remember how good you are at puzzles, those times are estimates for an average puzzler
The lighter teal box has lighter red pieces. It looks like they ran out of darkening agent! LOL XD
BTW! I'm obsessed with your content, Karen! Especially with the episodes where you have your Sherlock hat on :D
A pink moon is the first full moon of northern spring (April).
Maybe the pink puzzle was a promotional advertising run for a company, like Mary Kay, or some other company using pink branding. As for proof of completion, film cameras and Polaroid cameras were somewhat common then, as were mail-in promotions. All we had was snail mail and getting stuff in the mail was extra fun, especially for kids. Many toys had mail-in promotions, I joined the Gi-Joe club in the early 1970s by mail, still have the certificate.
I don't get why they didn't change the box design to say "comes with a random puzzle from this selection: Moonshot, Ice Cream"
In 1967 I think that many people would have thought that the pink moon was Far Out and Cool. I love it!
I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the outlines featured in the video. How long did it take to reproduce them? With DIFFERENT COLORS for the lines cut. For the weird color puzzles being sold: maybe the quality control worker was color blind. 🌒
Too long, especially for the short amount of time it ended up in the video 😅
The two puzzles are showing different regions of the moon entirely. The one with the big flat region represents maybe a 1/20th truncation of the full moon. Likely because the craters on the moon are quite small compared to its apparent diameter - showing only a small circular section of the moon would make those craters pop more.
I adore the pink version! It's adorable ❤
Maybe during a production run multiple inks were being mixed and spayed and a spray nozzle for some pigments became clogged. The QC person decided to let it slide because they were on a deadline or the materials cost to re-do was not feasible.
Since the puzzle is okder, maybe the cilor composition of the dye changes over time?
I love Pink Side of the Moon by Dark Floyd!
Could the pieces not be interchangeable because the radial and concentric cuts were made by separate dies?
Oh that's a great thought! Some of them seemed to be off in just one direction so you may be on to something there.
I dont think its a printing issue... the images are not the same. I just stared way too long at them side by side at 17:22 - they are different images.
The brown one is from the front of the moon and the pink one is from the backside (the dark side) of the moon
Could this be some kind of "If you're lucky then you'll have bought the special secret version of this puzzle"?
I think the brown one is of the Mare Imbrium, and the pink one is of the Tycho crater. Both near side of the moon.
Imagine the following conversation at the factory:
Employee 1: The cutter is ready, the image is loaded and we have begun printing the first layer.
Employee 2: Sorry I'm late! Here's the new image for the Moon puzzle
Employee 1: What do you mean, "new image"?
Employee 2: Didn't you get the memo? The design department sent the dark side of the Moon by accident. This one is-.... Wait, why is the printer already working?
Employee 1: [panic noises while trying to cancel the printing process]
Printer: "I can smell your fear, puny human!! I shall deliver way too many copies before I adhere to your command!! Muahahaha"
* A little time and many missprints later *
Employee 1: ... I'm going to get fired.
Employee 2: Hey, don't worry, it's not that bad! At least you only wasted 1 layer of ink. And you know how sometimes people love missprints because they are rare? I bet these will be very popular!
Employee 1: It's almost half of the production. Will that still be considered "rare"??
Employee 2: Buddy, I'm just trying to save your job here. Come on, let's box them up before the boss sees them
Best explanation for the pink moon puzzles, honestly some guy going “eh, it’s not going to my house.”
I used to run a 4 color printing press. The colors are ran in separate passes through the press. Looks like the Pink ones only made it through one pass in magenta. Quality control didn't catch it.
Because I’m a broken person, anytime I hear “moon shot,” the next few lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” play in my head… “Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, Punk Rock…”
OK so I actually used to work in Waltham, down the street from where American Publishing once was. It's in the Watch Factory building, which has since split into different apartments and businesses (it was originally America's first big watchmaking town, and there is now a museum about Watch City). The building was sold in 1961 to the First Republic Corporation of America. Also funny, we're talking about moon puzzles and this was on Crescent St.
My theory is that the diehard fans of the watch factory were so mad that the building was sold that they stole as much ink as they could to shutter the publisher. Unfortunately, they missed some of it, mostly a big box of magenta, so the publishers just had to make do.
I was wondering if I might reach somebody who lived locally to the address. I love all this background info!
I think they were planning to do 6 different views of the moon in different colors, but didnt get enough sales of the first two angles and colors to justify completing the project. Or, they had 3 different factories assigned to 2 colors each, then 2 of those factories were liquidated suddenly for some reason. OR there were two factories who both got a series of moon surface images and possible ink colors during prototyping and there was a miscommunication on which image and color was the final version.
I would hang the pink one on my wall.
April's full moons are named "Pink Moon" in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe that has something to do with this color difference. I spotted an American Publishing puzzle on Amazon priced at $6,389.75 with $41.98 shipping!!! It was the "Clown Blanc" 551 piece puzzle. (1984). Loving your videos. ❤ 😊 🧩
I would have guessed that the pink puzzle was exposed to sunlight for a long period of time to cause fading, but there's two reasons that theory fails. The first is-red pigment is the one that fades the fastest in UV, so magenta would have gone first, not last. The second is-you have found so many examples that show very similar fading so it is unlikely they befell the same fate. So.. now my theory is that, rather than having run out of cyan and yellow ink (how disorganized do you need to be to manage that?) I think that the cyan and yellow offset plates were damaged. These plates have to be created through a photographic/emulsive/etch process, so they would not have been easy to replace. if they got damaged in the printing process, maybe they just kept on printing with magenta only.
Very interesting. I'm not as familiar with this type of printing, but I think that's a great theory.
I agree with this theory
My first guess would have been that due to storage conditions the pink ones sun faded, but the lack of dots at all on the second one makes me think the mistake didn’t get caught fast enough that it would have been too much of a loss not to sell the pink printing ones. Honestly I like the pink one better 💅🏻
As far as the time it states for working a puzzles, they are talking about normal experts. Your more than that. Your one of the fastest puzzlers in the world, don't forget that bet of information! LVU
Very nice the moon puzzles are amzing
At that time 4 colors offset printers were very rare. Most part of machines had to print one color at a time, then wash the machine and use another color, and so on. Usually the 1st color is magenta. Probably they found a forgotten batch of puzzles printed only in magenta after printing the other 3 colors (cyan, yellow and black) and wouldn't worth print it again and then decided to sell it as it was, in magenta only.
my guess on the color difference is that the pink puzzle was stored in less than ideal conditions, which might account for the fading of the box as well as the discoloration of the puzzle pieces.
moon. yes i commented before watching the whole video. maybe the other colors faded but magenta didnt.
@@lindasardonell2554 this is my theory as well
Idk...I don't think that is the case because from the photos you can see the pink puzzle coming in the dark boxes too. To me it looks more like printing error. That they run out the other inks or forgot to run then through more than once, since back then you could not print more than one color at the time.
I just started watching ur videos I love them. Have u ever tried the puzzle brand Cross & Glory??
Have the pink ones just been left out in the sun, or a brightly lit room?
It look like that kind of colour fade you get when some of the inks used are more light stable than others.
I can only assume back in the day, nearly 60 years ago. The dies were probably made more manually, thats why the pieces don't interlink between puzzles. (moon)
Is it even the same image? Maybe this is actually a dark side and light side set?
I agree. The pink puzzle is a completely different image
They used a different photo to create the pink puzzle - the craters don't match.
They all use the same die but they were cut manually back then so regarding 24:12 I wouldn't be surprised to find some that are rotated 90° or 270°.
Could the pink version have been a test release, to check the complexity, but then they choose another photo. And for some reason (stock liquidation) the pink ones got released too?
It's possible! I just wish we had more of a sample size of how many of each version were ever made.
My over the moon theory (and now supported by other things you found out): this was produced off site, possibly by another company. American Publishing either didn't know, or didn't care, that many incorrect ones were produced and said "we have the stock, let's out it out there!"