Planet Puzzle: Retro ray guns and other vintage key chain puzzles

 

I'm back with I feature I would have expected to do a lot more with by now. In fact, the lot here is material I had already gotten last time, but ended up sitting on while my format and posting frequency was in flux. I got these in the course of a minor binge of online shopping for keychain puzzles, the ancient ancestors of the party favor puzzles I grew up with. In the end, I ended up with a lot of lost bids for big lots that sold for a lot more than I would have paid, and all of three purchases I paid relatively high prices for. To kick off the lineup, here are my prize acquisitions, two copies of a puzzle first made in the 1950s, obviously modelled on a Flash Gordon/ Buck Rogers style ray gun.

I got these separately, one advertised as a "vintage" puzzle and the other as a packaged specimen of unspecified age. It should already be apparent that the one in close-up above is the vintage one. I believe it dates from the 1950s (the awe-inspiring Rob's Puzzle Page gives a date of 1954 for the design), while I'm sure the other one is at least a decade more recent. The older specimen is hard plastic with a solid feel and primary colors that are still bright. The copy, on the other hand, is mostly made of almost translucent plastic with a singularly flimsy and unpleasant feel that makes me think of handling very old paper. (The "packaging" was a tiny bag with instructions printed on it.) Ironically, it was the copy that I was able to disassemble, mostly because it's rickety enough that it is close to coming apart to begin with. By comparison, the original is solid enough that I spent days twisting the key piece before I gave up. When I was preparing for this post, I finally managed to take it apart. Here's some shots with my phone camera of the ensuing disassembly. Again, it should be quite obvious which parts are from which version.

Here's a few close-ups of the piece that caused all the trouble, a sort of nose cone. The "trick" is to line up a notch on the inside with a protrusion on the grip piece; the totally unfair part is that there's no external indication whatsoever where it is. I finally tried turning the piece and tugging a few degrees at a time. It turned out that the notch on the original was just a nudge counterlockwise from a minor imperfection I had been looking at all along. On further examination, I found a visible white residue on both specimens, I'm sure from wear, as further indicated by a rough edge on the central piece which I have also photographed.

One more thing I found on close inspection is that the geometry and proportions of the two specimens are subtly different. The copy is narrower in the two main pieces, no doubt to slightly reduce the amount of plastic used, while the nose is less rounded and closer to a true cone, which may have simplified manufacturing but has no obvious further benefit. There's also visible differences in the supports for the sight on the center/ grip piece, which was already strangely proportioned on the original. It's clear from these differences that the copy was made without access to the original molds. Again, the original is better and flat-out more pleasant. Here's a few more close-ups.

Meanwhile, I had two more puzzles that I got in one lot. The first was a readily identifiable Steinhardt cube, which I previously featured in the prize puzzle box. It was interesting mainly as a demonstration how closely the pattern has been copied. Here's a couple comparison pics.

Finally, there's perhaps the most interesting piece, a bowling pin. The big gimmick here is that it has a compartment for a ball in the middle for a ball, which was still with the puzzle. The cover has a notch that makes it easy to remove with the piece on top. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the two pieces of the body, which I simply can't budge. I'm convinced this is because the plastic is either warped or decayed into gunk that fused it all together. At least it still looks nice. Here's a couple pics.

All in all, I have to say these acquisitions were a letdown, especially for the prices I paid for them, to the point that I called off or held up other purchases I had been considering. I suppose this is a non-trivial reason I haven't done more installments a lot sooner. All in all, they look good, but no great shakes compared to the large and decorative puzzles of  the 1970s-'80s (see the last post), and even compared to the prize puzzles, they lose out in durability and ease of use. One can be glad they existed and still exist, but time has moved on and we have done better. With that, I wrap this up. As always, more to come.