I came across this while perusing OP's other offerings after ordering the Simpsons puzzle I finished last weekend. Garbage Pail Kids were absolutely huge in the '80s, and I was a little kid at just the right time to be totally hooked on them. As a small child who was immersed in the endless comedic gross-out fare so common at the time, people vomiting unexpectedly seemed to me the very height of comedy. So naturally, Luke Puke was my favorite. I remember being so dismayed when my friend Dana peeled the border sticker off of my Luke Puke sticker card!
OP produced a pair of puzzles featuring the GPKs, and I settled on this one for two reasons: First, it prominently features two of my favorites. (The aforementioned Luke, along with the multi-tongued Nasty Nancy.) Second... well, that requires a bit of a story. My little niece went through a phase a few years back when she, too, thought that vomiting was hilarious. (I promise that I had no influence on that, as it had lost any comedic effect on me by the time I was 8!) One of her favorite games was for us to sit on the big wooden swing on the porch. I would count down, then launch us into a big back-and-forth swing. We pretended it was a roller coaster, and I had to do the voices of various characters that she decided were riding the roller coaster. This was usually a mix of Masters of the Universe, Batman, and Simpsons characters, with an occasional wrestler or Mr. T thrown in for good measure. One of the characters would quickly get sick and vomit, with the forces involved swooping it right into another character's face. This character would vomit in turn, until everyone had tossed their cookies. With the sole exception, that is, of whatever character she was voicing, usually Catwoman, who was the only one who did not get sick. She would scold all the silly boys for being so gross, then roll and cackle with laughter. When I saw a nearly identical scene depicted on this puzzle, how could I do anything but buy it instantly? She's past the "puke is funny" phase now, but she recognized the scene immediately, and got very excited about it.
The puzzle was tougher than I expected. I knew the yellow areas and the expanses of solid red and wood pattern would be more difficult than the rest, but I wasn't worried about it since those were a relatively small portion of the puzzle. The sky had enough variation that I knew it was unlikely to present a problem. What I didn't expect was how tough the kids themselves were! Some areas went together instantly-- Luke was the first one I completed, since his pieces were immediately identifiable as his-- but much of them didn't coalesce until quite late in the assembly. Bad Brad, the devil boy at the front, was the toughest of the kids. His face and hair took me so much longer than expected, and he was the last one I completed. The variations in his skin tone were very deceptive on the puzzle pieces. Once he was done, it was just a matter of filling in the remaining background, which took only bit longer than he did. I expected the yellow-tinted areas to be the toughest of these, but surprisingly, that went together pretty quickly. It was the large wood-textured area at the bottom that gave me the most trouble. Even with Brad's shadow as a guide, the patterns on these pieces deceived me time and time again. What I expected to be the easiest part of the puzzle, apart from the kids themselves, wound up being the hardest!
The piece quality was good, with the same matte texture I appreciated on that Simpsons puzzle. The fit seemed looser, however, and I had a fair few false fits in several areas. The fit was so loose that I was unable to move even two or three pieces without them crumbling apart. That Simpsons puzzle didn't hold together like a Galison, but it was not this loose! I thought I might want to frame this one at some point, and splitting it into sections and stacking them in the box without it all crumbling was a bit of an ordeal. (Several sheets of paper were used to move them over mostly intact.) Still, I've had puzzles with looser fits, and there was very little dust, and that's always nice. While the quality was a slight step down from that Simpsons puzzle, it was decent enough that I'll probably be buying their other GPK puzzle in the near future.
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