Rant Review: The Simpsons: Cast of Thousands 1,000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle (OP Puzzles)

I don't know how this puzzle came and went a couple of years ago without my knowledge, but as soon as I found out it existed, I had to have it! I saw an earlier iteration made by another company years ago, but at the time, I had just finished a giant photomosaic Simpsons puzzle, and the mental scarring from that ordeal left me less than enthusiastic about immediately diving into another sea of yellow. I didn't do puzzles as often in those days, so quite some time passed before I thought about that puzzle again. By that time, it had gone out of production, and the secondary market prices were well on the other side of ridiculous. I've always kept an eye out for one at a reasonable price since then. This one has now ceased production as well, but recently enough that I was still able to find a sealed one for just a bit more than MSRP. 

There's not much sorting you can do with a puzzle like this, so I separated the edge pieces and the interior solid yellow pieces, then just grabbed a random piece and got to work. There's obviously a hell of a lot going on in this image, and while someone like me with an encyclopedic knowledge of the characters has an advantage, it's not as big as you may think. Recognizing the characters from whatever bit of them is on a certain piece doesn't make it any easier to locate their position within the chaotic image, after all! I don't normally use a reference poster, but one would have been very helpful in this case. So naturally, OP did not include one! It was slow going at first, but once I was able to sit down and spend a couple of hours placing pieces in the area where they belonged, then slowly building out those little sections, progress sped up considerably. In a change from most puzzles, the border was the last thing I finished, as I had left all those solid yellow pieces for last.

The image itself is a dream for a Simpsons lover, with so many characters to find among the crowd. Some of the characters are a bit off-model compared to how we're used to seeing them, skewing toward portrayals from early in the show's life. (Hans Moleman's skin tone is a good example. He was only that dark in his first couple of appearances.) A few guest stars who appeared as themselves are present, most notably Stephen Hawking and Matt Groening. (You could say that Groening technically appears twice if you count his design from the 138th episode spectacular!) And of course, no assemblage of Simpsons characters would be complete without the Inanimate Carbon Rod! In Rod we trust! 

OP is a brand that is new to me, and they have a few other puzzles of interest to me. (You'll be seeing one of them soon!) The quality is decent. Pieces fit together well, and false fits were very uncommon. (It certainly helped that the only places where a false fit would even be feasible were along the solid yellow borders.) There was a moderate amount of dust, certainly nothing like what you get with a modern Springbok. The pieces have a matte texture that I like, though that may not be the best match for such a colorful, animation-based image. There were no missing pieces, though several were slightly bent right out of the box. The puzzle would crumble when I tried to move sections of more than two or three pieces. I had to use sheets of paper to disassemble and stack it into the box in sections so I can easily reassemble it for framing later on.

This is one of those puzzles that I was rather sad to be done with. I have the itch to do another Simpsons puzzle-- OP also made a Treehouse of Horror-themed one that is very appropriate for the season-- but there simply don't seem to be many to choose from. I do still have that photomosaic one from all those years ago, but I don't want to do another Simpsons puzzle quite that badly!