Ravensburger Double Retrospect Keith Haring Puzzle (32000 Pieces)

Wonderful idea to create such a large puzzle, and interesting background to the artwork as well. Don't underestimate the weight, size and scale of taking this on - it requires a bit more of you than just a standard coffee table puzzle otherwise you'll just lose patience with it. It took us just under 12 weeks to complete this one although if you were on it a bit more it could be done much quicker.

We found some of the pieces slightly damaged/lightly folded and it is all too easy to take a piece out of the puzzle (a wrong attempt) and start peeling apart another piece in the process. Generally the piece composition material is quite dry (there's considerable dust in the packaging so watch out for rubbing your eyes) and powdery so take care with the pieces. The correct pieces do click together nicely though and the top finish is good.

The puzzle is supplied in eight bags of pieces, each bag being very modestly labelled to assign it a position on the puzzle so you can complete this in sections. Each section has the same template as the others, with the exception of the edges which obviously sometimes differ. Coloured pieces are not too bad, the white pieces can prove a little more tricky as some are reasonably similar and need checking until you get the good fit - there are no small gaps or ugly pushed together pieces when they are in properly.

Positives:

+ wonderful concept, interesting artwork
+ tricky to bring such a large puzzle to market so well done to Ravensburger for taking the plunge

Negatives:

- take care with fragility of pieces, all too easy to remove the laminate layer
- watch out for dust

Would we buy another Ravensburger? Oh, yes, very much so.

Before you even think about starting to put this together, make sure your calender is empty for the next few weeks, as you will find it hard to stop! This puzzle is good quality. Out of the 32 000 pieces only 1 was damaged a little (nothing a bit of glue couldn't fix), the other 31 999 where in perfect condition.

This Puzzle is packed in 8 bags of 4000 pieces each. When I got to the 4th bag I noticed some of the colors in this bag (green and blue) didn't have the same shade on all the pieces. Once put together It showed that there was a shade gradient from left to right, going from blue and green to a more purple blue and a more yellowish green. Depending on the lighting it would be more or less noticable, and it wasn't someting I couldn't have lived with. However, I contacted Ravensburger anyway, explaining my observations, and two days later ups dropped of a brand new bag with 4000 pieces to replace this part of the puzzle! Great service from Ravensburger!

Packaging of this rather heavy puzzle is very good! The white ravensburger puzzle box was packed together with a trolley in a very sturdy cardboard outer box and made its way to Belgium in perfect condition.

Just a hint, be carefull if a piece doen't fit very well. The puzzle contains a repetitive pattern of 1000 pieces, which means every piece will appear 4 times in each bag. Thanks to the pattern being flipped upside down on the lower half of each part and a slight shift in placement of the illustrations, this will mostly not cause any problems. However, most white pieces will appear twice in each bag, almost identical, if not identical. Even some coloured piece will be identical. If a piece doesn't seem to fit perfectly, don't push it in but but start looking for its identical twin (which if already placed will be found at the exact same position of the side-neighbouring illustration, or in the lower/upper neighbouring illustrations at +/- the same location if you flip it 180° and shift it up/down a couple of lines. Luckely there are 2 very strange pieces in every illustration, which makes it easier to orientate yourself and locate the twin.