Issue 138 was once again packed with lovely full colour pictures of jigsaw puzzles and related epherama. Most of the first half of the magazine was taken up by accounts of the very successful second BCD virtual weekend – see following posts for summaries of this.
The second half included a variety of interesting articles, notably two from a couple of our European members in Germany and the Netherlands. Kerstin gave us an insight into the history of Lumar Puzzles – ‘made by the “King of Toys”‘, it being the trading name of Louis Marx Ltd. of London in the 1930s. Marx Toys was founded to launch a new line of Lumar-branded floor operated tin toys, trucks, vehicles and planes that were produced in the US and England from 193 until after WW2.Wout’s contribution was “Pondering Ponda Puzzle History”. 
Ponda, was founded in Hastings, Sussex in 1946 by James William Griffin, previously employed as puzzle maker himself. It survived, adding a second production facility in Portrush, NI, until December, 1965 when, tragically, a “fire gutted the Ponda Puzzle Works in Battle Raid, putting 60 people out of work”.
Other articles covered a wide range of puzzling-related topics including “When knobs are not knobs but hands and feet”, “The Falls Puzzles”,”Colour spectrum and Colour-Changing Jigsaw”, “Unidentified Jigsaw Puzzles”, “Search for Examples of ‘The Swan Jig-Saw’ and “An Interesting but Accidental E-Bay Purchase”!