Victory

Waddington's purchased the Victory name in 1988 after the latter's Bournemouth factory closed and their production of saw-cut jigsaws ceased. This range of 500-piece laser-cut plywood puzzles represented a considerable change to their previous concentration on the production of cardboard, die-cut ranges and was branded 'Waddingtons Victory'. They were supplied in good strong boxes and included full-sized colour guide prints in the boxes, along with a miniature reproduction on the lid.

It seems that all were produced to the same rather uniform cutting pattern, the only change being to the orientation of the print. This was perhaps one of the reasons that production appears to have been rather short-lived. There was also a contemporaneous issue of scorching due to the heat of the laser which could show up as burn marks in pale-coloured areas. Later manufacturers such as Wentworth had to address this.

The process gave the pieces a loose fit as it burned away a small thickness of wood between each one. This made the puzzles more challenging as 'wrong' pieces of like colour can appear to fit together.

Many thanks to Alan Sudbury for supplying details and images of examples from this range.