This is a bittersweet day for the Harvey Mercheum. On the sweet side, today’s exhibit is the 100th:

This is a great milestone for the Mercheum, and one which I was not sure I would ever reach. I am proud of what I have accomplished, and promise more great things to come.

The not so sweet news is that today’s exhibit is the last of the JA-RU rack toys currently in the permanent collection. I am fairly certain more exist, so there is at least a chance of future JA-RU rack toy exhibits.

One of my biggest fears when starting this website was running out of items to post. While this has not happened yet, the completion of one of my favorite parts of the permanent collection reminds me that some day it will. That is why guest submissions are critical to the survival of the Harvey Mercheum. I urge you to go through your collection and share your Harvey merchandise.

Now, on to the exhibit. Today we have the last (for now) of the Casper 4 Jigsaw Puzzles. This one features our friend Spooky again, this time relaxing while a helpfully labelled “glass-bottom sight-seeing boat” goes by. If there is a joke here, I am missing it. The important thing to note about this variant is that the UPC is on a sticker, not printed on the backing card like the other three, and the number does not match the other three. It also does not match what I think it should be, but I will touch on that in a future post. This variant claims to have been made in China, not Hong Kong like the other three, so that could be a factor.

The reason I say the last for now is that I have seen another variant. Hopefully I will be able to purchase it some day, or receive photos of it as a guest exhibit. It has the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” logo from the top of the backing card on a light blue background. If you have any information on this, or any other variant not featured here, please use the Contact the Curator form to let me know!

It is quite remarkable that JA-RU complicated their manufacturing process to place different puzzles on top. It is even more remarkable that for a product named “Casper 4 Jigsaw Puzzles”, they would make five (or more!) different puzzles. These items were only produced for one year, so this is a lot of extra effort for questionable gain. Going above and beyond the requirements is part of the reason I love the JA-RU rack toy part of the permanent collection so much. Without further ado, I present the last one:

View the exhibit:

Casper 4 Jigsaw Puzzles, Spooky with boat variant

Read an analysis of the JA-RU rack toy collection here:

“Big Data”: Analyzing the JA-RU rack toys

or download it in Portable Document Format here:

Analysis of the Rack Toys JA-RU Made for Harvey Publications, Inc.