As summer tries to break winter’s hold all things related to that chilly season take a back seat in the consumer’s buying habits. Mix that seasonal effect with the overall cautious retail climate and you’ve got a recipe for slower jigsaw puzzle sales. Our retail customers who bought the new 2009 Gibsons selection have done predictably well with them and those who did not buy are anticipating a worse than normal summer season slowdown. Gibsons themselves have changed their release pattern. Rather than two new product release events (once in the spring and again in the fall) they are spreading their

new releases throughout the year.

The word “hobby” comes from hobby horse. Made from wood, a hobby-horse may look like and be climbed on like a real horse but it’s really only a toy, i.e. it’s being used for fun. To ride one’s hobby-horse is to play at horse riding and is not the real thing. Nowadays it means to induge a pastime and has latterly meant to partake of recreation.

Hobbies are practiced for interest and enjoyment, rather than financial reward. For example, people collect stamps, paint pictures, build plastic models and do jigsaw puzzles. Although a high degree of skill may be realised there is little reward beyond the satisfaction of achieving a level of competency and often appreciation by one’s peers.

One often finds a professional golfer enjoying fishing as a hobby and some F1 race car drivers can find relaxation in computer games. It is the amateur status of the hobbyist that differentiates his pursuit from that of the professional. Stamp collecting and jigsaw puzzles offer no remuneration beyond a sense of accomplishment. Nevertheless it is an important characteristic that we seek hobbies such as cooking and going to movies to relieve the daily stress of our working lives. Sadly TV doesn’t count as a hobby.

The Gibsons Game company is almost 100 years old. Despite not developing a puzzle line until fairly recently the company has created a range of puzzles with a decidedly English perspective through a span of time dating back to the early twentieth century and, especially for the Christmas season, even earlier into the Victorian era. Other European puzzle manufacturers compete from an increasingly weary range of stock photographs of castles, mountain lakes and air brushed galloping horses. Gibsons use only painted images which enhance the more homemade feel of the puzzles. Less dramatic but more humanly sympathetic, Gibsons puzzles appeal to the hobbyist who has an interest in the interaction of working people and the goings-on of everyday social activities through decades of seasonal occupations from spring to winter.