Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinAlone, unmourned, and unloved since 1969

Have to admit the “Trivial Pursuit” emblem threw me.

§ June 27th, 2022 § Filed under justice league § 4 Comments

So one of these ended up in my hands recently, a Justice League Unlimited Coloring and Activity Book with “Easy Tear Out Pages,” dating from 2008. The pages had not been colored, activitied in, or easily torn out, so I had a complete item here, though the cover had some moderate surface wear. The pages inside were just like new.

But the puzzles and such. Hoo boy. Now I realize I am (ahem) a few decades past the recommended age groups for this book, so going through each puzzle and proclaiming “HAH! You call this challenging?” is desperately missing the point. That’s not going to stop me from saying that about a couple of the entries in this volume, however, so let me push aside these crying pencil-wielding children begging to be entertaining by Justice League-themed puzzles and let me get started.

The puzzles themselves range in difficulty, sometimes even really simple activities like “draw a line from Superman to his symbol” here:

…which looks incredibly easy on the surface (Superman’s wearing his symbol right there, making it a cinch to spot in the column of choices) but this could very well be the first time a kid encountered the word “symbol.” If s/he doesn’t know it, they should pick it up from context I’d imagine, and plus you get a good look at other character’s symbols as well. Even if those overly-fancy designs I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere.

(EDIT: I originally used “emblem” instead of “symbol” in the previous lines…I have no idea how that happened.)

Honestly, though, this connect the dots page:

I mean, sure, it’s remedial, it’s for really young kids just learning about things like “connect the dots,” and how to draw a line from numbered point to numbered point in order. But c’mon. You first saw that and you went “what, seriously?” I’m not expecting them to throw in a puzzle where you connect all the dots and end up with Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement,” but maybe a little complication beyond “draw an oval” might have been nice.

Just a few pages earlier, they put in a spoiler for the later dots puzzle:

This is one of those “copy this stock image into the blank boxes on the opposite page” thingies, and those I remember liking as a young Mikester. Copying over the contents of each box into the corresponding box until you ended up with a vague approximation of the original picture was always kind of neat, and certainly more fun than that “draw a circle” business.

The Flash connect-the-dots is kind of funny as well:

“I wonder what this arm-shaped series of dots and numbers in place of the Flash’s arm is going to be?” [LATER] “Wait, it’s his arm? Frankly, I’m amazed.”

My favorite pages in here are the “draw in your own pictures” pages, where they give you a small prompt (pic on Wonder Woman in the corner (a different pic from the previous ones, surprisingly), with the caption asking “What is Wonder Woman trying to lasso?” And then you, the kid reading this and armed with pen, ink, crayons, whathaveyou, took at a stab at it.

Evocative, no? Well, I gave it a go:

Yes, it is beautiful, thank you for noticing.