Good evening all of everyone!

Today we feature a classic: the large Titanic Puzz3D by Wrebbit (Wrebbit made a smaller one as well) and how I think it just might have been based on the Titanic of James Cameron’s film. This 3D-puzzle came out in the late 1997, right around the time James Cameron’s Titanic came out. The puzzle measures 30-3/4″ long, by 3-1/2″ wide by 6-1/8″ tall and depicts a reasonably accurate representation of the Titanic. Like all of Wrebbit’s Puzz3Ds, the puzzle is made of foam pieces with stickers which when assembled create a three-dimensional structure.

Wrebbit’s Puzz3D Titanic

What is particularly interesting about Wrebbit’s 3D puzzle is it’s scale. The box lists the puzzle as a 1/350 scale replica of the ship and it is vaguely close. However, the ship looks too short for how tall and wide it is. In fact, if you crunch the numbers (which I did recently), you find that the length (30-3/4″ vs. 882′-9″) of the puzzle is actually 1/348 scale, the width (3.5″ vs. 92′-6″) is 1/317 scale, the height from keel to Bridge (3-3/8″ vs. 104′) is 1/369 scale and the height of the funnels (2-3/4″ vs. 71′) is 1/309 scale. So, this puzzle is all over the place, if you’re getting picky.

But Wrebbit is/was (they are a new company now) pretty accurate in their representations on 3D-puzzles, so how can we explain this? The height differences can probably be best explained as a compromise. The funnels are made out of standard-sized pieces, so they might have had to be larger so to keep the overall height consistent, they made the height of the hull shorter. Making the hull shorter might also have been an aesthetic choice, too. The puzzle depicts the area of the ship which is usually underneath the waterline, Wrebbit may have shortened the height on the hull so that the whole peice wouldn’t look “too tall” for those used to seeing it in the water (like, say, from a major block-buster movie).

However, I think the width-height scale difference was taken from James Cameron’s movie set. James Cameron’s set featured a similar difference and the puzzle was in development while the movie was being made. Although the set of James Cameron’s film was highly realistic, the giant ship set was shortened for reasons of budget. Martin Lang, Art Director on the film stated, “We took three slices of 20-foot out of the ship […] and just shunted it together.” Where these slices came from is illustrated in the photo below.

The set of James Cameron’s “Titanic”, indicating where slices of the ship were removed.

I crunched the numbers and although all of the decks on the 3D puzzle vary slightly in scale (this is do in part to the in-exactitude of using foam pieces), the biggest offender by far was the Boat Deck. The length of the Boat Deck of the Puzz3D is approximately 1/390, despite its width scale of 1/317. To me, that says that Wrebbit’s people just might have used James Cameron’s set as a reference, since it was also to a smaller length scale, despite maintaining the correct width.

Both of Wrebbit’s Puzz3Ds of the Titanic are great, and although not hyper-accurate, are still very cool to have, especially if you are into puzzles. It’s kind of interesting to think that Wrebbit might have used Jame’s Cameron’s film set and so their puzzle is the way it is. I suppose it is possible that Wrebbit’s designers and researchers just chose to do it differently for no particular reason, but I like my theory more.