Somerville
Logo

The Somerville company interests me since it produced puzzles for so many years and seems to have gone through a variety of different restructurings. One thing that is very consistant is that almost all Somerville puzzles do mention "London - Ontario" as home.

The following is my attempt to sort out the various logos used by Somerville over the years. You'll see that some of the data comes from Somerville board games which were more often copyrighted than were puzzles.

No Logo
At first I thought only earlier puzzles did not have a logo on them. Now I am not so sure:<>

Early Artist and London series puzzles do not have a logo and list the company as "Somerville Limited". Yet other puzzles in the same series that look almost identical in format have the "script" logo noted below - apparently skipping over the "block" logo and these other boxes list the company as "Somerville Industries Limited".

At least one other puzzle (Classic's Wilderness Waters) is also without a logo but that box says "Somerville Industries Limited". This puzzle looks more recent.

The MB 1968 board game "Off To See The Wizard" that was manufactured in Canada by Somerville also is lacking a logo. Earlier MB games such as "Easy Money" and "Pirates and Travelers" had both MB and Somerville logos on them but not this 1968 game. In this latter case I wonder if Somerville had simply taken on the role of manufacturer so it was not appropriate to have their logo on it.

Block Square Logo
up to 1940's-1950's
This is the logo that I think is earliest but was used up to at least the 1950's. I call it "block" because the text is in a block form. This logo not only looks like an early logo and was found on a puzzle that appears to be pre metric, postal code and bilingual. (Deluxe Windsor: Teaching Her Puppies to Drink). Except for the logo, there is no other reference to Somerville on this puzzle. It also appears to be on the Handy puzzle I had with the handwritten notes of 1943 and 1944 on it. Embarrassingly I don't have that puzzle anymore so can't confirm the logo. The image of this Handy puzzle box on the web page looks like it has this style of logo. It is also they logo on the Royal series too.

I have also found the logo on a Milton Bradley board game called "Easy Money". The game has created in the 1930's and has various formats up till the 1990's but the copyright on the board itself is 1956. The board game box says "Somerville Limited".

I have been trying to track down some details on this boardgame for it has various formats and as I understand those, I can be more accurate. This is one of those games that had both English and French instructions printed on the lid even before it was mandatory to do that.

Variation to Block Logo.

Another boardgame is "Word Wise" but I can't find any dates for it. It is an older looking game and had inside of it a copy of Transogram's Word-Fun which is dated 1954 although there may be not connection with dates. Word Wise is a Milton Bradley game but that is not mentioned anywhere except for a small line on the inside cover. Also made by Somerville Ltd. but has a variation of the block logo. On this one, the word "limited" spaced in tiny letters below the word "Somerville". Example. Also contains paper French instructions with the words printed on the box "English and French Edition". Have not seen this logo on a puzzle yet.

Script Square Logo
1960's This logo is the same format as above but the words "A" and "game" are now in a script font. This appears to be the most common version of this logo and found on most Somerville products.

Found on puzzles with copyright date of 1962 (Map of Canada) and on the Canadian Splendour puzzles dated 1965. The company on these products is now always called "Somerville Industries Limited".

Problem. This logo is also found on the MB board game "Pirate and Traveler" which is copyrighted 1953. I need to find out if this is the copyright of the game but it was released later.

Bilingual Logo
I have found this on only one puzzle (Beautyland "Freshly Painted"). Series appears to be in 1970's since there is French on the box and the measurements are also metric (in tiny print. Also found on one board game, a more recent version of MB's "Easy Money". Oddly I can not find a copyright on this version of the game even though the entire board game has been modified for Canada. This is one of the mysteries of the versions of this game. The box is clearly more modern than the one mentioned above. Yet the board design, completely different from above, looks older as does the playing money. To add confusion the top of this box is too big for the bottom making me wonder if I don't have parts to 3 versions of the game. Once I get some clarification on the versions of this game I should have a better grasp on dates.

Somerville - Bekin logo
Only seen on one puzzle in the Beautyland series (Jackson NH). As I type this I see some confusion in the text on that section that needs correcting.

Copps Clarke - Somerville logo
Seen only on one puzzle ("Farming Country")in the more modern Classic series.