Robots

On June 12, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This cute kids puzzle is adorable to look at, but had disappointing quality. Puzzles are so good for the brain development of children, I wish all the makers of puzzles for kids put the effort in to making great quality puzzles for them.

The image itself reminds me of Birthday Owls that I assembled last year. The artwork is very similar, but that puzzle had better quality than this one. The collage-type image is an easy one to assemble, and is great for helping gain confidence when assembling a puzzle with a larger piece count.

Mega Puzzles have hit or miss quality from my experience, this one was a miss. You can see below that the pieces don’t lie flat because they’re on the thin side and easily bent.

Although the quality wasn’t the best it was still a fun little puzzle to put together. I do love a collage!

Old World Map Calendar

On June 11, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This puzzle is a very interesting concept; it’s a calendar within a puzzle, and you are supposed to be able to reassemble it every month. Cool idea, but not at all practical in my opinion.

I like vintage map puzzles, I find they can be intimidating and tough to put together, but I love the look of them and enjoy the challenge. This map was no exception, with beautiful colors and an interesting background.

The fit is extremely tight so that you can hang the finished puzzle with no glue or taping needed to keep it together. There are basically only 2 different shapes of pieces; this is so all the pieces can be interchangeable when you need to reconfigure the calendar each month. This is where the it becomes impractical; any puzzle made from cardboard isn’t going to be able to withstand multiple disassembling and reassembling – especially when the fit is so tight.

You can see below that the tabs are lifting and the image is coming off, and in some places the image is actually torn off. Perhaps a plastic puzzle would be a better way to go with this idea. With cardboard, no matter how sturdy it is, it will start to come apart after many assemblies.

I assembled it for this month, June. The 10th is a family birthday, the 17th is Father’s Day, and the full moon this month is on the 28th. The extra 160 pieces are for the major holidays, and extra days and spaces.

It was fun to put this together, and while I like the idea and the finished puzzle it just isn’t at all reasonable for a cardboard puzzle. Still it was an excellent thrift store find and I’m glad it was all there and I was able to try it out.

Seeing Double

On June 9, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This is an interesting kid’s puzzle with a twist, you’re seeing double as one side of the attic looks like a mirror image of the other. But there are 14 differences between the two sides. Your job is to assemble the puzzle and then find what’s different.

The quality of this puzzle is very good. The pieces are a nice thickness and they fit together very well with a good variety of piece shapes. The image reproduction is good, but the finish is slightly shiny which caused a bit of glare and made working the top portion of the puzzle difficult under artificial lights.

This puzzle seems like it’s a bit old, but I wasn’t able to find any information about it online. Great American Puzzle Factory does have a series of these “puzzles within a puzzle”; some finding hidden images or like this one, finding differences.

My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders when I put this one together, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to find all the differences on my own. I did find one of them right away, while assembling the edge, it’s right underneath the wording….

There’s a mustache on the man on the left, but not on the mirror image on the right. Basically it’s really the only difference I was able to find on my own, for the rest I just used the answer sheet.

It was a little difficult for a children’s puzzle, the top was quite dark which made it harder to see and put together. I think it’s a good thing when kids puzzles are a little challenging though, if they’re too easy they can become boring. The missing piece was a bummer, but it was still a good quality puzzle and a fun assembly.

Bearsville

On May 29, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles5 Comments

This was a quick, fun puzzle that I put together one afternoon when I needed a puzzle fix in between larger piece count puzzles. It’s part of Ceaco’s Home Sweet Home series by artist Roger Nannini. I found I enjoyed the artwork very much!

Ceaco puzzles aren’t my favorite brand, but to be honest my opinion of them has gone up quite a bit after working with a brand that was much, much worse. Of the 25 puzzles I have assembled this month from 14 different brands, the Ceaco puzzles have been the best fitting of all of them. Shocked? Me too!

It’s interesting to me how a much lesser quality puzzle boosted my impression of Ceaco. Perhaps it just caused me to re-assess what I would and would not put up with in a puzzle. The fit is amazingly important to me – too loose is extremely annoying and frustrating. Too tight is the same way; if it takes upper body strength to smash the pieces together I always second guess if the pieces actually fit together (and it hurts my thumb!)

The pieces are on the thin side, with a good variety of piece shapes – made from multi-layered board that tends to split easily – but the fit is excellent. The image reproduction is good, with beautiful colors and crisp lines. This puzzle has been assembled many times, there is documentation on the side indicating each time it was put together. From what I’m reading it’s been put together at least 11 times before me. You can see in the picture above that many of the pieces were either split or bent and the finished puzzle didn’t lie flat. I don’t feel I can comment negatively on the quality of this specific puzzle if it’s been assembled so many times; I have no idea what it was like when it was new. That said, I actually think it’s held up well.

I enjoyed this puzzle very much, the artwork was interesting and made for a great afternoon of puzzling. I suppose I have more puzzles to choose from now that I’ve re-thought my stance on Ceaco. 😏

Mr. Potato Head

On May 10, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This is a cute 48 piece puzzle of Mr. Potato Head that comes with 20 clings that you can mix and match to create different faces. And to think that in the early 1950’s when the toy was first produced it was just separate plastic body parts with pushpins that you used on a real potato! What?!

I think the idea for this puzzle is excellent, but I was pretty disappointed with the quality. I really wanted to like this one too! The pieces were thin and easily bent, what I consider to be not sturdy enough for repeated play. If the object is to assemble and play with this multiple times I don’t think the pieces will hold up well. As you can see in the image above, the puzzle also doesn’t lay completely flat – not great. The clings themselves seem like good enough quality, but to comment on them specifically I would want to spend more time with them. All in all I was hoping for better from this puzzle, we found it new and unopened at the thrift store.

I wanted to make at least 2 different faces to show some of the clings that come with the puzzle. I had a good time choosing and trying to make a funny face. 🤓

Perhaps if this puzzle is something your little one would really enjoy you could glue it once it was assembled to keep the pieces from bending and wearing out from repeated use? I don’t have an answer. It’s a great idea, but not as well executed as I’d hoped for. This puzzle is unfortunately not recommended.