Well, you can put it together, so I'm giving it two stars, but it's unpleasantly like putting together a house of cards, not the usual model-building-cum-high-quality puzzle fun you normally have with these. The corner-cutting on production _really_ surprised me. I'm a big fan of the old Puzz-3D puzzles and own half a dozen of them, so I expected this puzzle to be on the same quality level. But it isn't.
The foam used is thinner and not as dense (the darker color tipped me off before touching the pieces confirmed it), so the overall fit of the pieces is looser. You don't get that solid all-one-piece feel when you've put together one of the larger model pieces. And that means a looser, more fragile fit overall when it comes to putting the model together. This is only exacerbated by the size, complexity, and large number of curved surfaces in this one. The tension often pulls pieces apart that should be fit together or makes pieces sag, despite the internal cardboard supports.
The print/cut registration was also slightly off for some pieces (I have a few red dots on teeth). The surface print is slightly glossy, which means rubbing and bends leave visible mars on the image (the better-quality Puzz 3Ds from Winning solutions have the old matte printing), and one piece actually de-laminated and I had to glue the image paper back onto the foam. Worse, you can clearly see/feel the individual piece seams on the model pieces when assembled, which typically doesn't happen with a Puzz-3D. Everything's just a little looser and that has consequences on the ease of the final build when you put the model pieces together.
The usual red-dot waste-piece-removal task was hampered by the odd choices of where the cuts for pieces come: quite a few of the legitimate pieces closely resemble the shapes of the discard pieces which I've never seen in a Puzz-3D before (very small slight triangles or very thin rectangles with only one puzzle join). The design would have been better if this kind of piece had been integrated into its neighbor where the join wasn't needed for surface flex. It's too fiddly and annoying for words.
The house-of-cards bit comes in when you start to use the cardboard support pieces. The cardboard is thin, and the tabs are fragile and the fit with the foam is too loose (there are cutouts in the foam, not slits, so the tab doesn't fit snugly or securely. You have a lot of listing cardboard pieces that fall out and have to be replaced to swear at). This isn't helped by the fact that the box for the puzzle is too small for the larger cardboard pieces to be packed flat, so they've already been bent/crushed. Having a floppy bent piece of cardboard as your main structural support makes for a few more swear words. Didn't have these kinds of issues with the Wrebbit-3D Taj Mahal cardboard supports at all.
As I said, I was surprised: I've had good luck with other Puzz-3Ds from Winning Solutions. However, I really really regret not waiting until Amazon had a listing for the new WREBBIT 3D Sydney Opera House (925-Piece).
If you don't know the story, Wrebbit was the Canadian company in Montreal that began making these foam 3D puzzles back in the '90s. The company eventually got purchased by Hasbro in 2005, Hasbro moved production to the US, and then in 2006, they stopped making them. In 2011, Winning Solutions (who do high-end Hasbro products), began to reintroduce/reprint the classic old Wrebbit designs. But, in the meantime, the son of the Wrebbit founder, the chief designer, and a number of the old employees reformed Wrebbit, and began producing new puzzles in 2012 under the label of Wrebbit-3D. Given that I wanted to support both companies, and to see both the older puzzles that Hasbro retains the rights to back in print, I bought the Winning Solutions Puzz3D Eiffel Tower Puzzle when it came out, and this year, bought the WREBBIT 3D Taj Mahal Puzzle, 950-Piece. Both were excellent. I assumed that Winning Solutions was keeping to the high quality of the original puzzles, but I won't be assuming that from now on.
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Product information
| Product Dimensions | 1 x 1 x 1 inches |
|---|---|
| Item Weight | 1 pounds |
| ASIN | B00BZBT93C |
| Manufacturer recommended age | 10 years and up |
| Customer Reviews |
3.4 out of 5 stars |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Manufacturer | puzz 3d |
Feedback
This puzzle was great but was missing a piece we worked on it ...
This puzzle was great but was missing a piece we worked on it for 5 days and was very disappointed when we never found the missing piece
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This puzzle was great but was missing a piece we worked on it for 5 days and was very disappointed when we never found the missing piece
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Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2015
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