I'm a puzzle lover and a state quarters enthusiast so I couldn't help but buy this puzzle when I saw it.My anticipation level was high when I received it and quickly began piecing it together.It took me about four hours to finish and it was overall a satisfying and fun experience.So, the good bits:The detail on each quarter is fun to piece together.Often you'll find yourself looking at just a few letters and deciphering which quarter "SACH" belongs to, for example.The word puzzles inside the jigsaw puzzle were fun to complete.As the puzzle comes together you enjoy that sense of satisfaction that good puzzles give you.
Now for the disappointing items:
1.The jigsaw piece design is not good.Far too many pieces simply butt up against their neighbors, with no interlocking action at all.Often times you'll find yourself with 7 or even 10 pieces all carefully placed in the proper spot with not a one of them actually connected.An errant bump then ruins the group.I think this problem is due to the round shape of the puzzle but that makes it no less annoying.
2.The double-sided thing is a novelty and nothing more.Initially I was going to solve the puzzle twice, one for each side, but because of the issue above, I decided putting together the less detailed side with no help from the shapes of the pieces would be way more frustrating than fun.The colors wouldn't really help either-just a bunch of different shades of grey.I ended up solving only the detailed side.
3.The manufacturer committed a serious mistake.They chose to use the "good" side of the puzzle for the bad design (the single quarter).If you look at a normal puzzle piece up close, you'll see there is a glossy side with the image on it and a plain cardboard side.The glossy side's edges are rounded down as a result of the cutting process (the entire puzzle is "punched" in one blow) which makes the pieces easy to handle and nicely fit together.The cardboard side is completely flat.With this puzzle, they applied a glossy backing to the bottom of the puzzle and put the detailed design on the bottom!So the fun side to solve is actually on the bottom of the puzzle as it relates to how the puzzle was punched and as a result it's simply not as fun to put together as it could have been had they switched the two sides and put the good design on the top.Or even better, dispense with the gimmicky double sided feature and just give us a high quality one-sided state quarters puzzle.
4.The price dropped by $7 (almost 50% off) a week after I ordered it.
The pieces don't interlock.
The pieces.They don't interlock.
It's no trouble at all to determine which pieces belong on which side of the reversible puzzle.
But.
Once you assemble a state's quarter, you can not move it, except piece by painstaking piece.Because... the pieces don't interlock.
Maybe it's more of an issue around here, where my family of boys likes to tackle puzzles together.Let me tell you, if one child has gone to the trouble to assemble Delaware and another child picks Delaware up to fit it in the larger puzzle, and Delaware crumbles... this is not a peaceful puzzle.
** I uploaded our images into "Customer Images"**
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