Thirteen Puzzle Companies Ranked by Overall Quality

I have added a formal review of Buffalo puzzles to the "Company Reviews" page and revised (as a result of more exposure to their puzzles) the numeric totals of a couple of others. I have broken point-ties strictly by a gut feel for which for which company's product I would likely reach for first.

That said, I do use a point-system to rank the companies, and there is still surprisingly little difference along that 35-point scale in many cases. It seems that most companies are strong in some qualities and just average or even weak in others, so the overall ranking can boil down to only one or two category "misses" on the parts of the companies. Some companies produce too many damaged pieces, some produce poor colors, or too loose a fit, etc., but whatever it is, they almost all have one or two weak areas.

I rate eight separate categories from 1-4 points each, and offer up to three possible bonus points for exceptional quality in any of the rating-categories. That means that a perfect score would be 35 points (and no company has approached that number yet). This thirteen-company ranking is based on total points (with the percentage of a perfect score also shown strictly for informational purposes}. 

More reviews and list adjustments will follow as I gain more experience with the puzzles of other companies.

Puzzle Company Ranking List:

1. White Mountain -   29 points, 83%
2. Aquarius -   28 points, 80%
3. The Jigsaw Puzzle Factory - 28 points, 80%
4. Ravensburger - 28 points, 80%
5. Cobble Hill - 27 points, 77%
6. Buffalo - 26 points, 74%
7. SunsOut -   26 points, 74%
8. Dowdle Folk Art -   26 points, 74%
9. Hogan's Harbor - 25 points, 71%
10. Eurographics - 24 points, 69%
11. Ceaco -  23 points, 66%
12. Hasbro - 23 points, 66%
13. Puzz3D (MB) - 15 points, 43%

Detailed Reviews for Each Company Ranked - Click Here


I invite your comments and/or mini-reviews on any of the puzzle companies I've ranked to this point. Just attach your thoughts below in the comments section and I will copy them to my review of the same company. Your words will appear here in the original post AND as an attachment to my review. 

Thoughts, folks?

Twelve Puzzle Companies Ranked by Overall Quality

I am adding reviews of two puzzle producers today to my ranking list of ten companies previously posted: The Jigsaw Puzzle Factory and Hasbro.

I use a point-system to rank the companies, and there is surprisingly little difference in point-totals in many cases. It seems that most companies are strong in some qualities and just average in others, so it's all boils down to one or two category "misses" on the parts of the companies as to where they will rank. Some companies produce too many damaged pieces, some produce poor colors, or too loose a fit, etc., but it seems that they all have at least one major weakness.

I rate eight separate categories from 1-4 points each, and offer up to three possible bonus points for exceptional quality in any of the rating-categories. That means that a perfect score would be 35 points (and no company has approached that number yet). This ten-company ranking is based on total points (with the percentage of a perfect score also shown for informational purposes}. 

More reviews and list adjustments will follow as I gain more experience with the puzzles of other companies.

Puzzle Company Ranking List:

1. White Mountain -   29 points, 83%
2. SunsOut -   29 points, 83%
3. Aquarius -   28 points, 80%
4. Ravensburger - 28 points, 80%
5. The Jigsaw Puzzle Factory - 28 points, 80%
6. Dowdle Folk Art -   27 points, 77%
7. Cobble Hill - 27 points, 77%
8. Hogan's Harbor - 25 points, 71%
9. Eurographics - 24 points, 69%
10. Ceaco -  23 points, 66%
11. Hasbro - 23 points, 66%
12. Puzz3D (MB) - 15 points, 43%

Detailed Reviews for Each Company Ranked - Click Here

Six Puzzle Companies Ranked by Overall Quality: White Mountain to Puzz3D

Since starting Puzzle Fanatics, I've had sufficient experience with the recent puzzles of several companies to compare the overall quality of their products. My "Company Reviews" page, in fact, now includes full reviews of puzzles from six different companies, so I've decided to post my first puzzle company ranking list. And, I'm close to feeling comfortable about reviewing a handful of other companies, so I'll continue to add to the review page and ranking list as those reviews are ready.

I use a point-system to rank the companies, and there is surprisingly little difference in poing-totals in some cases. It seems that most companies are strong in some qualities and just average in others, so it's all boils down to one or two category "misses" on their parts. I rate eight separate categories from 1-4 points each, and offer up to three possible bonus points for exceptional quality in any of the rating-categories. That means that a perfect score would be 35 points (and no company has approached that number yet). This six-company ranking is based on total points with the percentage of a perfect score also shown. Remember that more reviews and list adjustments will follow when I feel comfortable with doing initial ratings for other companies. 

Puzzle Company Ranking List:

1. White Mountain -   31 points, 89%
2. SunsOut -   31 points, 89%
3. Dowdle Folk Art -   30 points, 86%
4. Aquarius -   29 points, 83%
5. Ceaco -   24 points, 69%
6. Puzz3D (MB) -   15 points, 43%

Detailed Reviews for Each Company Ranked - Click Here

Puzzles I Don't Have Yet: Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

"Sgt. Peppers Lone Hearts Club Band," Aquarius, 1000 pieces, 20 x 27 inches

This is another of those puzzles that I let get away when it was still readily available at retail prices...and now that I wish I had it, I'm seeing it priced on the secondary market at prices approaching $70. So needless to say, it will probably be sitting on my "Puzzles I Don't Have Yet" list for a long time.

Aquarius makes a high quality puzzle, and the image looks like it would be a lot of fun to put together, but the real reason I want this one is because just looking at that old album cover brings back some really great memories. I became a fan of the Beatles even before they first hit the shores of the US in 1964, and I have vivid memories of sitting in front of the TV set several times to watch them on the Ed Sullivan Show (in black and white). And then, after seeing them live in Houston in 1965, I was hooked forever. That particular "concert" is the most exciting one I've ever attended and is unlikely ever to be topped. I put "concert" in quotation marks because it was so noisy in the old Sam Houston Coliseum that it was often hard to hear clearly what was happening on stage. Luckily, I found a soundboard recording of that very concert about ten years ago, so I know now just how great that performance really was.

There are several Beatles puzzles kicking around the puzzle market but this one is my favorite.

Loony Tunes Puzzle - Seven Days of Fun

"That's All Folks," Aquarius Puzzles, 1000 pieces, 27 x 20 inches

I finished this Looney Tunes puzzle a couple of days ago and enjoyed the whole process from start to finish. The Looney Tunes cartoons were my favorites as a kid because they were so much more fun to me than the sugary sweet Disney cartoons. Mr. Disney was a marketing genius, but in my opinion, the Looney Tunes were generally better - I know they always made me laugh, usually out loud.

I could tell from the start that this was going to be a relatively easy puzzle, and it's easy to see why. This is one of those puzzles that an initial sorting effort will easily divide into just a few primary colors. The only color-blending is in that large pile on the bottom left, the red and black pieces that blend together to frame all of the cartoon characters. Those pieces could be challenging at times, but in the end, they came together fairly quickly too. 

As usual, I started with pulling all of the border pieces and completing the frame before moving on to the rest of the puzzle.

Because the color patterns were pretty obvious, I next pulled the smallest of the piles, the green ones, and began to put together the Frog and Alien characters. When the green was gone, I was left with filling in with all the connecting pieces of other colors.

Next up was the yellow pile. That gave me all of Tweety, the brush on the Alien's helmet, and most of the words "Looney" and "Tunes." Things were starting to come together nicely at this point.

Then it was time to begin Daffy Duck and Sylvester the cat by tapping into the orange and white pieces a bit. It would prove to be a long time, however, before I would complete these two characters.

Next, was a little progress on the Coyote character, a character that would keep me busy for a bit longer than I expected it would - the guy had very long ears.

Then it was finally time to start working Bugs Bunny into the picture. Because Bugs is the central character in the piece he is a good bit larger than everyone other than Sylvester the Cat.  

This is the point at which I started to feel I  was coming to the homestretch of the puzzle, little realizing how long those red and black blended pieces were still going to take me to complete.

This one was more fun than most, probably because it brought back so many good memories. The quality of the puzzle is excellent: thick pieces, bright colors, a large but manageable size, and NO missing pieces. My only complaint is that the pieces did not always fit together quite as tightly as I prefer them to fit.

Overall Grade: Excellent

Aquarius Mystery Solved - Doh!

"That's All Folks," Aquarius Puzzles, 1000 pieces, 20 x 28

Well...this just stinks. I was really enjoying this puzzle, and it was going very quickly because it's largely made up of primary colors. I knew that when I started working on the "words" in the puzzle that things would slow down, and I was more correct about that than I realized. The yellow pieces with red lines look very much alike when chopped up and spread out into one pile, and that was bad enough. But I finally got into a good rhythm and worked my way through all the pieces, only to find that there aren't enough of them there to finish the word "Tunes." 

I am at least TWO, and probably THREE, pieces short in this puzzle already, and I know this at the 400-piece mark on my progress toward completing it. Believe me, these yellow pieces just jump out at you, so if they were still in the remaining stack of pieces, they would be easy to find. Now, no matter what happens with the rest of the pieces, the puzzle is doomed to have a big, very noticeable, hole in it. That takes away much of the fun of completing this one now, but I imagine I'll trudge on to the finish line anyway.

Note: This is only the second Aquarius puzzle I've ever built, both of them bought brand new. The first one was a 1500-piece Coca Cola posters puzzle that had one piece missing in the left vertical border (and again, I knew this very early on because I always complete the puzzle's "border" first). Now this one has at least two pieces missing. 

EDIT: Lesson learned...look closely at the picture and you will see what I just noticed finally: by sliding the "E" down to the "S" I get a clean fit and all the pieces are suddenly accounted for. Doh! (The lefthand side of this row was tied in to the border and I thought I had the right angle...nope.)

Tweety, Daffy, Bugs, Sylvester & Friends

"That's All Folks," 1000 pieces, Aquarius Puzzles, 20 x 28

My current puzzle is one featuring some of my favorite cartoon characters from way-back-when.  I have always preferred the Looney Tunes cartoons of the day over those of the slicker, sweeter Disney ones, so this one jumped off the shelf and into my hands when I spotted it at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago. 

Aquarius consistently produces high-quality puzzles, and this one is no exception. On this particular puzzle, though, the colors are the thing: bright primary colors faithfully reproduced to closely match those on the box. As I've often noticed, however, the Aquarius boxes have a little quirk about them in that the cover photo never seems to be cropped to match exactly the actual image produced by the puzzle pieces.  That can be more than a little confusing sometimes.

Anyway, the basic sorting is all done, and it's time to start assembling the end pieces - and, if things run the way they usually do, I'll be going back into the sorted stacks to find the five or six end pieces I missed on the first pass through.