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?

White Mountain Puzzles: "Fourth of July"

"Fourth of July," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30

This one from White Mountain took me a day longer than I expected it would, and that's entirely due to the trees that make up almost one-third of the puzzle. I wish I knew why it was, but trees give me more trouble than anything else I've ever encountered in a puzzle. It just seems as if my eyes glaze over when I see all those leaves and partial branches...and fitting pieces becomes near-impossible. And that was exactly what happened again.

As you can see from the cover, this is a representation of a Fourth of July celebration in a park setting of at least sixty or seventy years ago. It's the American ideal, of course, and I enjoyed watching all the little scenarios come to life as I began to piece things together. 
(But be warned...take a close look at the puzzle cover and you will notice that the puzzle has been blurred beneath the title "Fourth of July." Those words do not exist on the completed puzzle itself, and anyone building this one will be on her own for that section of the puzzle.

This one works almost as if it's one of the White Mountain collages in that it's best just to start fitting the various characters together without worrying too much where or when they are going to attach to the overall puzzle image. Then when you have enough of them completed, they start fitting to the frame and you can take it from there by either continuing with the separate little images or working the puzzle from the bottom up. I decided to keep doing what had already gotten me to this point by taking every separate scenario as its own little puzzle and worry about attaching all of them later.

And eventually they all start coming together...leaving all those pieces of trees and branches sitting around to laugh at what is to come when I dare pick one of them up for the first time. That's when things came to a streaking halt.

Finally, I got the trees started, but only because I could place some around the crashed kite and the balloons that had escaped earth to head toward the sun and their eventual doom.

Eventually, the trees began to fill in, but it would be another three hours or so before I would finally finish that last big section in the center of the puzzle. If you had asked me about the difficulty of this one before I started on the trees, I would have told you that it was pretty easy. But now? I would tell you that it's a pretty good challenge, and a whole lot of fun.

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

Goodwill Store Finds (Plus one from Half Price Books): 6 from Springbok and 1 each from White Mountain, Rose Art, & Eurographics

"At the Wee Folks' Fair," Springbok #5930, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

In what has become a more or less typical week, I added way more puzzles to my collection than I completed. In fact, I added ten puzzles and worked throutgh about one-and-a-half...meaning that the to-do stack is now officially out of control. I'm going to feature nine of those puzzles in this post - the tenth one is a review puzzle that I'll be featuring in a few days - because they clearly show why I'm so addicted to checking the local Goodwill Stores for puzzles. You just never know what you might find. (Of course, you also never know how many pieces are actually in the box, but that's got to be acceptable to you going in or you shouldn't be buying used puzzles in the first place.)

"At the Wee Folks' Fair" is a Springbok puzzle from the period in which the Hallmark company owned Springbok. I'm guessing that it's from the eighties but there is no copyright year on the box so that's just an educated guess.

"Santa's Delivery" & "Eyes of Color," Springbok 2004 and 2008 puzzles, 1000 pieces

"Feathered Friends" & "The Toy Shoppe," Springbok 2004 and 2006 puzzles

"Butterfly Collection," Springbok 2004 puzzle, 500 pieces

I stumbled upon these five Springbok puzzles one morning at the Goodwill Store I most often visit. I had been there only the morning before, so these must have come in together sometime later on the day of my initial visit. Needless to say, I snapped up the lot of them, and the bargain price of seven dollars for the five helped seal the deal quickly before someone else noticed them.

The particularly interesting thing about these five is that they were obviously produced for the French Canadian market up in Quebec. Last time I checked, Quebec was still requiring that everything be labeled in both French and English - and these puzzles are all packaged that way. The picture below shows the "French side" of the boxes:

The slightly different (in translation) puzzle titles 

I also added these two puzzles from a different Goodwill outlet. The "Kodacolor Puzzle" from Rose Art has never been opened despite being some 27 years old, and the White Mountain one, despite having been previously worked, looks like new.

Unnamed Winter Scene, Rose Art, 500 pieces, 13 x 19 inches

"Candy Wrappers," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

And, last but not least, the one shown below is the only new puzzle I purchased this week. I got it from Half Price Books and was able to use a 20% discount coupon on their already reduced price, so it cost right at ten dollars with tax. I particularly like it because it features so many of my favorite authors, writers I've been reading for my whole life - and the images are a good bit larger than the impression you get from the box cover.

"Famous Writers," Eurographics, 1000 pieces, 19 x 27 inches

White Mountain "Precious Days" - Somewhat Less than a Precious Experience

"Precious Days," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

I'm not even certain where I first saw a picture of "Precious Days," all I can say for sure is that I wanted to own a copy from the time that I got that first glimpse of it. But, because I already own a whole lot of unworked puzzles, I didn't rush right out and buy a copy. Even so, it was never far from my mind when I was looking at new puzzles on various websites and in the local shops that sell jigsaw puzzles here in the Houston area. And then one day, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered "Precious Days" for myself - only to place it on the shelf it sat on for the next three or four months waiting for me to pay some attention to it.

Finally that time came, but sadly enough, the experience was less than I hoped for.

I started this one in my usual manner: getting the puzzle-frame built and then moving on to the most logical starting points the puzzle offered me. In this case, the focal point of the puzzle is the big white house and the two side buildings, so I pulled those colors and started putting together the structures.

I was surprised at how quickly the house, barn, and side building came together and how relatively easy it was to link them all the way across the horizontal confines of the frame. Next, it was time to start on some of the rock wall and all that grass in the foreground of the image - and that's when things slowed down a bit.

So I decided to alternate working between the grass and the darker sections of the sky at the top of the puzzle. I found the pace picking up a bit at this point, and that's probably because I wasn't lulling myself to sleep by endlessly staring at only one section of the puzzle. Alternating sections, flipping the puzzle-axis on its ear, etc. are techniques that always seem to jumpstart me when I begin to bog down on a puzzle, and it worked again.

This may not at first glance appear to be much progress, but the sky was coming together all the way across the puzzle.

At this point, I was alternating between the top and bottom sections of the puzzle, and the whole image started to squeeze itself together into one coherent image.

With almost all the grass and rock wall in, I was really starting to feel good about "Precious Days." Little did I know that the rug was about to get pulled right out from under me when I realized that I was really working on a 999-piece puzzle, not a 1000-piecer.

So after 2-3 hours per day for eight days, this is what I end up with...an absolutely stunningly beautiful image with a little white star above one of the big trees in the puzzle. Problem is, of course, is that that "little white star" is a missing piece, meaning that this puzzle will never really be completed - and that instead of finding a display spot on my study wall, this one is destined to be exiled back into its little box some time in the next twenty minutes or so.

Sadly, this whole puzzle-building experience did not come close to meeting White Mountain's normal quality level. In addition to the missing piece, I must have glue-repaired almost three dozen pieces from which the image was peeling from one piece-extension or another. I believe that this damage was most likely done in the separation process because no single piece required more than one repair. It is likely that an overused, dull cutting tool caused this to happen, and it had to be obvious to someone at White Mountain that there was a problem when so many of the pieces did not cleanly separate from their brothers and sisters. This one really should never have been shipped in this condition (and by the way, I got this one directly from White Mountain, not from a retailer).

White Mountain is still among my favorite puzzle companies, but my confidence in their quality control took a hit with this one.

White Mountain "Precious Days": Reality vs. The Picture in My Mind

"Precious Days," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

I love this puzzle; I swear that I do. And this is how it still looks in my mind when I think about it. 

But a harsh bit of reality struck me a few minutes ago when I snapped this "in progress picture."  Suddenly, I realized that the last 225 or so pieces are going to take a bit longer to place than I thought  when I sat down to the puzzle board two hours ago. But it's going to happen sooner or later, I guarantee you that.

With approximately 225 pieces of sky and sparsely-leaved trees to go

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

"The Toy Store" (by White Mountain): Every Kid's Dream

"The Toy Store," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

It's been a while since I've built a White Mountain puzzle, so I was really looking forward to this one. As it turned out, this one would not be typical of the other White Mountain puzzles I've worked in the last few months, mainly because this is one of that company's "larger pieces" puzzles. I had not realized just how different from the other White Mountain puzzles I've done that one change would make this one.

The biggest impact of the larger pieces was in the way they fit together. At times, the space between adjacent pieces was annoyingly wide and I had to go back and apply a bit more force to them to get the gap to close up a bit. The fit was so loose, in fact, that when the corners of the puzzle inadvertently slipped over the edges of my puzzle board, the pieces would often come apart - and I really messed up at one point when I let that happen while a corner of the board was over open air. About thirty pieces dropped almost three feet and spread everywhere, costing me about ten frustrating minutes putting them back in place. The looser fit associated with these larger pieces also means that the "lines" between the separate pieces are much more obvious than usual when looking at the finished piece...something else I'm not crazy about.

The only surprise that I got in the initial sort was finding that this one would be near-impossible to sort by color (other than the store's wood floor, the red dress, and the yellow dress).  But that would not turn out to be a problem at all since the larger pieces made it easier to pick up a piece and know almost immediately what general section of the puzzle it belonged to. As usual, though, I missed half-a-dozen edge pieces in that first pass through the box.

It seemed logical to start with some of the figures in the store, mothers and their children, but I could not wait to build the six White Mountain puzzles that are prominently displayed on the shelves of this toy store, so I started there. (Those are actual White Mountain puzzles, including even two that I have on my shelves right now for later fun.)

As you can see, I worked on a few of the shoppers and even a couple of toys, but I kept coming back to those tiny puzzles. Go figure.

Things were really coming together at this point.

This is the point at which I started feeling like I was in the homestretch. The remaining pieces, even the wood floor, started coming faster and faster to their final resting places, and the puzzle was complete before I knew it.

Overall, this was a really fun puzzle to work, bringing back lots of great memories along the way since I am a child of that era. It is a relatively fast-paced puzzle that offers sufficient challenge for most puzzlers, so I'm going to put this one on my "keeper" shelf for revisiting in a year or two (like that ever really happens).