All About Puzzles from the Magic Puzzle Company
Have you heard The Magic Puzzle Company?
I do a LOT of jigsaw puzzles (you can see some of my favorites here) and in the past few months, I started getting more and more messages suggesting I try out a Magic Puzzle.
Well. . . that was all the encouragement I needed and a few days later, The Happy Isles was on its way to my front porch.
The Magic Puzzle Company launched on Kickstarter in spring of 2020 (a fantastic time for puzzles, truly) and had nearly $3.5 MILLION pledged in their 30 day run!
Now you can buy all six of their puzzles on Amazon (they don’t even sell them on their own site) and all of their puzzles are 1000 pieces.
If you’re at all curious (i.e. a puzzle nerd like me), I highly recommend watching their Kickstarter video – it’s just a couple of minutes long and gives you a really great look at why these puzzles are so special.
One of the main creators is a magician and you see that love for visual surprises and attention to detail all through their puzzles.
Here are a few things that set Magic Puzzle Company puzzles apart:
All About The Magic Puzzle Company
- No puzzle dust. I frankly don’t feel overly bothered by puzzle dust but apparently this is a BIG selling point for many people.
- Wide variety of puzzle piece shapes. You know those puzzles where every piece is a two prong, two hole piece? This is not that puzzle. The pieces are all different shapes which makes it extra fun.
- Original art. Pretty much every puzzle I do is original art (I’m not here for a stock art puzzle), so this is less of a selling point for me but they ARE really cool designs.
- 50+ Easter Eggs to find in each puzzle. These puzzles are kind of like doing a Where’s Waldo. There are so many tiny details to look for and there is a card included with a checklist so you can keep an eye out for things. This really adds some fun to the puzzle along the way.
- Edge pieces all the way through. Instead of just a single edge around four sides, a Magic Puzzle Company puzzle has multiple sections, each with edge pieces and then those sections fit together to make one puzzle.
- The pieces are each made to be interesting. One of the makers’ complaints about normal puzzles is that the overall image might be beautiful but each individual piece is kind of dull, which is a bummer when you spend basically all your time with a puzzle dealing with individual pieces. Each of the individual pieces of a Magic Puzzle are interesting on their own and have been cut so you don’t have the details all falling between the piece cracks.
- The surprise ending! This is the real magic of Magic Puzzle Company puzzles and I’ll tell you about it below with a major spoiler warning so if you want to be surprised, you can just skip it!
Okay, so let’s talk about the surprise ending. This is the thing that really sets their puzzles apart. In their Kickstarter video, they talked about how it’s kind of a letdown with most puzzles how you put the final piece in and then . . .it’s done.
They wanted something special at the ending and they’ve put together a clever little trick. It’s the same trick across each of their puzzles, so once you’ve done one, you’ll know what to expect on the others, although watching it happen will still be a delight.
If you don’t want it spoiled, skip this section!
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When you’re done with your Magic Puzzle, you open the end envelope. It’ll have a card with instructions to rearrange the sections of the puzzles and suddenly your puzzle which was a full rectangle will now be more of a square with a hole in the center.
The envelope will have another set of puzzle pieces (around 80 pieces) and you put together THOSE puzzle pieces – which you don’t have an image for – and they’ll complete the puzzle and add a new surprising twist to the story the puzzle image was telling you. For instance, in The Happy Isles puzzle, a giant squid appears in the middle section, ready to destroy all the little islands from the rest of the puzzle.
It’s a fun twist on a normal jigsaw puzzle and then when you’ve done it, you suddenly notice all sorts of hints in the original puzzle that suggested what might be coming.
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It was definitely on the more tricky side for a 1000 piece puzzle – it took us several days to finish it, even with both Bart and I working on it quite a lot (Bart’s not usually a puzzle do-er so it was fun that he was so involved in this one).
I’ll definitely be trying more of them out – if you have a favorite, let me know (I’m eyeing the Mystic Maze one next!).
And if you have other questions about the Magic Puzzle Company, let me know and I’m happy to try to answer!
So- I’m not a person who does puzzles by looking at the box lid/picture of the puzzle (I like the extra challenge)…BUT because of that, when we did this puzzle we did it wrong and had no magic surprise ending. It made us so sad! It was still a ton of fun and we actually were so motivated by this puzzle that we did it in 24 hours (probably a record for us!). SO, whenever I have gifted or loaned this puzzle I always tell people that they actually want to use the picture. And of course they all LOVE it! Also- I have to say I’m not sure I’d do more of them because like you said, the effect is the same. I wish they’d come up with a way to maybe have it be different for each puzzle. Oh well. I still highly recommend these!!!
I’m a huge magic puzzles fan. I’ve completed 5 of the 6 that have been released and I’m really hoping they release 3 more this winter like they did last winter. I don’t mind knowing the twist because although the gimmick is the same, the artwork is so different for each that the added part is still a fun surprise. I got into jigsaw puzzles at the start of Covid and they’ve remained a great relaxing hobby for me. Magic puzzles are by far my favorites!