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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Giant Galapagos tortoise 3-D animal puzzle

Have you tried these wonderful 3-D plastic animal puzzles yet? They're among our most popular items. Fun for kids on summer trips, and fun for indoors entertainment when the weather gets too unpleasant to stay outside. I find this tortoise one of our more challenging. We have approximately 40 animal puzzles in stock. Most come in plastic eggs, shells, ice blocks, etc. In other words, the packaging is a snap-together container that you can keep as a way to store the pieces if you decide to take it apart rather than leave it out as a showpiece. The cases are also wonderful for packing to take the puzzles on trips.

I said the tortoise was one of the more challenging, and it is. Most of the bulky animals such as the hippo or one of our two elephants are a bit tough because there are some interior pieces. With the bulky animals you sometimes need to pull off a side, front, back, or top once it's partially put together to get the interior pieces into where they belong. With the thinner animals, most if not all of the pieces have exterior paint and that helps match the pieces up, and you also don't have to maneuver the outside pieces while working on the inside. It's hard to describe, but you'll see what I mean. The snakes, for instance, are reasonably easy, but each animal presents some sort of problem to solve. THE most difficult is our tarantula! Try figuring out which jointed leg goes where - and yes, they have to go in the right sockets, because otherwise the spider simply won't fit together. Kids usually do better with these puzzles than the adults! Check them out, they're lots of fun. And once put together, they look like real animals, so you can add them to your collection of collectible toy plastic animals!