Planet Puzzle: Am@zon prize puzzle boxed lot

 

After the last Mystery Monday, I decided it was time for yet another new feature that could keep me going for a very long time, on puzzles. In keeping with the usual subject material of this blog, I'm starting with the cheap and semi-anonymous. This time, however, I'm working with something new that can be purchased online, because as I keep saying, some things are immortal. Here's the lineup.

I picked up this one in the last few weeks, when it started to look like my area would be on lockdown again, along with a five-pound bag of candy. I had looked through a lineup of bulk lots for sale online, mostly from different companies and sellers that were almost certainly getting their stock from the same factories. I chose one that was a little cheaper and had a lot less material that was junk even by my standards. I was a little surprised when it arrived in an actual box. More intriguingly, it had a company name "Hi-Partner", albeit probably a bulk buyer rather than a manufacturer, and packaging that seemed aimed at adults. As seen above, it's labelled "Fidget Toys", which would usually have me at "Fidget", and an extra bit of promotional text, reading in full, "Stress and Anxiety Relief." It left me wondering if the target market is employers trying to reward employees, without having enough money to put the company name and logo on their junk.

In any event, it turned out about half the box were squishy rubber toys I didn't bother to photograph. That still left a good selection of puzzles, without having 10 or 12 each. Of these, the ones I had been after to begin with were a set of puzzle balls and cubes made on the same pattern as a vending-machine toy featured on the Mystery Monday puzzle installment. Per the awe-inspiring resource Rob"s Puzzle Page, the pattern came from a patent by Irving Steinhardt, originally used for a souvenir sold at the 1939 World's Fair. Of course, I wasn't expecting a new challenge, but I like the aesthetics of plastic puzzles well enough to pay for a few more on a different scale. Here's a few pics, including a lineup of the pieces.

We've discovered a planet of strange monuments, all with the inscription "CHINA"....

You should be able to see from the lineup just how consistent the pattern is, even when converted from ball to cube. What you won't see without handling the things is how cheap they look and feel. There's places with rough edges that won't be obvious without very close inspection, and some pieces require a bit of force to go in, especially the first few times putting them together. Even with these allowances, I have literally been afraid of breaking them, especially the spindly bits on the fourth and fifth pieces. An upside, I can still do the gag with the key piece.

The items that quickly proved most interesting were a set of "snake" puzzles. It's supposed to be possible to create your own shapes, but so far I haven't got much past straightening them out or putting them back into the polyhedron they start in. Again, they feel cheap, but the motion is smooth enough that you don't need to push hard enough to risk real damage. They also look very nice. Here's some pics.

On the other hand, the one total washout here are a set of Rubik's cubes. It would seem like a very simple thing to copy the design, but there's complicated mechanics if you think about it. Still, I've seen keychain-sized ones in vending machines that looked decent enough, so it shouldn't be too hard to meet a minimum standard of quality. These, however, are so cheap and loose that the parts almost slide under their own power. What's tricky (and makes me think twice about the capsule toys) is that they come wrapped in plastic that holds them tight. Even on a flat surface, they still look okay, put as soon as you pick them up, it's a horror show. I personally have never been any good with these things, but I liked the idea of having one on hand to play around with. I nd no such pleasure in ones as crude as these. Here's a pic to show just how bad it is.

The rest of the lot are a set of what I think of as "ball bearing" puzzles, which I now know are descended from the original pinball machines. I remember having some of these around when I was a kid. In the 1970s and '80s, they still came elaborate and sophisticated enough to be offered as competition with the Paleolithic handheld video games. As electronic games reached tolerable quality, they faded away into cheap prizes that usually broke quickly. For anyone with my level of experience, these are middle of the road, clearly sturdy but with a tendency  for major components to go askew with a good shake. The one I've really tried out looks like a mound with two spiral ramps; it's a genuine test of problem-solving and dexterity to get the ball to the top, which also takes advantage of the three-dimensional space. There's a seesaw that's worth a second look, though it strikes me as more gimmicky. The other two are simply random, especially the black one, which you just have to shake untilthe ball goes in the single cup in the center. Here's a lineup of the lot.

All in all, it's a bit of a letdown for the relatively high price, but still some good fun. It's of further interest that these are being sold for adults, I suspect in the further hope of appealing to nostalgia. I have to say as someone who grew up with these things, I don't see it apart from the puzzle balls. These are nice to try out, t least for a while, and they were never meant to be more than that.