 I mean, seriously, wouldn't you want to be in this picture? So today I'm going to be working on a puzzle from a brand that I have not tried before. And this was the runner up to the last poll that I had. Now I'm sure most of you realize that I am a huge Disney fan, but another park that I do very much enjoy is Hershey Park. And if you haven't been to Hershey Park before, I highly encourage you to go. They have tons of great roller coasters, great rides in general, tons of great food and desserts, of course, and they have fantastic gift stores. And the last time that I was there, I ended up picking up three puzzles. And I actually have that haul video in my Puzzle Hall playlist, but I'll leave a link down below if you haven't watched it yet. Now I do plan to go again next summer and when I do, I will take you along with me and we'll shop for puzzles together. Because you know, I'm not going to go back to Hershey Park and not pick up more puzzles. I mean, that's kind of crazy, right? So today's puzzle is going to be from the brand Masterpieces. But this one is also an officially licensed product of Hershey. And this one is called Hershey's Candy Shop. It is 1,000 pieces and it is 26.75 by 19.25 inches when it's completed. There is also included in this box a free puzzle guide poster with larger details, which makes solving the puzzles more fun. Um, I 100% agree. And on the back of the box, the bottom kind of talks about Masterpieces and it mentioned that it is made with 100% recycled board and eco-friendly soy-based inks on all puzzles and packaging. They are hand-drawn dies and extra thick puzzle board create fully interlocking pieces and random cut variety. So we might have like another Buffalo Games perfect snap situation going on here. Even has a little story about Milton Hershey. I like how it also has the actual size of the puzzle piece in the back as well. I kind of like to see that to kind of help me get like initial ideas of how long and how difficult a puzzle is going to be for me. Well, there were tons of sets when I was at Hershey Park at the time when I picked this one up. But the reason why I grabbed this one was because I mean, it's a candy shop. I mean, obviously Hershey is all about candy. We got all the candy bars on the side. You got handmade chocolates behind a case. The wall is covered in old posters. I hung my coat up earlier because it was raining obviously and I kind of forgot to take my bag out of the way when I was taking this picture. But anyways, this is a great image and you even have like a little kind of like a little soda bar back there where they have milkshakes going on and stuff. I want to be sat here. I am totally in this image. I could just smell the scent of the chocolate and all the sweets surrounding me. One thing that's a little concerning to me in this image is that there's just happens to be a random puppy on the ground. Just sat there waiting for someone. I don't know if if it's the cashier's dog or or what, but I thought that was a little strange. This is just overall a very fun, very immersive image to me. I mean, seriously, wouldn't you want to be in this picture? Now first impressions looking at this image. For one, you got a lot going on here, but I'm going to be honest and I know I've said this before, but I kind of feel like this image is going to be kind of easy to me. And maybe it's because I feel like with the size of the actual puzzle piece that you're given in the back of this, I feel like I'm going to be able to see a lot of what's going on on that particular piece. So I kind of feel like I'll be able to tell where it belongs fairly quickly. I don't know, maybe I'm just thinking too much of myself. The details here seem pretty straightforward. I feel like, you know, I'm going to be able to tell what pieces belong for the homemade chocolate display case, the candy bars, you know, you have very recognizable posters and logos here. So I honestly don't see how this is going to be extremely difficult for me. But then again, we don't know, right? This might take me 20 years to complete. And, you know, I'll just stop saying how easy something's going to be. Well, I guess you have to sit through the video and find out. But anyways, you know what? This is too exciting. I kind of, I kind of wish they made the box, you know, like scratch and sniff because I feel like I could smell the chocolates. Actually, wait a minute. Hmm, I got me a few here. Kind of get me in the mood, right? You're going to give me the energy I need to finish this puzzle fast. Watch it take me like two weeks. You're also bearing witness to me intentionally giving myself really bad heartburn for the rest of the night. Well, man, that's it. I'm ready to go. All right, guys, I'm ready. Let's open this up and let's get started. All right, guys, let's get this one opened up. We have a few stickers on the back. So let me get my scissors. Here's our poster. Oh, wow. This is a really big poster. Oh, my goodness. I'm going to move this out. Look how big this is. This is fantastic. Talk about poster. They weren't kidding. This is big and it has on the side here some images from more puzzles from their series. This is going to be super darn useful. All right, now let's get to the pieces here. Let's see what we think about this. We have some nice big pieces here as well. And these are fairly thick pieces and in terms of quality, they definitely feel way sturdier than seco pieces. They do have quite a bit of glare to them. They have like that glossy finish on top, but that's all right. I kind of feel like it's not going to be a huge deal considering how sharp the image looks here. Like I can already know where this belongs. I love doing this with puzzles, do you? Or am I just being strange here? Yeah, I mean a lot of the images on these pieces. It's very straightforward, but we'll see, right? I'm really excited about this one. So let's get busy. Okay, so I'm going to be honest here. The sorting was way more challenging than I expected. So I had to kind of come up with a different setup with my sorting. What I basically decided to do was, because there's so much going on in this image in general, in terms of like the candy posters and all the pieces and chocolates and whatnot, I figured the best way to go about this, and this is the first time I'm doing this, was to kind of break it into sections. So for example, in this side here, as you can see, this area, I did it into three sections. So we have the area above the coat rack, which is basically this tray back here. I have the coat rack area with the posters that are within there is going to be this middle tray here, and then the bottom candy case with the register is this bottom tray. And then I kind of did the same thing here with the top. We have this banner here on the top of the image, and that's basically this top tray here, which is, I kind of have it laid out the way you see it in the image. So that's the banner. And then this area in the image, which is basically the bar area is this tray. And then I have this tray back here is the edge pieces. So for this area, since we really have kind of two main things going on, I made this into two sections. So we have kind of split into this top area up here with all the posters is this tray up here. And then I have the candy display case as the bottom tray here. And I think I also included some of this. Actually, no, I definitely included some of these posters and the items on top of the case in this tray as well. This top one is mainly all the rest of the posters here. So that's basically how I have the tray set up for this situation. This might not work for every puzzle set, but to me, I kind of felt like the best way for me to attack this puzzle was to break it up according to areas of the image itself. So I don't know. This is the first time I've done this. So we'll see how well this works. Hit the like button if you've tried sorting your puzzles this way. And if you're new here, let me know if you do ever sort your puzzles or if you just start straight from a pile. It's okay. I used to do that too before I got these trays. I'll put a link down below in case you're interested in picking some of these up for yourself. Anyways, I moved on to the edges by grouping similar pieces and sections and then I assembled from there, but that wasn't actually the end of the sorting. As I moved along the puzzle, I decided my next plan of attack was to pick one tray and resort what was in there. And again, that was mainly because there was just so much going on in this image. I would just pick a particular chocolate poster from the image or a feature from the area I was working on. Then once I felt I had enough pieces, then I'd assemble it and then basically move it into the space where it would be within the edges. Then before I knew it, I had completed a big section of the puzzle and this worked so well that I just kept going with it. I don't know if it was the method that helped me or the design of the image itself, but I feel like I'd have to try this method on a different puzzle to kind of know for sure. But I'd highly recommend you try this and see how well it works for you. And if you do, let me know if it was successful in helping you plow through the completion process or not. And if you see a light every now and then flashing in the video, that is from my new puzzle scoop. Honestly, it was truly fantastic. It gave me just to write light when I needed it. The magnifying lens was excellent for scoping out the finer detailed pieces or just when I couldn't make out what was on the piece. So I'm going to leave another link below for this accessory. If you're interested in grabbing one for yourself, I think I can tell I'm going to be using that scoop quite a lot. All right, now let's start with the negatives. And this is one thing I noticed right from the start when I first opened the puzzle and it's that these pieces do have quite a bit of glare on them. And like any glare issues, wherever your light is hitting from above, it's going to put like a spotlight on the puzzle itself. So that was a bit annoying at times, but I mean the good thing was that the puzzle pieces were big enough so I was able to see them pretty well even with the light hitting funny in certain areas. Another thing about the puzzle pieces, I did have a little damage on some of the pieces, but it was only probably like on two or three of them, which was not bad. Now, one of the things I mentioned earlier in the video was the possibility of this having kind of a perfect snap feel to it. It did not overall and I don't know if this is a very good way to describe it. I can't really put it to words, but this puzzle kind of felt spongy to me. I don't know if that's going to make sense, but I guess it's from the thicker pieces. These were very thick pieces. Now, overall the fit with the pieces was it was okay. It almost felt a bit tight at times and I guess that just has to do with the thicker pieces and I guess that kind of better explains that spongy feel I mentioned, but I did notice in certain areas of the puzzle. Well, in most areas in general, the pieces would kind of lift once they were set in and the area itself would not really sit flat on the table. So there were times where I was just like kind of patting the sections down to see if they would sit flat, but it didn't really, but this issue sorted itself out once the puzzle was pretty much fully completed. Overall, this was a very strong puzzle and I'm going to show you more about that in my next puzzle storage video where I'll also be trying out the new puzzle mat that I got from my Christmas hall. Now, in terms of positives with this puzzle, I did not see any puzzle dust, which was nice because it didn't leave my table dirty. In general, the image print on the puzzle piece is solid. The colors were bold. They weren't faded. It wasn't blurry on top of that. The puzzle was super fun and it was easy and I don't know if that has anything to do with how I went about attacking this puzzle. I truly felt like I was like the master of disaster. Kind of like that feeling of really pushing through a completion process really quickly. And like I was just putting in pieces like no one's business. This puzzle took me about four hours to complete. Like the Eboo puzzle, this made me feel puzzle smart. It made me feel good about my puzzling skills. That's two in a row now. That's not bad. Maybe I am getting better at this. I don't know. Well, now I'm ready to sit and have a drink and buy some more chocolate. If you like this video and want to hear more about my thoughts on other puzzle sets and brands, do consider subscribing and you'll also keep up with any new puzzle tips and tricks that I come up with that make me feel puzzle smart. Anyways guys, thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one.