 I mean, yeah, this is super budget puzzle for $1.25. Hey guys, so in today's video, I kind of wanted to go back to a Disney puzzle, but not one of our typical ones. Instead, I thought the best thing to do was to finally try out one of the budget puzzles that I picked up from Dollar Tree. Now I've been pretty curious on how the quality is on these pieces. Is there really such a thing as having a great puzzle experience with a puzzle that cost you only $1.25? This will be my first time putting together a budget puzzle. As I had mentioned in my Dollar Tree video, which if you haven't watched it yet, I'll leave the link down below. I was quite surprised to find Disney puzzles in a Dollar Tree. I didn't think it was possible to get anything Disney for $1.25. Who would have thought you could enjoy Disney on a super, super tight budget because, you know, nowadays that's not realistic. So now this puzzle is from the brand Cardinal. It is 500 pieces and it is 11 by 14 inches when it's completed. So it's a fairly small puzzle. First impressions when I saw this puzzle was, okay, this is easy. It's Mickey and Minnie. I like Mickey and Minnie. They're not a little boat ride. There's these oversized plants around them, which is a bit strange, but then again, this is Disney. Of course it's going to be strange like that. This kind of reminded me of like the Mickey shorts from the artwork style and such. Now someone mentioned something to me recently in one of the comments of something that I didn't think of before in terms of when you buy these really inexpensive sets from stores like Dollar General and Dollar Tree. And it had to do with the possibility of missing pieces. Now again, it wasn't something that I thought about because, you know, to me in my head, oh, it's brand new puzzle. They can't be missing pieces, which I know is not true because I'm sure there's always manufacturing errors in new puzzle boxes that I'm sure it happens quite frequently. But, you know, sometimes these kind of stores are, I mean, let's be honest, sometimes they're given the rejects. So I'll be interested to see what my experience will be like with this one. You know what? I'm going to shut up now. Let's open this up and let's see what this is going to be like. All right, guys, let's open this one up. Got a little bit of tape on the top. Pretty straightforward. The box, of course, is a little flimsy, but, you know, again, get what you pay for. All right. Oh, these are tiny little pieces. Check those out. Looks like there's a little puzzle dust in the bag. Let's see. Oh, not that much puzzle dust, to be honest. All right. Oh, immediately. Look what I saw. It's like kind of a little bit of damage on that one there. Again, you get what you pay for, but I mean, for the most part, looking at the image quality of the print, it looks pretty good. The colors are nice and vibrant. It doesn't seem too bad. I mean, yeah, they're thin pieces. You can see the bend there a bit. I mean, it's a pretty thin cardboard, to be honest. I mean, look, $1.25, you're getting 500 pieces. You're getting a Disney branded puzzle. This is good for like a quickie, you know? I'm going to be optimistic. I'm going to stay positive with this. All right. Let's get started. So I'm kind of going to go over the strategy I used to go about this puzzle, and maybe you can take some of this info to help you kind of set up plan of attack for your puzzle. Now considering this was a pretty basic image, I figured my strategy for the sorting would be basically to just separate pieces with common colors, patterns, and of course, picking out any of the pieces that had the main focus of the image, which was Mickey and Minnie and the boat. And you can pretty much use this idea for any puzzle. Let me know if you sort your puzzle in a different way. Now I do have to note that as I was sorting, I found even more pieces that were bent and in pretty bad shape, which wasn't surprising. But overall, aside from that, it was an easy sort. But at some point as I was going through all the pieces, it made me realize that this puzzle was going to turn into a bit of a challenge. My next step was to then start on the edges and I do this pretty much for all my puzzles and that just basically helps me to kind of map out where certain details of the image go within the, I guess you could say the frame or the perimeter of the puzzle. And then I go about piecing together what I know I can get done quickly. So for example, for this one, I pieced together the pink flowers, Mickey and Minnie and the boat. And then I went on to figure out the leaves and the water, which then became the point where the puzzle got pretty challenging. Okay, so this was interesting. I'll start with the negatives so that we can end on a good note. First of all, don't you dare try to move this puzzle because it will lash out at you. I tried to move it a couple of times just to change my angle on my puzzle board and it pretty much crumbled several times. So yeah, don't do that. As I was putting it together, there were a good number of pieces that had bent tabs on them, which would basically make the puzzle pretty much stick up. And I mean like the whole section would lift up from the board no matter how many times I press on it, it would just levitate. These pieces really were very flimsy. I mean if you would stare at it long enough, it would bend in front of your eyes. Now would I give this to a child? Well, that would depend how gentle they are and of course at their age, I probably would say no younger than maybe eight or nine years old. I mean, but then again, this can go for adults as well. I know I could be a persistent beast sometimes when I try to fit pieces in where they don't belong. Now in terms of solving this puzzle, the main details such as Mickey, Minnie, the bow and the pink flowers were pretty quick and easy to put together. But then after that, it did get challenging once I got to the leaves and the water. It was almost like this puzzle was telling me I may be cheap, but I'm not going to be easy. It was hard to differentiate different shapes because for one, they were small. And secondly, their bent shape would kind of throw me off a bit. So I didn't really know how to go about changing my sorting by shape, which is something I usually do when it comes to areas that have the same colors and patterns and whatnot. And of course, there's no poster with this box. You basically get the full image of the puzzle on the back of the box and it's very small. This puzzle took me about five and a half hours to complete. Now on a positive note, to me, I thought the image print was really good. And I'm talking about the pieces where the image was impealing, of course. But I really thought the colors were quite vibrant. It did have a bit of glare on it. But overall, for the price of this puzzle, the color on it was great. For $1.25, you have something that is 500 pieces. You know, it wasn't a boring puzzle. Even though this image is quite basic, it did end up posing a challenge. So it does give you some good puzzling time. And in the end, it's a Disney puzzle. Really, this is something that is excellent to take with you when you're traveling. Let's say you need something to do at a hotel room or your Airbnb. This is a great way to kill some time on the cheap. And you don't even have to worry about losing pieces because it's so inexpensive. It won't really break your heart. Okay, we're done here now. So I'm going to move on to a holiday themed puzzle for the next one, which I am really excited about. So be sure you're subscribed so that you can join in on the puzzle festiveness festivities. Does that make any sense? Anyways, I'll see you guys in the next one.