Brew Up Some Neopet Fun With Milton Bradley's 'Scorchio Scientist' Puzzle
Written: Apr 10 '06
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Pros: Part of a great series, fun to build, high quality pieces.
Cons: Hard to find in retail stores, don’t really like the look of the Scorchio.
The Bottom Line: What's that Scorchio up to now? Brewing up a morphing potion? Working on a spell to enchant Jhudora? You won't know until you build the puzzle!
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| Freak369's Full Review: Milton Bradley 100 Piece Scorchio Scientist Puzzle |
Being an addict at the Neopets website isn’t easy. Outside of the chiding I take from people because it’s erroneously labeled as a ‘kid site’, my friends really dislike that I plan the third of every month around the half price sale that they have in the shops although I have missed it the past couple of months. Neopets is an entertaining site and over the past few years they have managed to strike deals with places like Limited Too and Wizards of The Coast to carry their products including plushies, games, trading cards and more. I only have to assume that the deal with Milton Bradley wasn’t as profitable as they thought because the puzzles in this series didn’t stick around in stores for all that long. When I first saw the puzzles I was head over heels about them but was a bit put off by the price they were asking for them. Before I knew it the shelves were empty and the barren spots had been replaced with other items, it seemed like I lucked out on these until I saw someone selling them at eBay.
Milton Bradley Neopets 100 Piece Scorchio Scientist Puzzle
When built this measures 10 x 13 so it’s big enough that you can see a lot of the detail of the image but no so big that it takes up the entire table. There is a lot of darker colors to the puzzle so you’d be wise to keep the box handy as a point of reference to work from. The pieces are a little larger than normal puzzle pieces so they are a nice size for younger kids to work with; this does have an age recommendation of five and older because of the possibility that one of the wee ones might start chewing on them. Out of the four puzzles in this series, this one and the Lab Ray have the most repetitive background detail making it a little harder to build but certainly not something that is impossible. Thankfully once you build it the pieces sit flat and there’s no buckling or uneven spots. Some times puzzles that are made for kids aren’t exactly of the highest quality and don’t stay together very well. I really wish that there was some insert sheet with a picture of the puzzle on it, it would have been easier to use that to build the puzzle with than to have the box around. Maybe they’ll consider that when they go to release the next series.
I have to be honest here, I don’t really like the Scorchio in this puzzle; he looked more like a bird than a Scorchio [meaning he doesn’t really look like a dragon]. Part of that might be that huge beak like think on his face; I like my Scorchio’s cute, not mean looking. Alas, he is working hard in what looks like a laboratory trying to mix up something in a potion bottle. This ties in with some of the things that you come across at the Neopet website; magic potions to cure or help in battle, morphing potions and things like that. Some of the things that really make this a challenging puzzle to build are the billows of smoke that rise up on the sides of the puzzle. The bottom sections are a little bit tough too but as long as you have the box, you should be able to build it without getting too frustrated. When you go to open the box make sure you cut it from the bottom instead of trying to open it from the sides, it is sealed on the bottom and if you cut it with a sharp knife, you won’t destroy the box in the process.
The Four Puzzle Series
There are other Neopet puzzles out there but in this series there are four to choose from; the Geran King [also known as the Geran Knight], Aisha Princess, Lab Ray Blumaroo and this one, the Scorchio Scientist. They are all nice looking when they are built and as I mentioned in the one for the Lab Ray, I am hoping to find a frame large enough so that I can have all four of them in one frame. There are smaller 50 piece puzzles for younger kids and rumor has it that there will be larger ones coming out that are harder to build and have more than one character per puzzle. Let’s just hope that they are in stock and on shelves soon and have a longer selling period than these!
Price
I was pretty lucky to find a seller online that had the four puzzles for one price; while I wasn’t all that happy to have to pay twenty dollars for all four of them the seller included the price of shipping them in that amount. I first spotted these at K-Mart for the obscene price of $4.99 each; as much as I love Neopets and openly admit that I am addicted to the site, there’s just no way I could see me paying that price. It still works out to five dollars a piece but I was running out of options since most of the regular stores stopped stocking them and I didn’t want to get shut out. It is a nice looking puzzle but to me it’s not worth what they were selling them for.
The Bottom Line
Sure I could have tried to find these for less but I wasn’t going to take a chance of losing out on getting all four of these at once. The overall design of the puzzle is nice so it is something that adults can have fun building too. You end up with a well manufactured puzzle that doesn’t have pieces that stick up or pop out of place and if you want to keep it ‘built’ you can use some puzzle glue on the back or plain old masking tape. If you use anything stronger than that, if you do decide to take it apart, it could rip off the back layer of the pieces. Chances are most retail stores won’t have these puzzles stocked but if you do happen to come across them at a good price, don’t resist picking them up because their price is only going to increase over time.
On a side note, I do want to mention that this puzzle doesn’t come with any type of TCG or Rare Item Code that you can redeem at the site. I got a few emails asking me about this when I posted up the review of the Blumaroo Lab Ray review so I wanted to mention that. Sometimes online vendors will misrepresent things to make them seem more attractive and sometimes they just cut and paste things from other sites or other products. You get a nice puzzle but that’s about it, so if you see someone advertising this with some added perk like a card, code or plushie, chances are you are going to get ripped off unless it is something that they themselves are adding to the offer.
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2006 Freak369
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Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): see review
Type of Toy: Puzzle
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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