4D Cityscape Toronto, Canada Puzzle

The item was supposedly new, sold by a third-party seller and fulfilled by Amazon. It came shrink wrapped, and all pieces were enclosed in bags. However, several building locations on the poster were marked with a permanent marker. I also found what appears to be a building in the level one bag. The box was a little banged up, too. I started working on the puzzle before I noticed the used poster. For those considering the purchase, the shape of the pieces all appear to be identical, which makes it difficult to put the water areas together. It’s hard to tell what’s right or wrong. If you like difficult puzzles, you may enjoy it, but it’s not your typical 1,000 piece puzzle.

For an architecture/city planning geek like me, this was a truly awesome way to spend a few hours. It was great to see the architectural history of Toronto unfold. The puzzle did have a few flaws that I'd hope its creators might be able to rectify in the future, but I felt that its educational value outweighed them.Criticisms:*Some (very few) of the paper puzzle pieces do have a tendency to separate from their foam backing.*The pieces themselves do not come in a large variety of shapes, which makes the puzzle significantly more difficult. Your Mileage May Vary on whether that's bad or good.*A little more realistic coloring of some of the buildings would have been nice; Scotia Plaza is deep red in real life, but silver in this puzzle. First Canadian Place and Rogers Centre are accurately white, though.*The most annoying and disappointing problem occurred as I was placing the little buildings into the puzzle. Background: There are actually two puzzles, one forming the base image, and another that locks on top of the first, and which features slots or holes into which the buildings are placed. This upper puzzle features a particular, extra-large piece where the densest concentration of buildings goes, and then mostly regular-size puzzle pieces surrounding it. This piece, and some of the other large pieces, had a tendency to warp as more buildings were placed into them, up to the point where the largest one's edges bent up high enough on one side that the surrounding pieces would not connect to it if they were flattened back down in contact with the "foundation" puzzle. This caused many buildings to lean over, unless they were pushed back down further through the upper puzzle pieces. This should be considered a major flaw in the product's design, but I imagine the simplest solution to be that the slots the buildings sit in should be manufactured just a very slight bit wider.Praise:*The puzzle shows the names of the city streets, which is highly informative, and makes the puzzle helpfully easier, and they also glow in the dark, which is a little bit awesome.*The act of placing the buildings into the puzzle in chronological order gave me a much better understanding of how the city was built in reality. It was very cool to see the effects in time and space of various architectural styles, technological advancements, and planning philosophies.*Makes a neat conversation piece once completed.*I love the fact that it uses very up-to-date data and diagrams of current, under-construction, and even future buildings from the Skyscraperpage.com forums, which makes it very relevant to real conditions in Toronto, right now.Overall, I highly recommend it to patient and easy-going parents and kids who are particularly interested in cities and their history, and/or those who just want to learn something new in a unique and mentally challenging way. It's fun!

I have purchased several of these 4D puzzles for gifts and all the recipients enjoyed them. I have a relative in Toronto so am pleased that I can send her a puzzle of her own city.

If you like puzzles you could consider this product a really good option.It has 3 different layers that make it more challenging. The first one is the largest and the most difficult to put together because all the pieces are very alike and it is necesary to put attention to each piece to put it in the right place.The second layer is the same as the first one, the diference between those is the size of the pieces because in the second one there are big pieces that make easier to complete this layer. Also, the graphics of the second layer are better and well finished (I mean well painted and decorated).In the case of the third layer, you are able to put around of 100 buildings in the puzzle over the layers 1 and 2. And thats the final touch that make the puzzle looks like a 3D cityscape. The buildings are not a high detailed replica of the real ones but, are well done and it is easy to identify each building to put over the layers 1 and 2 and complete the puzzle.

I've done Manhattan and Chicago with no problems. Toronto, once it was done was awesome! But it took two puzzles to get it right. I want to keep ordering from Amazon but need to work with me on how i know what i purchase is intact and everything there. Other than that, these items are incredible and i want to end up getting them all!

Offered it to my husband prior to our first trip to Toronto, it took us some time to put it together. But what a great idea, we felt very comfortable knowing so many streets in the new city!

Layer one is very annoying as all the pieces only have 2 different shapes, the pieces don't like to hold together and the water is just beyond frustrating! But it looks good and taught me the history of my favourite city. Probably will never assemble it again though and will use the buildings to make a diorama. If it was cheaper and more user friendly I would have given it a higher rating.

Unfortunately we opened and built this just to find out at the end that a piece is missing .What do I do know, broke it apart and return it ?And replace it and waste 3 more days to build it?Very disappointing, we have about 9 of those but this never happened before

I love this puzzle! I learned so much on Toronto while solving it. Too bad it doesn't have an option to attach and un-attach the layers and it's just sitting one on the other.Not so hard to solve and a lot of fun!

The 4D puzzle is a great concept but poorly implemented. The parts aren't cut properly, the picture particularly the sea is so non descript in many that I becomes just trial and error od each piece to complete. However the worst element is the buildings as the numbers on them do not correspond with the chart and more importantly there is no guide whatsoever as to where the location is of each building. Where there is a distinct shape it is easy to position but after that the majority of the puzzle images do not reflect the pieces themselves and many are of a similar size. So whilst you can find locations for the majority of buildings you have no confidence that they are in the actual correct places and there is no way of confirming either way. We are off to Canada for a holiday this year and given our love of puzzles thought this would be a great way of familiarising ourselves with the city before we go. Sadly it was not the case due the poor implementation of a great idea.

It was a hard puzzle but we had fun doing it as a family.

Very nice

Bought as a gift. Packaged well and best price I’d found to date