Deep Dive into Le Puzz Jigsaw Puzzles
Le Puzz is a new jigsaw puzzle company inspired by vintage puzzles from decades past! They especially love collecting vintage puzzles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, with an odd sense of humor. Le Puzz was created by Alistar Matthews and Michael Hunter. Le Puzz is a super quirky and fun puzzle brand that everyone should know more about!
“We love old puzzle box illustrations, silly copy, weird jigsaw shapes and of course interesting images. There really isn’t anything like that feeling of finishing a puzzle and running your hand over it, then trying to pick it up off the table in one piece.
We started Le Puzz with all of this in mind and set out to create a puzzle experience that we thought was fun and we hope you enjoy as well.” — Le Puzz
About the Le Puzz Brand
Little Troop — a design studio in Brooklyn & Melbourne, created every element of Le Puzz from branding, illustration, packaging, and art direction, to web design. The inspiration for the branding came from vintage game boards and old cereal box graphics.
Le Puzz’s company mascot is named Scotty, named after the founder’s cat. Scotty is on the packaging, stickers and tote bags, the website, and so much more. The design behind Scotty is inspired by vintage stamp ephemera. Fun fact: on the lepuzz.com website, Scotty’s eyes follow you everywhere (aka your cursor).
The wordmark for Le Puzz was based on an old wood-manufactured typeface, Winchester. My Le Puzz puzzles truly stand out from the rest because of the bold and friendly typeface. The color yellow ties back to Le Puzz’s brand values as it is recognized as the color of sunshine, warmth, and smiley faces.
Learn more about the process behind the Le Puzz branding here on Little Troops website and on the Under Consideration Brand New blog.
Puzzle Packaging
The packaging for these puzzles is fantastic — the box designs are just incredibly beautiful! I currently have 4 different Le Puzz puzzles in my collection and the back of the puzzles are all different colors — pink, green, red, and blue.
The box design itself is so detailed with lots to explore—it has everything from games and puzzles on the back of the box, playful copy, and lots of illustrated elements and type! I could stare at the boxes all day. On the side of the Lighten Up! puzzle box, it says, “The Wonderfully Whimsical Weirdo Wigsaw Wuzzle Wompany” — I just love the clever and fun copy.
When you open up the box, it’s just as amazing — the puzzle pieces come in a yellow resealable/reusable bag with a poster as well. Since I am a graphic designer, I have such a huge passion for beautiful packaging and this one is just PERFECT.
Piece Cut & Gemini Puzzle Pieces
Le Puzz puzzles have a unique puzzle cut—the cut is called “random-cut”. Most traditional puzzles are ribbon-cut in an even grid with a handful of different piece shapes. Le Puzz’s random cut puzzles feature a custom hand-drawn puzzle dieline. There is a different dieline for 500-piece and 1000-piece puzzles currently. Each puzzle piece is truly unique!
Le Puzz’s puzzles feature extra thick puzzle pieces too! Thin and flimsy puzzles aren’t fun so it was important to Le Puzz to work with their manufacturer to develop a quality thickness. Their 500-piece puzzles are extra thick and are reminiscent of vintage puzzles.
You will also notice the teeny puzzle pieces, they are called gemini pieces! The gemini pieces act as connectors but can be tricky at times. Read more about the gemini pieces on their Bits + Pieces blog. I personally think these puzzle pieces are super fun even though they are tricky and challenging at times.
“Introducing our friends the Gemini Pieces — If you’ve done one of our puzzles you may have noticed these tricky connector pieces, the ones with two tabs and no blanks. We lovingly refer to these as Gemini pieces. The name comes from their two headed shape and their dual nature of either being an edge piece or an inner piece, kinda tricky! These kinds of pieces are super common in any random cut puzzle and often act as connectors but may cause the puzzler to act indecisively due to it’s unreliability.” — Le Puzz
Puzzle Inspiration
Le Puzz takes a lot of its inspiration from vintage puzzles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. If you’ve ever gone on eBay and explored vintage puzzles, you’ll find lots of weird and quirky imagery — some puzzle images that look haunted with creepy dolls and old teddy bears. Check out their collection of vintage puzzles!
“We don’t know when it happened but somewhere along the line puzzle companies stopped taking funny risks and everything turned into a homogenous aesthetic. Here at Le Puzz we’re determined to bring back those freaky and fun motifs and breath a new life back into those things we love and miss so much from vintage puzzles.” — Le Puzz
Le Puzz has a unique and detailed process when it comes to puzzles. The Oops! puzzle was created from a bunch of vintage “Frozen Moments” food props that were found on eBay. You can learn more about the process and read about the interview with Geoffrey Rose, the original creator of the Frozen moments brand here.
Le Best Puzzles!
There are lots of puzzle brands that I love, but, this one has some of the best packaging and designs. Le Puzz puzzles make a great gift for any puzzler you may know — and they are beautiful just to sit on a shelf or a coffee table. When the holidays come around, be sure to put these on your list!
You can find Le Puzz Series 1 and 2 on their website — the 500-piece puzzles are $32.00 and the 1000-piece puzzles are $38.00. You can sign up for their email newsletter and get 10% off your first order! They even have some fun merch — sticker packs, bumper stickers, and their newest item, a large puzzle tote bag! I can’t wait to collect some of the puzzles from series 2 and complete more Le Puzz puzzles.
