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Y’all. I have been wanting to do a Pokémon puzzle since I saw Karen Kavett (aka Karen Puzzles) do the 5,000-piece Ravensburger puzzle several months ago. I finally got my opportunity when I found this 1,000-Piece Buffalo Games puzzle called Pokémon Frames at the thrift store last week. I have done a couple puzzles that have been on the spicier side over the past few weeks so I really wanted to do an easier puzzle and this was just the ticket.

I tend to look past a lot of Buffalo Games puzzles when I’m at the thrift store. While they do carry a few artists that I like, the majority of images that end up at the thrift are usually pretty generic and don’t pull me in. I like to get a slightly higher end puzzle if I can mostly because I have so many puzzles at home. I need to triage what comes into my house and often Buffalo doesn’t make the cut. Still, there are some images which just look too inviting to build and this is one of them. Pokémon puzzles are almost always incredibly vibrant and look like a fun, relatively easy build. This puzzle lived up to the hype.

If you do puzzles, you’ll probably be familiar with Buffalo Games as a brand. Buffalo is the largest producer of jigsaw puzzles in the United States. With a lower budget price point (about $14.99 for a 1,000-piece puzzle) and a vast catalog of puzzles, it’s hard to shop for a puzzle without running into Buffalo. The quality on their puzzles is so-so. Given the price point, it’s about what you expect. All Buffalo puzzles are made with a recycled puzzle board. For their basic puzzles (not the Silver Selection ones) the pieces are on the thin side and smaller in size than most puzzle brands pieces. The finish on the pieces is shiny and does reflect the nearby lighting so take note if you have overhead lights as sometimes it can make it hard to see the image. Puzzling near a bright window is helpful with puzzles with this finish. This puzzle clocked in at 26.75 x 19.75 once fully assembled so it was on the smaller side. The piece fit is pretty good actually. You can move smaller sections around with not too much issue although you are likely to lose a piece or two in the move. The whole thing isn’t going to crumble apart though which makes this better than some of the higher end brands I’ve done.

There isn’t too much to write home about with the packaging. It comes in a thinner white cardboard box with a full image of the puzzle along with the Pokémon logo, piece count, and a small graphic of Pikachu and a Pokéball on the front of the box. The puzzle comes with a folded up, full-color print of the puzzle which is a handy reference sheet. The sides of the box feature the classic blue stripes with the Buffalo logo. The back is a little boring and just has generic brand details atop a stock image of colorful puzzle pieces.

Pokémon, of course, is the wildly popular series of video games (and TV shows and card games and movies) developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company under the Pokémon media franchise. While I have not been a long-time fan of the game, I did play Pokémon Go for two years around 2018 so I’m familiar with the first four generations of Pokémon. This particular puzzle has 35+ characters, all of which I knew. The familiarity with the characters really did help with the overall assembly. Each Pokémon is framed atop a colored background with a handy white border separating each character. While some of the characters did have elements which shared the same color, overall most of the colors were subtly different from one another. This meant that even though I chose to sort some colors in larger piles, once I started to work on that color I could pretty easily separate each character just based on color alone. The white border was especially helpful. There were a couple of characters which were larger than the others and thus, more difficult to put together. To be honest, it’s a pretty easy puzzle so “difficult” is a stretch here but, I found that if I started with the border pieces for that section, it actually gave me a pretty good starting place to finish the remaining parts. If you watch the video, you’ll note my husband pops in a few times and finishes the entire Charizard and Gyarados sections (the big orange dragon and the blue water dragon on the left side for those not familiar).

The puzzle came together in just a couple hours and was a nice break from some of the other puzzles that I’ve done lately. I would definitely recommend it for anyone that isn’t looking for too much of a challenge. This would also be a great puzzle to work on with family, especially kids, as the subject matter is appealing and the different colored backgrounds make it so that a child could put together a small section at a time while the adults work on the harder areas.

Have you ever played Pokemon? What is your favorite character? Mine is Tropius, the grass/flying type Pokémon that looks like a dinosaur with wings made of leaves. At the time I played, this was a regional Pokémon in Pokémon Go that could only be caught in Africa. My husband and I were lucky enough to catch some when we were vacationing in Tenerife. Let me know what yours is in the comments!

Details and Links

Want to put together this puzzle too? Buy Pokémon Frames 1,000 piece puzzle here.

Other Pokémon puzzles I want to put together:

This 5,000-piece puzzle I have been eyeing since I saw Karen Puzzle’s do it on her channel. It looks like so much fun to put together. If you haven’t watched her video and are familiar with Pokémon, I recommend you watch – it’s a really fun video.

Buy the Ravensburger 5,000-piece Pokemon puzzle here.

The Crystal puzzle in the dark box actually doesn’t have too many details. It’s sold by a Japanese brand called ensky. I love that it features the Legendary Pokémon and not just the base characters. I’m reasonably sure that this is actually a plastic puzzle and when you put it together it works a bit like a stained glass window in that the pieces are semi-transparent. Don’t quote me on that because it doesn’t actually say it, but given it’s an ‘Art Crystal’ puzzle and I’ve seen quite a few Japanese puzzles that work as stained glass windows I’m feeling pretty confident on that.

Buy the ensky 1,000-piece Legendary Pokémon Art Crystal Jigsaw puzzle here.

The last two puzzles are both 500-piece puzzles from Buffalo Games which have fun images designs that I like. Though the first one is touted to be a ‘stained glass’ it appears to only be because of the shape of each section and not because it’s a plastic puzzle like the puzzle I mentioned above this one.

Buy Buffalo Games 500-Piece Eevee’s Stained Glass Jigsaw puzzle here.

Buy Buffalo Games 500-Piece Pokemon Bubble Jigsaw puzzle here.

Brand: Buffalo Games
Title: Pokémon Frames
Pieces: 1,000
Artist: Multiple artists. Based on the game conceived by Satoshi Tajiri