Donut Worry, Be Happy | 1500-Piece Buffalo Games Jigsaw Puzzle Review

When it comes to jigsaw puzzle brands, I usually don’t spend much time considering Buffalo Games. It’s one of the most common and affordable brands in the US, with puzzles starting at around $11.99 for a 300-piece puzzle, $16.99 for a standard 1000-piece puzzle, $21.99 for a 1000-piece Silver Select, and $32-$36 for the Noir 500 and 1000-piece puzzles, respectively. It’s not that I don’t want an affordable puzzle. I do, I just prefer to buy higher quality puzzles at even lower thrift store prices. Every once in a while, I find an image produced by Buffalo that I can’t resist, and this was the case with “Donut Worry, Be Happy,” a 1500-piece puzzle featuring art by Lars Stewart. I spotted this puzzle at my local Goodwill. While I initially put it back on the shelf, I regretted it on the drive home. When I returned a week later and it was still there, I knew it was meant to be, so I grabbed it.

This puzzle features a colorful array of donuts with a rainbow assortment of frosting colors and sprinkles, nestled around a glorious cup of coffee being poured from a metallic kettle. The artwork is by Lars Stewart, a well-known artist in the puzzle community who creates bold, colorful pieces combining traditional photography with digital art practices. His last name may be familiar to you as he is married to Aimee Stewart. Aimee is another well known and prolific puzzle artist and has been featured on this blog before back in April during #AllAimeeApril.

I’ve discussed the quality of Buffalo Games puzzles in other reviews, and this puzzle was consistent with my previous experiences. Given the lower price point, you shouldn’t expect high-quality manufacturing from Buffalo (unless you’re buying from their Noir collection, which I haven’t tried yet). This doesn’t mean their puzzles are bad; it just means you’re compromising on manufacturing quality for price. The puzzles are still fun to assemble, but you might encounter a few false fits and find the backing paper peeling from the pieces. The fit is generally okay; you can move small sections with care, but you’re likely to lose a piece or two in transit. Large sections might be difficult to move unless you slide them. I experienced several false fits while assembling this puzzle, including so many on the edges that I even reconsidered continuing on and finishing the entire thing. I’m glad I persisted because once I got past the edges, the false fits decreased dramatically.

Despite being 1500 pieces, my husband and I finished this puzzle in about 7.5 hours. While I was the primary puzzler, my husband joined in for several longer sessions, and it felt like we flew through this puzzle. I started with a full color sort, pulling out the larger sections of color without trying to sub-sort right away. After sorting, the edge came together quickly, and I decided to start with sections that had the smallest or most distinct textures (like the teal frosted donut and blues, or one of the brown sprinkles donuts). From there, I moved from one color to the next, pulling the entire color in front of me and sub-sorting the textures.

If you watch the time-lapse video of this puzzle on my YouTube channel, when my husband first joined me you can see he started on the purple and blue coffee mugs and absolutely zoomed through that section. At that time, I was working on the green frosted donuts and you can see that this section held me up a little as I barely finished any of that as my husband completed his entire purple section. I have a habit of focusing too hard on whatever I’m working on rather than taking a break and switching to a different section and coming back to the original later. Whenever I do actually switch sections and inevitably move quicker through the next section, I’m reminded that I really need to work on being more flexible when I come across a challenging section. We continued through the different sections, my husband working on most of the coffee-related elements and myself working on the donuts, and before I realized it we were putting in the last piece.

Unfortunately, as this was a second-hand puzzle there were not one, not two, but four missing pieces in this puzzle. It was kind of a bummer but given that this was a large puzzle, I don’t find it quite as noticeable as it would have been on a smaller piece count and that’s the risk you take buying puzzles used.

I found this artwork made for a great puzzle. Not only was it extremely colorful, but it’s clear that Lars is experienced in creating artwork for puzzles. Despite the donuts sharing similar frosting colors, the varying toppings made it easy to differentiate between pieces. The hardest donuts for me were the ones with green frosting because their toppings and tones were quite similar. In contrast, the nine different chocolate-frosted donuts were easier to separate because each had a distinct topping style or frosting look.

I can see this being a challenging puzzle for those who don’t puzzle often or if you don’t presort the pieces. At the very least, it is still a 1500-piece puzzle with many similarly colored elements. If you were to assemble this puzzle by randomly shuffling through the box to find small groupings of pieces, it could take a while and be frustrating. However, by presorting at the beginning, we were able to move through the puzzle efficiently, finding it entertaining and relaxing overall. This would be a great puzzle to do with a group of people.

All in all, ‘Donut Worry, Be Happy’ proved to be a fun and rewarding puzzle. The beautiful artwork by Lars Stewart and the enjoyable assembly process made up for any small setbacks from quality. Whether you’re a seasoned puzzler or just starting out, this puzzle is sure to bring a smile to your face.

Details & Links

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Looking to put the ‘Donut Worry, Be Happy’ puzzle together? Unfortunately, the 1500-piece version is no longer available but there is an 1,000-piece version available from not just Buffalo Games but also White Mountain.