D.O.P.-T.

We came to the end of our last huge order of jigsaw puzzles and I'm afraid to say this one is a real dud. The "hand-painted" background by Dona Gelsinger is a collage—some descriptions say so—and not only does that mean there are ridiculously huge oak leaves all over the place, and maple from spring mixed in with the rest from autumn, and bunches of pine needles randomly stuck in there, and the critters are bizarre relative sizes and floating in the air (the three areas of magically suspended water are particularly odd, and the poor moose has his legs cut off just below the knee; and the turkeys are halfway up a huge tree trunk), but there are straight lines where the picture changes that make for a weird experience when you focus on the details to do the puzzle, and the tree trunks on the right and left are exact duplicates. Not only is the trademark "Realtree" printed up the right side of the tree on the left, but she's made her sloppy work blatantly obvious by leaving another trademark, "apg", on both repeats of that tree and in a third position; presumably that's from the clip art she collaged together. Oddly enough, the other jigsaw we got that's marketed to the hunting/wildlife demographic is this panorama by the same person (and with the same bear), and is beautifully done, as are almost all the jigsaws we get. And I didn't find any reviews critical of the image in the first one, except for a complaint there were too many browns; other people appear to have received badly manufactured puzzles, but liked the picture. Boggle.