Bumbu Handmade Wooden Peacock Slotting Puzzle

This is absolutely beautiful. Gorgeously chunky wooden pieces, irresistible shapes. Young children love posting the little round purple cylinders into the holes. I was keen to find other open-ended uses for the pieces and we made some beautiful mandala type patterns with the curly green peacock 'feathers' and attempted some wonky stacking towers with the blue pieces (some of which look a little like marine creatures if you use enough imagination)., which was a nice little challenge! The curved green pieces also make rather fetching 'chairs' for tiny toy animals! You can tell it's handmade because each piece is a little different and you have to juggle the pieces around a bit to get them all to fit together, but from an adult point of view I think that rather adds to the charm. The pieces are simply colour dipped without being finished with anything shiny. This looks very charming, and also helps them grip together when stacked, but they could potentially stain more easily. The 3 year old said "I love doing this peacock puzzle" as he found it very satisfying fitting the lovely shapes together.

I've had my eye on this beautiful puzzle since forever and finally saved up enough to buy it. I got it as a great open ended addition to our wooden toy collection. Major reason for purchase was thinking that it would add pizazz to our Grimms block sets - Bumbu says each block is 4cm thick, which is the same as Grimms. It was actually smaller than I expected however, the pieces are only 2.9cm thick, so not as thick as Grimms. The length of the puzzle itself is 35cm, (39cm including the base) not 40cm as described, but this isn't an issue. They can still sit on top of Grimms blocks, just not match the size. The little purple cylinder pieces are about the thickness of a woman's thumb and 3cm high, so a definite choking candidate, but the skill and imagination level required for this puzzle limits it to older children anyway. I would say younger ones from about age 3 could definitely use the individual pieces open endedly as loose parts and for imaginative play, and to practice stacking them up etc.
The wood is left fairly "rough" in that it hasn't been given a final sand after painting, so the grain has stayed raised, It feels slightly rougher than Grimms. This aids in the blocks not slipping off when stacked and helps them 'grip' together. This is a handmade toy, so there is some minor variation in size between the hole sizes for the cylinder "spot" pieces, this means that not every spot will fit into every hole. I can see children trying to wedge them in and getting them stuck. I can't remedy this by sanding the smaller holes a little bigger, because then some of the other "spots" will be too small and fall through too easily. Finally, this is described as "oiled" with linseed oil, but I'm not sure where it's gone, because this wood feels really dry and looks very bare and untreated - I will have to oil or wax it myself.
Having said all this, this is undoubtedly a unique and beautiful toy and we will enjoy creating mandalas (without an apostrophe) and patterns with it as well as fitting the pieces together in many creative ways. Overall the beauty and versatility outweigh the very minor niggles with sizing and oiling.