List of Kiwi Cos

My daughters have received Kiwi Co Boxes for the past 10-12 months a gift and I am now starting to see Kiwi Co boxes at thrift stores. Opened, but with all the pieces.  These boxes have been great fun for the kids and for myself.  They are unique, creative, and at a good fine motor skill level for different age ranges.

However, I have had a hard time finding a list of Kiwi Co box names for each age group.  So, I figured I would start my own list.  I'm not sure if Kiwi Co has a limited number of boxes for each age range that cycle over the years, or if they are producing just new ones and old boxes are retired.

I'll list the ones we have
Competed:

Tadpole (Ages 0-36 months)
Neighborhood Fun
Ocean Games
Kitchen Play
Color Making
Mail Delivery
Space Search

Koala (Ages 3-4)
Farm
Playground
Music
Garden
Bugs
Wind
Reptiles
Numbers
Little Artist
Transportation
Storytime
Color Mixing
Daily Activities


Kiwi (Ages 5-8)
Modern Art
Music Machines
Printing Press
Science of Color
Lemonaid Stand
Growing Gardens
Wild West
Arcade Claw
Solar System
Secret Agent
Kaleidoscope Puzzles
My body & Me
Polarized Light
Rainbow Optics
Graduation Box
Fun With Flight
Glowing Animals
Race Day
Around the World
Gravity Car
My Wind Car
Rock and Roll Ramps
Probability Machine

Atlas (Ages 6-11)
World
Morocco
Japan
Peru


Doodle (Ages 9-16+)
Woden Clock
Sumi-e Ink Wash Painting
Color-Blocked Candles
Zipper pulls
Faux Leather Portfolio 
Handcrafted paper Bowles
Paper Lanterns

Tinker (Ages 9-16+)
Glowing Pendulum
Buzzing Circuits
Light-up Planetarium
Walking Robot
Wooden Automation
Biomechanical Hand
Bottle Rocket
Sewable Circuits
Color-mixing LED Crystal
Wooden Crane
Paper Circuits
Hydraulic Claw
Trebuchet
Fiber Optic Stars
Shake Table
Vacuum Chamber


Eureka (Ages 14-104)
Mechanical Lock Box
Articulated Desk Lamp
Pinball Machine
Perpetual Calendar
Wooden Ukulele
Stereo Headphones
Electric Pencil Sharpener

If you have other box names, please post them in the comments.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex

Mystery Puzzle SPOILER #9

Warning!  This post contains spoilers to a mystery puzzle.

This week's puzzle is "Time's Up!" with a story by Al Carusone and produced by BePuzzled in 1996.  It's a 250 piece puzzle.

The story follows a kid who is trapped in a time loop and need to escape before he runs into himself.

[Marty and Doc notice the cops taking an unconscious Jennifer away]

Doc: They're taking her home, to your future home! We'll arrive shortly thereafter, get her out of there, and go back to 1985.

Marty: You mean, I'm gonna see where I live? I'm gonna see myself as an old man?

Doc: No, no, no, Marty. That could result in a [gasps] Great Scott! Jennifer could conceivably encounter her future self! The consequences of that could be disastrous!

Marty: Doc, what do you mean?

Doc: I foresee two possibilities. 1: coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she'd simply pass out. Or 2: the encounter could create a time paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the spacetime continuum and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction might, in fact, be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.

Marty: Well, that's a relief.

This is the first Spider Tales puzzle that I actually found the bonus hidden spider!

Completed puzzle and box. 

Completed puzzle.

Hidden spider (grey and just under the green light bulb.)

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex

Mystery Puzzle SPOILER #8

Warning!  This post contains spoilers to a mystery puzzle.

This week's puzzle is "The Mummy's Crypt" with story by Robin Allen and produced by Golden.  It's a 200 piece puzzle.

The artwork on the cover of the box is done by RL Allen for Universal Studios.

The story follows two kids playing a video game and unlocking levels in the game and having several ancient Egyptian objects magically appear in their room.

My version of the puzzle was missing a single edge piece.  So, after completion, I made the piece and colored it in with colored pencils.

Full image from 1932, renewed 1960

Box and "completed" puzzle.

Tilt your head to read the secret message on the papyrus.  Sorry for the glare. 

Bonus advertisement in the box!  A mom's endorsement is a pretty good way of advertising for 91 Reasons Podcast. 

Comment card filled out!  Sinister Smorgasbord is another Golden mystery puzzle that I will need to track down now! 

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex

Mystery Puzzle SPOILER #7

Warning!  This post contains spoilers to a mystery puzzle.

This week's puzzle is "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 260 piece Family Puzzle."

The Family Puzzle design means that there are two main sizes of pieces.  Eighty pieces are three to four times larger than the rest of the 180 pieces to make it easier for smaller hands to work on their side of the board.  The entire left side of the puzzle is made up of the 80 larger pieces, where the right side is all small pieces.  The border between the large and smaller pieces was fun to find and figure out.

The added bonus mystery is a polarized decoder lens that you wave over the board to find several hidden objects.  My puzzle was missing the sheet of objects to find, but I believe there are 8-12 objects hidden in the puzzle.  The images are what you would expect from the Harry Potter world - an owl, a badger, a snake, etc. 

Looking closely at the puzzle board there are areas that have very small parallel lines that are hidden polarized images.  

Overall, the polarized images were hard to actually make out and any small adjustment with the lens/decoder and the image would be a blob.

Puzzle box.

 Puzzle image with the right side of puzzle with small pieces compared to the left side. 

A hidden image of a Griffin? 

Thanks for reading!

Dr. Alex

Mystery Puzzle SPOILER #6

Warning!  This post contains spoilers to a mystery puzzle.

This week's puzzle is "Where's Waldo On The Beach" 100 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle circa 1989. 

There is first the challenge of completing the puzzle. Second, there is the challenge of finding Waldo.  Lastly, there is the challenge of finding the extra images that are printed on the side of the box.

The front of the box is the puzzle solution. 

There are a few "odd" extra images that can be construed and that I'm unsure of what the correct answers are.

The completed puzzle.

The puzzle.  

Waldo is FOUND! 

The Checklist of other fun things to find. 

A man who is overdressed. 

A muscular medallion man. 

A popular girl. 

 

A water skier on the water.

A stripy photo. 

A punctured lilo. 

A donkey who likes ice-cream.

A man being squashed.

A punctured beach ball. 

A human pyramid. 

I missed the "A human stepping-stone."  It's just right of center. 

Sadly, almost all the people could be "Two odd friends."  Funny that two is actually even. 

A cowboy.

A human donkey. 

Age and beauty. 

A boy who follows in his father's footsteps. 

Two men with vests, one without. 

A boy being tortured by a spider. 

A gang of hat robbers. 

"An odd couple" again, could just about be any two in this photo.  Strange that a couple is also even. 

Five Sprinters. 

A towel with a hole in it. 

A punctured hovercraft.

A boy who's not allowed any ice-cream. 

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex

Mystery Puzzle SPOILER #5

Warning!  This post contains spoilers to a mystery puzzle.

This week's puzzle is "The Missing Piece" and it's really more of an ad for a new defunct fashion(?) website veer.com.  The goal of the puzzle is to find the mystery code word and then add $500.00 into your cart and use the coupon code to save $100.00.  

Better hurry because this offer is only good from May 1st to June 15th, 2007!

In reality, you do not need to solve the puzzle.  You just need the central area.  The pieces are easy to sort into the four made-up movie posters and then leaving the central round clue word area to for an easy piece together.

The back of the box has the puzzle solution with a "see side for details" where the codeword is hidden in the puzzle.  

We did this puzzle on a green felt puzzle roller/saver thinking that it might take a bit longer to put together the 550 pieces. Nope, we finished it in one night. 

Code: CASECLOSED

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex

Mystery Puzzle SPOILER #4

Warning!  This post contains spoilers to a mystery puzzle.

This week's puzzle is actually a three in one!  Cluster Puzzles "Figments," "Animals," and "Doodles."
Cluster Puzzles were created by artist/designer Alex Palmer and my edition was published by Cadaco sometime between 1977 and 1988.

Each of these puzzles has a common theme in that they have no straight edge border, all irregularly shaped pieces, no full image on the box, and a clue card to help fit each piece together with one other.

Examples of the clue card might include "Giraffe: I'm glad I have the Squirrel to help hold up my neck." 

All three of them finish off rectangular-ish in shape.  The pieces of thin and often slide over each other while placing more complicated pieces into small groves.  They were a challenge and without the clue cards, I doubt I would have stuck with all three of them.
 

Top of the box. 

 Completed Animals (#1) Puzzle.

 Completed Figments (#2) Puzzle.

Completed Doodles (#5) Puzzle. 

 Thanks for reading!

Dr. Alex