Penguin Box

Cuteness personified!

There you go, two-word blog post. Says it all!

Each year the folks at the Karakuri Creation Group run an ideas contest, with the best ideas selected to be turned into actual puzzle boxes by their master craftsmen. This year the standout cutest idea came from Yoichi Chiku who proposed the idea of a tobogganing penguin box. Beautifully crafted by Yoh Kakuda, the Penguin Box provides you with a flat sheet of (maple) ice and your very own little penguin to play with.

The little guy is a handsome be-tuxed fellow made of walnut, magnolia and maple, and he certainly looks the part. The blurb on the Karakuri website reliably informs you that penguins can move faster on land by sliding on their bellies than they can by walking – they don’t exactly have long legs, do they? That process – fun fact – is known as “tobogganing”. Anyone else feeling their heart song coming to the fore yet? The website ends off by encouraging you to “Please slide well!” – which is sound advice.

OK, so the puzzle element isn’t massive on this one, in fact the blurb on the web site more or less tell you what to do… there is a bit of a knack to getting it to behave properly though, but once you master that there’s a lovely movement that sees the tobogganing be-tuxed penguin magically releasing the secret drawer.

Guaranteed to put a smile on the face of the puzzler, no matter what their age!

Cuteness personified!