A dad has revealed the unexpected surprise that greeted him when he took a closer look at one of his daughter’s wooden puzzles.
Frankie, from Birmingham, Alabama, who chose not to share his full name, took to TikTok, posting under the handle @canibefrankwithyou_, to reveal what he found when he opened up the shape-based game.
“It’s my daughter’s, she’s two,” Frankie told Newsweek. “My wife bought it for a few bucks.”
The toy is a common one with numerous variations for sale, with studies showing puzzle play can be of huge benefit to children at preschool age. A 2011 study in the journal Developmental Psychology found a link between playing with puzzles from an early age and better spatial skills.
The idea is simple: the toy is a flat wooden tray with spaces carved out for 12 different shapes. Different colored pieces representing each of these shapes sit in their allotted space.
When a piece is lifted up via its handle, the name of the shape is revealed in the outline below.
But, as Frankie soon found out, it would appear that something unusual had happened when it came to the names printed on the main board.
While the shapes in the puzzle seems to fit their outline, a few names and spellings were amiss, if Frankie’s TikTok video is to be believed.
In the clip, Frankie notes that, on the face of it, his daughter’s toy looks like “any normal puzzle.” However, it’s when he starts highlighting the names given to some of the shapes that the issue becomes apparent.
A trapezoid is called a “teapazoid” while a heart shape is called simply “heart shapen” while, most glaring of all, a star is referred to as a “pentagram.”
Frankie appears to lay the blame for the unusual names at the company he claims are behind the product, quipping on the video “Temu strikes again.”
However, Newsweek has been unable to confirm whether the product does come from Temu. Newsweek has reached out to Temu on several occasions for comment.
The video has certainly proven a hit, amassing over 940,000 views since being shared earlier this month. Some sought to defend the name choices. “A star is a pentagram,” one viewer noted. “Heart-shapen sounds German,” another said.
One person suggested: “I would 100% just paint over the words.” While another said: “Are all the other shapes correct? cause I’d call that a win.”
Though those three shape names struck Frankie as unusual, he did note that all of the others were mostly normal. “Sadly the only other slightly funny one was them calling an oval an ‘ellipse.’ Which I mean is technically correct but maybe not the best for my 2 year old,” he said.
Despite all of this, Frankie said this minor mishap has not put his partner off buying from the same vendor again. “My wife loves a bargain,” he said. “She’ll probably buy more from them, it was just shared for some laughs.”
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