Jeliku is a new 3D Foldable/Manipulative puzzle from Taiwan. This versatile product can literally make anything you can imagine, from animal figures to abstract shapes or alphanumeric characters, you name it...

Why the Jeliku name? - According to the inventor, Mr. Jerry Chen, the first prototype had irregular bubbles with a transparent crystal appearance when reflected by light. Thinking it looked cool, he named it Jeliku.

The Jeliku comes packaged in its folded state, not much bigger than a credit card. However, when you unfold it, it can stretch as much as about 45cm (approx. 18") with its 10 different sized segments. The puzzle is made of a strong, but flexible high quality plastic material (Nylon) and its joints are tight enough that when manipulated, it stays in the position you want it to be, which is what you'd expect from such product. Worth noting is that the segments are directly connected by each other, thus reducing drastically the wear and tear and improving at the same time its tenacity.

There are 41 available colored combinations distributed in three main categories: Single color, 2 color combination and 5 color combination. This wide variety of choice allows to choose the colors that better suit your creativity. For me, I like the effect of just two contrasting colors. It's a simple combination, but the visual results are great. My combinations of choice weren't available at the time (White/Blue and Black/White), so I had to settle with Black/Blue and Yellow/White. Not the best option, but still nice.

Packaged with your Jeliku is a leaflet with a several examples of what can be built with your puzzle. A great feature is that you can purchase multiple Jeliku puzzles and join them together to form even more complex structures. The leaflet shows examples for figures made with just one puzzle and up to ten, but there's virtually no limit to the number of Jeliku you can use - If you imagine it, you can build it.

(Click to Enlarge) - Leaflet

The variety of structures and uses for the Jeliku are also limited to your imagination. You can even use it as stationery objects such as pen holders and cell phone holders or as a mere decorative object.

At first, looking at the already built structures from the pictures, they don't look so hard to do, but except from the simpler one-Jeliku figures, most of them can be rather difficult to build, particularly the three and four piece objects (the maximum I can build with mine). What makes it so hard is how to distinguish the segments from one another, because you're just seeing the finished structure and not how they're interlocked. Some of these figures can be quite the puzzle...

Closing Comments:

Jeliku is a great and fun puzzle to enhance your creativity. Its versatility to create anything you can think of, associated with the fact that you can join many units together, makes it hard to put it down once you start fiddling with it. As of now, I believe they are only manufactured in plastic, but I would also like to see it in a stronger material, like a metal alloy and it would be interesting to have a version with more than 10 segments. Until then, the plastic version is worth checking out.

Update (March 27) - I was informed that there was indeed a prototype metal version of Jeliku, but in order for it to be certified in many countries as a toy, it had to comply with many international safety and testing regulations. See this page for more info. Maybe the metal version can still be produced and marketed as an executive premium toy instead of just being considered as a kids toy.

Availability:

The Jeliku is widely available at many places around the globe. I'll leave you with  a couple of online options, but there are plenty more if you Google it. Amazon sells the first version (smaller) for about $10/unit and at Idear in Europe (Spain), they sell the second version (bigger, round frame and brighter colors) for about €10.

Videos - I've listed below a few interesting Jeliku videos, but you can find dozens more at Youtube:

Video 1 - 3D Flash Animation

Video 2 - Promo Video

Video 3 - 4 Piece Demo

Video 4 - Several Shapes Demo

Gallery: I've listed below a few pictures with examples of what can be done with one, two, three or four Jeliku puzzles.

(Click to Enlarge) - Two-Piece Shapes - "G.F" and Star

(Click to Enlarge) - Three-Piece Shapes