One Million Pounds B.C.

So yesterday I had occasion to pop into the local tesco on my way home from work. After 2 days of fasting I had quite naturally decided to eat ALL THE SAUSAGES. Only I needed rolls. But I'm not here to talk about sausages.

Just for a change.

No, see what I want to talk about is what it was I found confronting me on the way in:

Feel free to start spontaneously singing Misfits songs when you see this. I did.

Big honking Dinosaur skull for only 99p? FUCK YEAH!!!....

Or is it? Let's find out.

Now, it's no great secret that despite the restrictions of chronology, sometimes I am basically 5 years old. So OF COURSE this was the first thing I bought. I mean it was RIGHT THERE and had Dinosaurs on it. You'd think after Jurassic Park 2 I'd have learned my lesson, but no. Apparently "Because Dinosaurs" is still a perfectly valid reason to do things.

Sure. Why not?

Now, to be fair what you get is pretty good value for 99p. If you have a hankering for a large scale model Tyrannosaur skull to sit on a shelf somewhere then this is certainly one of the cheaper options. That it comes packaged with a magazine is largely irrelevant. I haven't really looked at it any great detail save to confirm I'm outside the target age range by a factor of at least 2. No, what we're mainly after is the stuff that comes with the magazine. Specifically the whole build a honking great model skeleton.

Actually, I should probably clarify here. Whilst the scale of the advertised model in undoubtedly quite large, it does not in fact honk. That would be a Parasaurolophus.

Okay, seriously, WHY IS NO ONE MAKING PLAYABLE PARASUROLPHUS SKULL REPLICAS?!?!?!

This model is actually that of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Because OF COURSE IT IS. Now, I have a great respect for T rex, and I do appreciate that it's one of the best known Dinosaurs. But why is it everything always has to be T rex? There are other Dinosaurs you know. One's that are just as interesting, if not more so. But you'd never get a weekly magazine with an Acrocanthosaurus skeleton would you? I mean hell, if this is the sort of size you want to go for why not do a Hysilophodont or something and do it 1:1? How cool would that be.

Basically I think I'm saying that T rex is basically the Wolverine of Dinosaurs. Kinda cool, but ultimately his main superpower is popularity.

Meanwhile Deinocheirus is gruffly stomping around with big claws and the Avengers haven't called once.

Still, could be worse. At least there's no such thing as a Boba Fett of Dinosaurs. I mean sure, some of them looked cool then fell in a hole and died. But even the herbivores managed to actually kill something first.

Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh right, this collectable magazine thing. So anyway, I get's it home and I unpack it and I am immediately impressed by the number of leaflets advertising subscriptions. I've got 2 ENTIRELY DIFFERENT mail order forms, a special bit of paper for reserving copies at a newsagents AND a bloody great questionnaire which basically seems to spend 4 pages asking what it would take to get me to subscribe.  It's having this sort of creepy overenthusiastic approach to attempting to pressure someone into doing something directed at me that is probably the closest I can get to feeling like a woman on the internet. Well, unless the magazine was just photos of unimpressive wangs. And the free gifts for subscribing are also pictures of wangs.

And if I really wanna see one of those I can just look down.

But I must confess to being slightly curious about the idea of a subscription. After all, giant Dinosaur skeleton opportunities don't come along every day. At least not on my budget. And this is where things start to get particularly interesting.

If we were to take out a subscription we would get:

• A wallchart, but 5 year old me has apparently fallen asleep after all the excitement, so meh.
• A free issue, which is okay but dramatically exciting.
• A set of genuine fossils. NOW we're talking. A Trilobite, Megalosaurus claw and bit of coprolite? Pretty cool. Probably not the most impressive specimens, but who cares? This is real science stuff.
• And finally... A MICROSCOPE?!?! That's... actually pretty damn cool. I mean, yeah, I've got a digital one but it's only a cheap one. And whilst I don't imagine this manual one is exactly top of the line it would probably be interesting to play with.

So, overall that's not bad actually. If I was 30 years younger this would be pretty amazing. But the so would everything since I wouldn't have had all the joy and wonder ground out of me by life yet, but I digress. And there's more! We can opt for a PREMIUM subscription which would give us 4 boxes of microscope slides. More science to play with! For only an extra £1 per issue!

Wait, how much IS a regular issue?

£5.99

That's... not insignificant. But there's all that cool stuff and the giant skeleton and all. So, how many issues are actually involved in getting the full model?

80

That's a lot of issues. I mean, I get it's a big model, but still. At one issue per week it's going to take just over A YEAR AND A HALF to finish. That is a hell of a long time to have a big clunky and incomplete model kicking around. But that's not the really bad part. Let's do some maths, shall we?

Issue 1 is 99p. We get 1 free issue as part of out subscription. so the total cost of out badass giant T rex skeleton is:

0.99 + (5.99 X 78) = £468.21

That's FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT POUNDS, TWENTY ONE PENCE.

But wait, it's get better! Remember, we can opt for a super duper premium subscription by paying an extra £1 per issue!

0.99 + (6.99 X 78) = £546.21

That's FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX POUNDS, TWENTY ONE PENCE.

That is a fucking lot of money. As in I've got a lot of books on Palaeontology and loads of Dinosaur documentaries and I'm not actually convinced I've spent nearly that much. Here, go have a look on ebay. You can buy all kinds of incredible stuff for that much. You could easily budget yourself £100 each for textbooks, models, fossils and a microscope and still come out with superior stuff and a significant saving before you've even counted your change. Which you could then go and spend on some gear for fossil hunting or something. And then go for a daytrip to the NHM. And still be able to buy a sandwich.

So, yeah. I don't think I'm actually going to be taking out a subscription any time soon. I may well get the second issue, since I'd quite like the remaining parts of the upper cranium and seven quid is still fairly reasonable for a skull. But I can't see myself blowing any more than that, not even for the mandible.

Mind you, even if I don't even manage to get that much, issue 1 was still totally worth having. Because thanks to this my big happy Tyrannosaur toy can now cosplay as Cubone.

And really, that's the most important thing, right?