- by Owen Morton
So, how do you review a product which has been given to you as a present? The obvious thing to do is to give it a nice review, or failing that, not to review it at all. Unfortunately, this being me, I can't pass up the opportunity for a good snipe.
The product in question is a Doctor Who Magnetic Spinning Tardis, and in fairness, that is an accurate description. Well, at least to the extent that it is magnetic, spins, and shares a connection to Doctor Who (it might even be a licensed product, who can say?). It is not, however, a Tardis. It looks like one, admittedly, but it is not capable of transporting the Doctor to any point in time and space, as it claims on the packaging. (Though, I confess, the door doesn't open, so I can't see inside. For all I know, there's a miniature console room in there, with all those nice buttons and levers. Based on my observations, though, this Tardis-resembling item remains fixed firmly in the here and now.)
So, what did my friends who bought me this item get for their money? As previously mentioned, there's a Tardis-shaped piece of plastic. There's also a big bit of plastic which looks a bit like the sort of lamp everyone had on their bedside table in the 1990s. This piece of plastic has a battery compartment in the base, into which you insert 6 AA batteries. Then, you position the Tardis bit in mid-air between the top and bottom of the other bit, and - in an ideal world - it would hover there, looking like it was flying of its own volition.
Okay, I'm not going to deny it. This is pretty damned cool. Not in an actually cool kind of way, but cool enough to make me put up a picture of myself with it on Facebook. (Though admittedly, I did try to distract from the actual picture by writing a long and involved caption about my wife wanting to reorganise our herbs and spices.)
So what's wrong with it? Well ... actually, nothing's wrong with it, apart from that it's a little tricky to make it actually hover - it's more inclined towards getting magnetically attached to the top of the big plastic bit. That's not really a deal breaker, admittedly.
On the other hand, and as I'm sure you know by now, I am of the persuasion that finds it impossible to be actively pleasant about something, especially here on my website, where I am king. Therefore, I am going to mercilessly take the piss out of the instruction leaflet, because under no circumstances does said leaflet meet my exacting standards for a) grammar, and b) accuracy.
Let's do grammar first. This will be a short section, because despite my desperately wanting to find some major grammatical errors in the leaflet (especially after writing the above paragraph in the secure knowledge that there would be some), I was only able to identify the following sentence as a bit of a problem: "Performance will be affected by battery strength, if the TARDIS refuses to levitate, replace all 6 batteries."
As you will be entirely aware, this sentence commits the heinous error of using a comma in an entirely inappropriate place. A full stop after the word 'strength' would be correct; a semi-colon in that position would be pretty much an orgasm, punctuation-wise. Otherwise, the instruction leaflet is irritatingly free of even minor niggles.
Actually, that's not quite true! Just found another one. The entire product is - to give it its full name - marketed as "Time Lords Spinning Tardis". Now, there's quite plainly a missing apostrophe here. In its current form, the product name means that there are in fact some Time Lords spinning the Tardis, which there aren't. Not unless they were missing from my pack, anyway.
What it should say is either "Time Lord's Spinning Tardis", if the Tardis in question belongs to only one Time Lord in particular (which I suspect it is supposed to - the Doctor, if you're having trouble working out which Time Lord), or "Time Lords' Spinning Tardis" if the Tardis is the collective property of a number of Time Lords. (I'm bemused, actually, as to why they didn't call it "The Doctor's Spinning Tardis".) As a pedantic bastard, of course, I'm now obliged to point out that as I am not a Time Lord, and neither is anyone else who could claim to own this product (i.e. my wife, and my friends who paid for it), the product ought to be called "Owen's Spinning Tardis-shaped Bit of Plastic". Not, I'll grant you, as catchy. But more accurate, both factually and grammatically, and that is what counts.
Okay, let's move on. Let's talk about the stupid instructions. There's a long and rather paranoid section on the correct use of batteries, which is clearly aimed at morons. Let's take the more interesting instructions one by one, and discuss them in great depth.
1. Rechargeable batteries are to be removed from the product before being charged. Well, in what demented plane of reality is it even possible to charge a battery while it's still inside a product?
2. Rechargeable batteries are only to be charged under adult supervision. I'll be generous and assume that they mean that children shouldn't recharge batteries, rather than the more literal meaning that an adult has to sit and watch the battery charge.
I'm bored of criticising the battery section now, and so I'm going to move on to my absolute favourite bit of the instructions. It is a separate piece of paper, and it says - and I quote in full -
Congratulations on your purchase of this Doctor Who product from Argos.
You have the opportunity to obtain a Doctor Who Tardis Emergency Fund worth £5.99 free of charge.
Simply fill in your name and address below (in block captials) and send this form together with a cheque or postal order for £2.50 made payable to 'China Industries Ltd.' Please allow 28 days for delivery.
We'll ignore the misspelling of capitals. It can happen to us all. Well, I say we'll ignore it, but in actual fact what I mean is that I'll criticise said misspelling in a passive-aggressive way, i.e. point out said misspelling, call attention to it, and then magnanimously forgive it in a way that makes me seem like I'm being generous, when in fact I'm being a right twat.
What I actually want to discuss is the utter incongruity between the claim that I can obtain a Doctor Who Tardis Emergency Fund "free of charge" and then the statement in the very next paragraph that I have to pay £2.50 for it. Did they genuinely think that Doctor Who fans are so monumentally dense that they'll overlook this enormous contradiction? Well, they're wrong. Doctor Who fans can indeed be very dense, but they also tend to be picky and pedantic (that's why I'm one), and they're not at all inclined to be taken in by this low trick. So Argos can stick their Doctor Who Tardis Emergency Funds right up their time vortex.
Incidentally, the other thing that bothers me about this great offer is that nowhere is the innocent Doctor Who fan actually told what a Tardis Emergency Fund is. They're just supposed to read the advert, start drooling uncontrollably, and instantly send off their £2.50 without even querying what they're getting "free of charge". For the sake of completeness, though, I have just Googled it, and discovered that it is a keyring in the shape of a Tardis, into which you can insert money for use in an emergency. The only emergency I can envisage in which I would be in possession of my keys but not my wallet would be if I were dangling over a cliff and there were a hole in my right trouser pocket (through which my wallet has just fallen) but there is no hole in my left trouser pocket (thus ensuring that my keys and Tardis Emergency Fund remain safe). Needless to say, access to a tenner stuffed inside a model Tardis would not really help in this scenario.
So, in summary, the Time Lords Spinning Tardis - awesome. The enclosed leaflets - appalling. So, on balance, it's a 5 out of 10.