T is for Transdimentional Hoojamaflip Thingamybob Doobryfirkin

So to our third article on recent developments in the world of 'free' (insert the cost of the magazine and subtract the unit cost here!) premiums given away with the Dr. Who Adventures Magazine. This is the Tardis kit I mentioned in the first post a week or so ago.

This was a brilliant idea, and would have worked well if it wasn't for the poor execution, yet there was only one thing wrong with the execution...not enough paint.

The paint-your-own Dalek issued a while ago and covered elsewhere (click Dalek in the tag-list/index) had two pots of paint that were more than adequate for the job, while the two small pots in this issue (white and black) had more than enough for the job, but the blue was a piss-take.

And the thing is - if you are trying to attract, entertain and retain readers of a youngish age for a magazine that - compared to the comics and magazines of my childhood - is (lets be honest) full of ephemeral shite, you need to make sure the 'freebie' is doable, if craft based, this didn't.

The kit itself is fine, two relatively well-detailed parts, bit of super-glue gel (to fill any gaps), a quick scrape with a scalpel blade and it was ready to go, a kid not needing to bother with the gel, or even glue as the locating-prongs made for a tight fit. But, once a single coat of paint was applied, firstly there was very little paint left, and secondly the paint dried to a high-gloss, semi transparent pale sky-blue! At this point our imaginary 'Junior' losses all interest in the project and faith in the publication....along with his or her non-toy collecting parent!

 Because I am a toy collector I persevered; clockwise from top left...

• A second coat was extracted from the remains of the pot, with the addition of a few drops of water, it dried to a flat matt that scraped-off with a finger-rub!
• Black was added to the remains along with a single drop of washing-up liquid and a third coat applied, this is shot without flash and seems darker/more even that it actually is.
• The rest of the black (I was determined to only use the given constituents for the sake of experimentation), with a few more drips of water gave a forth coat and the half-full pot of white was employed for the massive task of painting the light on the roof!
• Finally, two shots of the finished article with the stickers applied, I had scraped the pot to touch-up the bits that still showed particularly thin, but you can see from the two shots that it's still very see-through under flash, and not much better under normal lighting.

It is such a shame that the supplying company didn't provide the correct amount of paint, as it would have been a disappointment to younger builders, I'm sure. I will re-paint this one day, and to that aim, removed the stickers back to their sheet as soon as these photographs were taken. Then the CAD-Monkey's turned-up to inspect....they weren't impressed.

The sticker-sheet was most impressive as you can see from the shot I took through a jeweller's loupe, the whole thing is a perfect 54mm accessory as can been seen from the Britains gorilla, and apart from the lack of paint was a very good premium, they just needed to go that extra inch!