Build a model of The Bismarck - £900?

Question

As an ex-sailor, I looked forward to a new hobby - building a model of the Bismarck through an in-parts magazine. It would be a hobby, and I would have a model at the end of the day.
The first issue is usually at a sell-off price, so I bought one for 50p - usual price £4.99.
Only when I read through a mountain of leaflets did I find a single mention of the fact that the model came in 140 issues. This meant that the end model would have cost nearly £700 - and probably ended up in the garage!
Should the publishers of these multi-part magazines be made to show how many issues are in the series?
I once bought a series on car maintenance - handy, I thought. But at the end of the day I paid over £200 for them. A good DIY car maintenance book would have cost less than £30.
Are these people ripping us off, and should they be made to advertise the cost for the complete set?

Answer 1

Yes - as soon as I spotted that advert with the "usual price £4.99" flag it didn't take too long to work out how much 140 issues would cost and I wondered just how many would fall for it!
A couple of years ago there was a similar collection of railway books which were £6.99 (near enough - can't be exact!) but at least for that not only did you get a part-work which built into four large volumes but a series of 100 "N" scale locos in sealed display cases together with a leaflet for each giving all details, but the binders were free and we got a sturdy glass display case (which wasn't big enough by far!) on which to display (some of) the models, and although they were a bit on the dear side, they are rather nice - but as for paying £700 for a model ship, sorry, no thanks, even if the trains were much the same price!

Answer 2

Yeah the TV ad shows the number of issues in the small print at the end, it's like the "build your own Nitro R/C car" by the same publisher. Worked it out that it'd cost £300 when in the model shop the same model (which was an "old" design) as selling for £150 inc radio gear (which in the small print on adverts wasn't included!)
Hope your lesson has been learned, don't buy the magazines! Eventually enough people will stop buying them to make them realise they are ripping us off.

Answer 3

The advantage to these partworks is that you don't have to shell out for the entire kit in one go, and that you get very specific instructions that allow a beginner to build the kit.

You could buy a similar kit from a model shop, but that would still cost you several hundred pounds. You would get a set of plans and a few pages of instructions. Far too daunting for a beginner. Even an expert modeller would expect to take a couple of years to complete a model of this detail and scale.

Fair enough to call them expensive, you have to pay for the advantages, but they are not a rip-off. If you complete the model you will have a very impressive display at the end of the series.

Answer 4

I know, it's unbelieveable, seriously. You could buy the bismark for that, well not quite but you know what I mean. If you want to build a kit boat. Go to Snetterton Sunday Market in Norfolk and look in the model shop there. They've got some really fantastic ones. They aren't cheap, but even the most expensive was only around £300 or £400.

They get away with it because we are stupid enough to buy the damn things. I did the same with some nature series. OK the kids did use it occasionally but as you say, a book would have been cheaper. Never again I say. But just because we have learnt our lesson, doesn't mean there's not another sucker out there.

Answer 5

I totally agree. I went on buing the Complete Beauty Collection for a nearly a year costing me about £100, before I realised it was a complete waste of money and stopped buying it! God knows how long and how much it would cost me to have finished the collection, but I'm glad I didn't.

Advertisers and companies should be made to tell the price of the entire series!

The Harry Potter chess advert made me laugh because it would take two years before you could even have a game!!!

I'd steer well clear of these collections if I were you!

Answer 6

Ouch... I built the Bismarck from a Tamiya kit (1/350 scale)... $65 plus $25 for an after-market etch-brass kit.

That would be about £46.

I learned early on in life to NEVER buy through such companies. Sorry to hear that you fell into a trap like that

Answer 7

Its utterly ridiculous. Not only this Bismark thing but all the various collections with weekly magazines. My wife bought a n art course weekly and also a collection of national dolls. The collections worked out to hundreds of pounds. It is a ploy to sell more magazines and to retain the business over several months.

Answer 8

For that amount of money, I would want the end product to be operational.
This is just another example of the numerous gaps in consumer legislation that exist due to the might of the business lobby on governments.
Prices have certainly gone up since the 12/6d Air-Fix kits.

Answer 9

Yes
The good thing is there are plenty of models and Hobby shops where you can buy high quality models to build of a wide range of ships, planes just about anything.

Bismarck will be there

Answer 10

I agree with you 100%. What I find equally annoying is the magazines aimed solely at children, with the advert stating 'First Issue 5p'...and, for half a second, 'Usual Price £299.99' pops up in tiny letters in the bottom corner.

Such a rip off