by Ken Tuccio

I remember the first time I saw Jurassic Park as a child, for a good week or so I was obsessed with becoming an archaeologist.

For whatever reason the idea of digging into the ground and finding stuff was appealing to me. As a result I began digging around my parents yard. I was hoping to find the bones of a brontosaurus, T-Rex, or maybe even some loose change. Sadly, I never found anything of monetary value, but I did come to understand that my Mother doesn’t appreciate her lawn being filled with tiny Ken-created holes.

While I’m much older now, and employed in a field that in no way relates to archaeology, I still like the idea of finding hidden treasures underneath the ground. To this day the field still wows me, so much so that I always find myself DVRing specials on TLC or The History Channel about historic finds or revolutionary digs. I believe that proves my passion for the field, because television shows about grown men digging holes in the dirt is far from riveting television.

I think deep down I still have an urge to take a shovel to my backyard in an attempt to find some hidden treasure underneath the dirt of Stratford, CT. The only thing stopping me is the fact that my landlord frowns upon me digging up her back yard.

Therefore, to cure my archeological jonesing, I did the next best thing; I bought this dig kit from Toys R Us …

This is called the Mini Dig : Shark’s Teeth.

Essentially this is nothing but a hunk of sand that brings with it two guarantees.

Guarantee One : I’ll find some shark’s teeth in it.

Guarantee Two : I'll make a mess of my apartment in the process.

Even as a child I never used a Mini Dig kit, but based upon the look on the face of the small child on the blister card, this is sure to bring me tons of fun …

Seriously, I’ve never seen a child so excited to hold a lump of molded sand.

This Mini Dig comes with only two items, a lump of sand in the shape of the letter L, and a blue plastic knife, which is also known as the “digging tool” …

Obviously, this is the high tech equipment every archaeologist uses in the field. That’s why most digs are sponsored by Chinette.

The back of the box has a few instructions, as the idea of chipping away at the hunk of sand until you find shark’s teeth must be too complicated for some young children …

The instructions inform me to use a “back and forth scraping motion” to remove the rock, and in the event the shark’s tooth doesn’t come free I can “gently pull it from the rock with my hands”.

So, to sum it up, if I want I can eliminate the silverware and simply excavate these precious artifacts with my bare hands. Good to know.

While I love getting my hands dirty, I believe I’m going to make my first attempt at scraping at this rock with my “digging tool” …

What you see there is the result of 5 minutes of constant scraping. I didn’t find any sharks teeth, and also didn’t seem to make any real progress in removing chunks of sand. I did manage to make my fingers sore while getting grains of sand all over the place, so I guess that’s a plus.

I’m not one to give up, so I’m going to make another college try at this hunk of gravel …

If it looks like I didn’t make much headway in terms of excavating the sharks teeth from it’s sand fortress, that’s because I didn’t. After another 5 minutes of effort, that was as far as I could get without cursing uncontrollably.

Even worse, my "digging tool" is now starting to wear …

What sucks is that I don’t even see a hint of the shark’s teeth yet. If I was able to see one protruding molar I’d be thrilled, and I’d have the second wind to scrape back and forth with unrelenting glee, but sadly I don’t.

It’s become obvious to me that traditional excavating methods aren’t cutting it, so I decided to bring out the big guns …

Meet Mr. Flathead, the digging tool they use to find fossils in the hood.

This bad boy doesn’t gently scrape back and forth, he takes no prisoners and attacks those hunks of sand like cell phone salesmen attack patrons in the mall.

Will Mr. Flathead be any more successful than the weak-ass blue digging tool …

Of course not.

While I managed to make some deep grooves in the hunk of rock, I still don’t see anything even remotely resembling shark’s teeth. By this point I’m beginning to think there's no sharks teeth in this thing, and I was duped into purchasing a hunk of sand. Maybe this is Geoffrey the Giraffe’s way of getting me back for buying crap at KB Toys recently.

I’m still going to soldier on though, breaking out the even bigger gun …

I call this guy clampy, and he doesn’t gracefully go after the shark’s teeth, he attacks it in a Steven Seagal-esque manner that is sure to make hunks of gravel cry …

As you can see, Clampy simply hammers the gravel into submission, and it worked, because I found my two prizes …

Yeah, that was fucking worth it.

After 20 minutes of effort I’ve got an apartment that looks like a beach, and all I get as a reward are two fucking sharks teeth.

Don’t get me wrong, the product delivers as advertised; it’s a hunk of sand that houses a few shark’s teeth, but the effort involved is absolutely ridiculous.

I’m a guy whose interested in archaeology, and by saying that I feel safe in verbalizing my disgust for this product. If I was a young child I’d have given up at trying to excavate these teeth after 10 minutes, because as an adult I wanted to quit after 5.

Unless you have a child that gets his or her jollies out of scraping small pieces of plastic against hardened rock, this product won’t excite them. If they’re interested in archaeology, rent them an Indiana Jones flick, make them watch episodes of The Flintstones, or take them to a museum, don’t hand this this hunk of gravel and say, “play”, because I’m fairly confident you’ll end up with a house covered in sand and a really annoyed child.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a dig site to clean up.

Does anyone own a vaccum?