Paracetamol - a drug which is freely available over the counter and which most of us have at one time taken to relieve a headache or some other pain or ache. In fact it's probably the most commonly used painkiller for the majority of the population.

I buy Tesco paracetamol for three very simple reasons:
1 - Its cheap.
2 - Its easy because I shop here every week.
3 - It does exactly the same job as every other paracetamol brand I've ever come across.

Tesco paracetamol comes in tablet and caplet form, and I have to say I do prefer to buy the caplets rather than the tablets personally. As far as I can tell the only difference is the shape - tablets are round and flat, caplets are sort of oval and more rounded. I find the caplets slide down slightly more easily than the tablets meaning I don't taste the horrible sharp flavour of them.

Addressing the above three points one at a time:
Cheap. Well, 16p for 16 tablets is pretty cheap I reckon. I don't see the point in paying for a brand name or pretty packaging when these contain exactly the same ingredients and work just as well.

Ease. Even if I had to pay more for these, I'd still probably buy them because this is a place I visit weekly, so it means I can avoid an extra trip to a different store to get them.

Sameness. I think I've already addressed this point really, but other than the fact that some chemists sell packs with larger quantities in, I can't honestly say I've ever been able to tell the difference between one brand of paracetamol and another, and as long as that's the case I'll keep using the cheap ones.

Actually something that really does bug me is the law on how many you can buy. You're not restricted to x number of tablets, you're restricted to two boxes. Now this strikes me as pretty ridiculous when I can go into a store and buy two boxes each of which contain 64 tablets, or I can go in buy two which contain 16 each. The restriction seems rather ridiculous and a little off the wall. Add to this that supermarkets like Tesco do seem to have trouble recognising that pills like Paracetamol and Ibuprofen are very different and can actually be taken in combination without doing harm so they say you're only allowed two boxes combined rather than two of each.

Ok, Rant time... Now, not being funny, but if someone was gathering pills together to do themselves harm with (which apparently is the reason for the limit being put in place), I'm sure they'd manage to go into however many stores needed to procure enough to do the job. They wouldn't think OH, I can only have two boxes from here, I'd better go home and re-think my idea now would they. They don't limit you to buying just enough alcohol to make you tipsy but not to do you any harm, or say oooh nooo you can only buy one bottle of cough syrup. When there are several people living in one place, and all are ill, sometimes, just sometimes it would be useful to buy oooh I don't know say threeeee boxes of painkillers in one go to save an extra trip to the store!

Anyhow... back to the product. Yeah well, these are paracetamol they come in a blister pack, in a box with a leaflet with warnings etc. on it. They work for mild pain and I'm gonna keep buying them as long as they keep working and remain cheap and easy to buy!