Frank McNally wonders at this year's must-have toys, including the robot built by a NASA engineer.
In retrospect, the first signs of Barbie's mid-life crisis probably came four years ago when, at the age of 41, she suddenly developed a belly-button. During her long reign as the world's favourite doll, she had never needed one. Not in her first career, as a teenage fashion model (1959). Not as Barbie Goes to College (1964). Not even during the wild parties when as Freundschafts Barbie (1990), she helped celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.
No. It was obviously the combination of a significant birthday and the arrival of a hip new generation of dolls called Bratz that finally forced poor Barbie down the belly-button route. From there, it was slippery slope to the events of this summer when, as you probably know, she dumped Ken, her boyfriend of 43 years, and ran off with an Australian surfer called Blaine.
Meanwhile, sales continued to nose-dive. And last month, the British Toy Retailers' Association confirmed what many suspected by excluding Barbie from its Top Ten Christmas Toys list for the first time in years.
The next step, it seemed, would be the release of a special edition Barbie with Half-Empty Gin Bottle, or Barbie as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. But no. The heartening news from the winter toy catalogues is that Barbie has pulled herself together and is back with Ken. The pair have teamed up for the annual Barbieland musical - this year The Princess and the Pauper - and their brave smiles give no hint to what they must be going through. Nobody's mentioning Blaine. Their friends are just hoping for the best.
It's probably far too early to forecast the demise of a doll who has seen off so many challengers for so long. Anybody heard from Cindy lately? But the pink princess from Wisconsin does provoke strong reactions, as in a quote from the US website About Dolls Daily. Greeting the recent arrival of yet another generation of pretenders - the Get Real Girls - a contributor declares: "For the first time ever, Barbie may have a challenger who can kick her anorexic butt!"
On the other hand, Barbie is nothing if not a survivor, and after the embarrassment with Blaine, she appears to have cleverly repositioned herself to benefit from the upsurge in family values in the US. You'd expect political awareness in a doll whose multi-faceted career has included two runs as a presidential candidate (and whatever about the shortcomings of her campaign platform, critics agree she was a lot more animated than John Kerry). So even if their relationship is a sham, the Ken and Barbie Wedding and Vanity Playset (€16.99) looks like a shrewd career move.
Bratz are the sort of dolls who should have voted Democrat: they're young, they're female, and they represent several ethnic minorities. But you know they never got around to voting, because they were too busy trying on clothes. Their promotional blurb makes no bones about their priorities: "Bratz offer girls a world filled with funky makeovers, endless shopping, and lots of time for just plain kickin' it." There are no details about what exactly they're kickin'. Not the drug habit that's responsible for their big spacy eyes, that's for sure. Nor the collagen treatment that has left them with lips the size of Barbie's butt.
There's no sign of them kicking their Western-style consumerist lifestyle either, despite a current flirtation with the orient. This is the subject of the Tokyo a Go-Go range, typical of which is the Karaoke Sushi Lounge (sushi bar by day, karaoke stage by night), which offers "a ton of accessories", including "a working sushi conveyor belt". All for just €44.99. Frankly, with their cars, their boyfriends, and their love of kickin', Bratz are not the kind of girls you want your daughter hanging around with.
But their big selling point seems to be the clothes. One six-year-old, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, explained their appeal thus: "When you dress them up, they're just really, really, really nice." And the six-year-old's mother, who defended a recent Bratz purchase on the grounds that "You're the one who bought her the Barbie lunchbox!"), agrees that the clothes are well done.
The striking thing about the Christmas toy market, for girls anyway, is the extent to which dolls still dominate. This probably explains the comeback of the Cabbage Patch Kids. Such was the demand when these were first launched in the early 1980s that harassed parents queued for hours to buy them, their faces haunted by fear of a clear-out, like food shoppers in a communist supermarket. A repeat of such scenes is unlikely as the makers target the nostalgia of Generation X graduates who are now parents, but the Cabbage Patch phenomenon remains otherwise unchanged.
You still don't buy Cabbage Patch kids, you "adopt" them: a fun concept undermined slightly by the fact that the spoilsport shopkeeper will insist you hand over €29.95 first. This includes all the necessary paper work (birth certificate, adoption documents, disposable nappy, etc).
Thanks to random computer generation, no two dolls are exactly alike. And insofar as they have a message, it's that you don't have to be beautiful, or even kickin', to be loved.
Another 1980s toy still going strong, incidentally, is My Little Pony. It will be interesting to see whether Irish sales are affected by the current cynicism about equestrian matters. As it is, the MLP accessory range suddenly looks inadequate without urine samples, burgling equipment, tarnished gold medals, and a miniature Charlie Bird.
At the toddler end of the toy market, the bad news for many parents is that that there is still no sign of extinction for Barney. The fun-loving but adenoidal dinosaur continues to hold our children in his purple-and-green grip, and he's not letting go. Christmas offers include the Singing in the Rain Barney (€19.99), the blurb for which threatens: "Barney holds his umbrella and sings fun songs. Batteries included."
The only hope in this is in the introduction of a weather theme. Perhaps 2005 will see the launch of a "Climate Change Barney", featuring the hero's doomed struggle to adapt after some unknown but cataclysmic event - possibly a giant meteorite - wipes out dinosaur habitats.
Longevity is a recurring theme among toys this year. A survey commissioned by London's Museum of Childhood recently named old reliable Lego as the toy of the century, while October's Hong Kong Toy Fair suggested traditional games would dominate the 2004 Christmas market. Yo Yos are due for yet another comeback. Modern classics such as Buckaroo, which this year promises an "even moodier mule", are still shifting in large numbers. And old superheroes such as Spiderman and Batman show no signs of retiring.
But there is a new kid on the block in Toytown, and once the hype starts in earnest, your six-years-and-upwards son will probably want him for Christmas. Maybe even your husband. Robosapien is his name, and he's the latest thing in "applied biomorphic robotics", whatever that is. He was designed by a NASA engineer who also helped build one of the Mars probes, and he has no fewer than 67 programmable functions, of which walking, dancing, throwing things, and speaking fluent "caveman" are just a few.
But these are not the most exciting functions. The clincher for most young boys will be the fact that Robosapien can "belch" and "fart". This is a crucial breakthrough in applied biomorphics, and hopefully it will put an end to the complaints of the many Americans who believe that NASA's enormous budget is not money well spent. You'll probably be hearing a lot of demonstrations of Robosapien's farting programme over Christmas, assuming you can afford to shell out the €109.99-or-more that this scientific wonder costs.
Robosapien comes with an operating manual (which no self-respecting boy will consult). But according to its inventor, users of the toy have already moved on from operating it as intended, and are now adapting it, like Sid, the horrible boy next door in the film Toy Story. Amateur robotic enthusiasts have already successfully transplanted a Swiss army knife in place of Robosapien's head, apparently, while at the extreme anorak end of the movement, one US enthusiast who bought a dozen of the robots has programmed them "to salute to his Darth Vader doll".
This is the sort of thing that makes ownership of a Tamagotchi sound like normal, healthy behaviour. In any case, the virtual pet-on-a-chain is expected to sell strongly this December. Complete with an infra-red function that allows it to communicate with other Tamagotchis, the toy can now facilitate flirting between humans (although whether Tamagotchi enthusiasts are equipped with the emotional skills to interact with real people is surely debateable). Two Tamagotchis can now also create "Tamababies" together! This raises so many issues, it's hard to know where to start.
The Incredibles - the latest creation of the people who gave us Toy Story and Monsters Inc - has yet to hit the cinemas here. But the merchandise has arrived in advance, and its importance in the Christmas market earns it a place on the cover of Smyths catalogue. It also shares a page inside with the characters from Shrek. And the latter provides an interesting talking point in the form of a face mask of the green ogre which, as worn by a boy model, looks remarkably like Neil Diamond. If that's not worth €23.99, nothing is.