here are three trends in toys that professional toy-watchers are warning parents away from this holiday season: toys with electronic or computer technology; toys spun off from Hollywood creations, especially ''Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone''; and war toys.
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That first category we already know about. Educator Joanne Oppenheim, co-author of the annual ''Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, 2002 Edition,'' a comprehensive guide to children's toys and media, calls them ''bossy'' toys, which gives a hint why educators don't like them: They tell children how to play, leaving little if any room for imagination. The problem this year is that there are more of these toys than ever, and they are more sophisticated than ever, making them harder to resist and harder to evaluate. Are they worthwhile? Oppenheim says no.
But Harry Potter? Kids of all ages love him. Isn't he someone parents should be able to trust?
And what's wrong with war toys? War is real right now. Are we supposed to pretend otherwise?
One way to answer these questions is to look at what children themselves choose to play with.
In a highly unscientific experiment, we gave four girls and three boys, second-graders at the John A. Garfield Elementary School in Brighton, a dozen new
toys to choose from.
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Twister, a classic floor game, was the first choice for three of the girls. When they tired of that, they picked Chinese checkers, then moved on to a foam rubber bat and ball set. ''This is just what you'd expect from girls this age,'' said teacher Debbie Walsh. ''They are very social. They want toys they can play with with their friends.''
A Harry Potter Lego set was not anyone's first choice, even though other construction toys were. Jeremy Wong headed straight for a transformer dinosaur kit and put it together like a pro. Kevin Alves, who loves cars and trucks, showed enormous patience assembling a military vehicle. Until it was pointed out to him, he didn't even realize it had a gun mounted on the top.
''The car is more fun than a gun,'' he said.
The one toy all the boys wanted a turn at was a remote-control, giant-sized bug. Even before he got the first turn at it, Sergy Belokamensky predicted it would be boring. Within minutes, it was. ''Bor-ing! Bor-ing!'' he announced. That didn't stop others from wanting a turn, though, even though Jeremy's evaluation was, ''This is fun ... for a few minutes here. At home, it would be boring.''
None of the children was interested in the rescue toys (ambulance, rescue helicopter), but the biggest surprise was that the only child interested in playing with GI Joe was Melissa Bradley. She had three reasons: ''I have three older brothers; my mother buys them these toys, and they have little army people and I don't get to play with them. I feel badly for the people who have to suffer in Afghanistan and the soldiers might help them,'' and, ''It's fun to dress and undress.''
There could be any number of reasons why these children did or didn't play with a particular toy, including that there wasn't enough time, someone else got to it first, or the collection of toys itself was flawed. As you start to make toy purchases, however, consider this: Given the choice, children gravitate to toys they can put an imprint on, toys that allow them to be the boss.
When we buy a toy, it's usually because we think a child will like it. However, our purchases are also influenced by the marketing we've been exposed to, the marketing our children have been exposed to and our own needs and feelings that we project onto our children, sometimes subconsciously. How many of us will buy a ''Sorcerer'' toy because we're carried away by Harry hype? Who will buy a war toy out of a vague sense that doing so is somehow patriotic?
It's not that those choices are automatically bad. If you have a child who's wild about Harry, a Harry Potter item may be a great idea. If a child knows someone who is a soldier or he's following war news, an army of small action figures may be a relevant choice.
''We make the best toy purchases when we follow our kids' passions,'' says child developmentalist George Scarlett of Tufts University.
Even when a toy feeds into a child's passion, however, it needs to be able to follow a child's lead. When there's only one way to play with a toy (push a button and it says something) or it comes with a proscribed script (follows a movie story line), the toy dramatically reduces children's options for the kind of creative play that allows them to work on their own issues, says early childhood educator Diane Levin of Wheelock College, whose specialty is children's play. She is spokeswoman for TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment), a national organization based in Cambridge. (For TRUCE's annual toy list, see related article.)
There are typically three stages of toy-play, Levin says. First, a child pokes and examines a toy to figure out what it does. Then he forms a relationship with it, getting proficient at making it do what it does. Lastly, he creates his own uses for it. Many toys don't allow children to get beyond the first two stages, she says. ''With open-ended toys, they do.''
That explains why Oppenheim, for instance, would prefer giving an 8-year-old a set of blocks and some miniature action figures rather than toy guns and elaborate military props. They provide too much structure. The same advice holds for Harry Potter (or other movie/video/TV spin-off) toys.
''Not all of them are terrible, just most of them,'' she says.
No professional toy-watcher objects to giving a child one or two Harry Potter souvenir items, but they rather it be something open-ended - a sorcerer's hat or a wand - rather than highly realistic replicas. ''That way, your child is more likely to develop his own way of playing `Harry,''' says Levin.
''None of the Harry Potter electronic toys made our list,'' says Oppenheim. Hasbro's Tiger Electronics, for instance, has 11 Harry Potter toys it is marketing, including a talking picture frame that acts as a room alarm. (''It's a novelty, not a toy,'' Oppenheim says). The chemistry sets didn't make it (too dangerous), and neither did the flying brooms (ditto). She does like the Harry Potter Clue game and some of the Lego-licensed products; they encourage problem-solving and stick-to-itiveness, but many of them are pricey (the Hogwort Castle is $89).
There's something else to keep in mind: Whenever you give a child a toy, it comes with your endorsement. Not just, ''Here, this is for you,'' but also, ''This is what you should play,'' says child psychologist and author Steveanne Auerbach, a play specialist who is also known as ''Dr. Toy.'' Her annual toy list doesn't have any Harry Potter items on it, either.
That toys come with that unwritten stamp of approval is one reason why she urges parents to look for toy figures of everyday heros, such as firefighters and police. ''Children have always been drawn to them because they are people they see in their daily environment,'' she says. ''Since Sept. 11, these toys are wisely getting pushed to the front of the store shelves.''
One toy that Oppenheim particularly likes is Billy Blazes by Fisher Price. A game that Daphne White of the Lion & Lamb Project recommends for children 8 and older is ''Rainbow Land'' by HeartSong. Lion & Lamb is a national grass-roots organization devoted to eliminating the marketing of violence to children.
Somehow, the second-graders at the Garfield School seemed to know all this instinctively. They went for building toys and social toys; they had the goods on the one glitzy, electronic toy; and when it came to the one child who chose the military toy, she played with it as if it were a doll, not a soldier.
''She really wants a Barbie for Christmas,'' said teacher Walsh.
Now that's another toy story.
Contact Barbara F. Meltz at meltz@globe.com">meltz@globe.com.
