So real you'd nearly cry yourself

Cuddly Victorian-style teddy bears with dickie bows and upturned noses won't be high on Santa's list this year. Teletubbies aside, children want life-like baby dolls - dolls that babble and burp, cough, laugh, cry, and even go to the bathroom for heaven's sake.

Even toddlers who can't yet speak instantly recognise the most popular doll on this year's Christmas market - Baby Expressions (£39.99). This newborn baby doll has many facial expressions, from pained hunger to nappy-rash irritation. When the doll is picked up she laughs, moves her lips and smiles - all with the help of five costly batteries.

Baby Born (£32.85) is the second most popular doll this Christmas: she has a special attraction for girls. Not only can she drink milk from her "magic" bottle but she can be spoon-fed with coloured "special doll food". Tears flow at will - just squeeze her arm. She wets her nappy and uses her pink potty (this bit is particularly appealing to kids). Motherhood can even be proven with a doll's "birth certificate", along with a book explaining baby development. There are numerous accessories from sleeping bags to car-seats and each doll is created to perfection, even down to her protruding belly-button.

Baby Doc (£34.75) is running at third place with a nasty cough and a forehead that turns rosy when she's running a temperature. Her bottom gets sore but her surrogate mother can play nurse with the stethoscope and apply a cold cloth to dolly's head to reduce the redness and slow down the heartbeat.

It's certainly a far cry from the peg-wooden dolls that amused Peig Sayers, so are the toy makers influencing toddlers still in nappies to act like parents before they are ready?

"Sometimes a doll can be too complicated for a child's developmental level and they mightn't get the best out of it," says child clinical psychologist Anne O'Connor. "But if you look at a child's play, it is often an imitation of their home environment. Children speak to dolls just as their own mothers talk to them. "A child nowadays might seem more socially sophisticated than 20 years ago simply because children are now more exposed to experiences earlier, but emotionally they're the same." Melissa Nolan, owner of the Doll's Hospital on Dublin's South Great George's Street, says some children keep their dolls squeaky clean and seem to show maternal instinct. "Some even believe their dolls feel the cold and put extra underwear on them. But then others bring in filthy dolls and I believe their own children will probably be like that in 20 years' time."

The Doll's Hospital sells collector dolls priced from £10-£2,500. Nolan explains that nowadays antique dolls are not made with full composition bodies and so are much softer. One creamy-faced porcelain doll stares through her handmade blue glass-eyes, dressed in rich, red velvet with brown mohair ringlets falling from beneath her drooping hat. Her legs are covered with bloomers and a cotton petticoat hangs just below her knees. But will little girls want her?

"It's the television advertisements that sell toys. But still, if the kid-next-door has it, every child wants it," says Frances Quinn, manageress of Toymaster on Mary Street, Dublin.

Even boys want dolls, it seems. "Parents shouldn't be worried if their sons play with dolls: it is perfectly natural," says Anne O'Connor. Usually, in fact, the boys go for dolls such as Action Man, who certainly doesn't wet his nappy. For boys, it appears, it's all about shooting the enemy and launching secret missiles. Action Man Street Commander (£32.99) is the most popular - he speaks, repeating the recorded words of his kiddie commander.

And the search for realism marches on. "There will be a doll out early next year that actually breathes and gets her wind up after feeding. You can sing her to sleep and if you clap your hands, she wakes up crying," says Melissa Nolan.

Meanwhile, commerce imitates life as Barbie goes for plastic surgery to help her sag a little, in all the right places. Her waist will fill out and her jutting bosom will be trimmed to conform to the human figure. Next, they'll create a Baywatch babe complete with umbilical cord and a beauty spot right between her cellulite dimples.