It's one of the oldest cliches. Come tomorrow morning as children excitedly tear open their Santa presents, we can expect many of them to eventually get more fun out of the boxes and wrappings than the toys themselves. The bigger the boxes, the better the fun and the more opportunities for play. Call me quaint, old-fashioned, a killjoy, but I seriously doubt the play value of many of the toys on the market this Christmas. Tell me - how a child can invent games to play with a doll that feeds, pees, dirties her nappy and says a set number of phrases? Certainly, children learn by imitating adults but being tied down to a dependent doll or a dependent Furby at the tender age of three or four is not my idea of childhood freedom.
Aren't toy manufacturers bringing home a trifle too early the message that teenage pregnancies can wreck your life? What child sincerely wants to have to look after a Furby 24 hours a day? One writer quipped recently that they are at least better than a puppy, but - with responsible involvement from the parents, of course - looking after a dog teaches children rather more skills and emotions (and its spontaneity is not battery controlled).
Things have gone so far that one of the play tents on the market this Christmas comes complete with a lamp which can make the sound of crickets. Can children no longer be left to discover such sounds themselves?
I am not against all toys or even all faddish toys (I still regret never having had an orange space-hopper myself as a child) but I'd like to throw in a word or two on the benefits of playing with "non toys". Think about it. Almost every pre-school-age child gets endless hours of fun from playing with her mummy's purse or her daddy's wallet.
"Every parent knows the wealth of playthings in their kitchen cupboards but not many parents are strong enough to resist the peer pressure of buying their children the latest, advertised toy," says clinical psychologist Olive Travers.
"Some contemporary toys are wonderful - for the parent. There is a child's awe in us all. But it's important to be aware of what we are doing. If it needs a battery, think twice about it because the amount of fun a child will get from it is limited.
"What children really need are aids to their imaginations and these aids don't have to be toys," she says. "Think of the fun young children get out of playing with cushions, bedspreads, curtains, running behind sofas, etc. All children need are props to play out their internal dramas which help them make sense of the world.
"The more flexible the props, the more valuable they are and many modern toys aren't at all flexible in this way," she continues.
Herself a mother of four, Travers finds hardware shops offer great scope for play objects. Such things as magnets, magnifying glasses, torches and measuring tapes present children with lots of interesting play. "It's that old idea of childhood being an apprenticeship for adulthood. Children love being familiar with adult things because they can create play out of real-life experience. Anything that belongs to the real world (providing it is not dangerous for them to play with) that they can handle and make use of is a potential plaything."
Some parents have commented on how some of their children's favourite playthings are, in fact, not toys at all in the conventional sense. One little girl gets endless fun from a big, old-fashioned, black telephone. Another two children find an unused tea-trolley to be a perfect plaything - sometimes giving each other rides on it and other times serving full-blown afternoon tea for all and sundry. The very fact these objects are not toys per se sometimes makes them even more enjoyable to play with.
Educational consultant Alice Quinn believes part of the reason we flood our children's lives with toys is that in the late 20th century, we feel everything we do has to have an obvious, meaningful end. "We give children toys which we think have a clear purpose. For instance, if they wind it up, it will move."
Speaking at the Irish Pre-school Playgroups Association annual conference earlier this year, Quinn accused some of today's toys of actually inhibiting children's imaginations. "In fact, children learn more through the process of play than from a toy which reacts when they press a certain button. Make-believe, for example, is essential for children. Pretending a stone is a castle is the basis for understanding `print' - something which represents something else," she told the conference.
Meanwhile, writing on play and creativity in Natural Childhood - a practical guide to the first seven years (Gaia Books), Mildred Masheder concludes that true creativity comes when the child feels his play is really his work and that he is taken seriously for it.