Furby wannabes, digital cameras, dog poo: top toys this Christmas

It’s only 59 sleeps until Christmas – and the Toy Retailers’ Association has released its list of the top toys Santa will be dishing out to well-behaved girls and boys this year. Call MT old-fashioned, but in its day, it didn’t have things like this: hi-tech toys like the Fijit Friend (Furby’s less creepy, purple cousin), the Kidizoom Twist (whizzy vocal effects machine complete with two megapixel camera) and Milky the Bunny  (creepy-looking interactive soft toy) dominate the list. Then again, there’s Doggy Doo – a dice-based game in which players have to, well, scoop poop. In fact, one of its USPs, according to Amazon, is that it ‘includes plasticene poo’. When it comes to the hilarity-inducing abilities of the word ‘poo’, some things never change…

Other toys to make the list include yet another version of the Star Wars lightsaber (yawn), Lego’s Ninjago Fire Temple (which comes complete with Lord Garmadon and an evil skeleton army) and, rather traditionally, a Fireman Sam Pontypandy Multi Rescue Set. That’s got to be good for Anglo-Welsh relations. There’s also the Moshi Monsters Moshling Treehouse – which may look like standard plasticky Christmas toy fare, but also comes from Mind Candy, friend of MT and one of the UK’s most successful tech firms. When you consider that it has the likes of Mattel and Disney to compete with, that’s not bad going…

To be fair, Christmas can’t come soon enough: figures out last week showed consumer confidence dropped by three points in September to 45 – that’s 10 points lower than during the same time last year. And although figures by the Office for National Statistics, found that against all the odds, online retail is on the up (£1 in every £10 is apparently now spent online), IMRG, e-tailers’ industry body, downgraded its 2011 growth forecast from 18% to 16%. So even online, the bleak midwinter is descending prematurely. Bring on lashings of that plasticene poo…

- Find out how head Moshling Michael Acton Smith built a company big enough to get his toys into the bestseller list…