No-Toy Story

And a major reason for this toy ennui is, I suspect, a surfeit of toys: Many kids these days simply have so much to play with that none of it feels especially enticing. How indulged are they? On Toy Wishes magazine's list of this year's dozen hottest toys, three cost more than $200, including a $300, three-foot-tall animatronic plush pony that is galloping off the shelves.

I've been reading "Jane Eyre" to Julia recently, and I was struck by this passage in which Jane, looking back on her 10-year-old self, describes her intense attachment to a battered doll. "Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doted on this wooden toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation."

Jane got more pleasure from this doll than Julia did from the must-have gift of a few years back, her $87 American Girl doll. (Julia chose Kit, a child of the Depression, during which, as my father, another child of the Depression, pointed out, no one could have imagined forking over that kind of money for a doll.)

And yet, as much as kids today may feel peer pressure to put away childish things, they really do, at heart, love toys. Children of all ages -- even children -- want to play.

We were all at my parents' house for Hanukkah the other night, with an assortment of cousins and friends ranging in age from 6 to 11. In the flurry of trendy, branded presents (an iPod Nano for one, an Abercrombie sweater for another) the hit of the evening was a ghastly oversized Barbie head -- the Barbie Primp and Polish Styling Head with Hands for Manicure, to be exact -- for my 6-year-old niece.

As the adults were having dessert, I crept back downstairs. The five tween-aged girls had elbowed the 6-year-old aside and were clustered around Brobdingnagian Barbie, curling her hair and applying her makeup. A creepy, sexualized toy, perhaps -- but a toy, nonetheless.

"I want this for my birthday," said the oldest. She has since asked for anonymity so she can continue to attend middle school. She wasn't entirely joking about wanting it, though. Jane Eyre, I think, would have understood perfectly.

marcusr@washpost.com