Jason Gardner looks at what we're going to be buying this Christmas

Coming up with a Christmas wish list is a serious task for most children. I remember as a kid that the summer was hardly over before I was pacing the floors awaiting the arrival of my Mum's Autumn/Winter shopping catalogue. The weeks building up to Christmas would find me poring over the pages in the toy section, drooling over pictures of Meccano and Millenium Falcon's (Han Solo's spaceship from Star Wars for the uninitiated.)

I even remember one desperate Christmas having to haggle with my Father over the suitability of a Commodore 64 computer as my Xmas haul. I tried to convince him that I'd put it to educational use, learning to write programmes that converted centigrade to fahrenheit etc. He saw through my thinly veiled motives and realised I just wanted to play Yie Ar Kung Fu. I ended up with a bike instead.

Mind you these days it's not just kids who struggle to come up with a list for Santa. In the run up to Xmas many women are yanked into Currys to receive 'hints' about the gadget of choice for their boyfriend or husbands stocking. This year will it be a Tom Tom Go 910 GPS or a 2Gig iPod Nano? Or a Panasonic Scen 29 CD micro hi-fi system with DAB digital radio? And yes I am using this article to drop my own hints.

It's amazing how many items actually find themselves on lists of top toys for boys and for grown men who maybe should know better. So Comet have predicted that the Wow Wee Roboreptile, a snazzy remote control dinosaur will appeal to Dads and lads alike as will the Nintendo Wii, pronounced 'we', the latest super games console to hit the high streets, a mere snip at £180.

It's the kiddie market where the big bucks are spent though. Contenders for the season's star toy are Mattel's kid tough digital Camera, the ever prevalent Tamagotchi - a digital computer pet on a keyring - and my personal favourite the Dr Who Cyberman Mask. I can imagine the delight on the faces of grannies the country over as their grandchildren transform into metallic voiced cyborgs bent on world domination.

But as well as being a season for trying to beat your junior relatives at Playstation, it's also the season when we face dilemmas over our excess. Should we have that minced pie with Brandy butter or low fat cream? Should we polish off the coffee crèmes in the bottom of the Quality Street tin? Should we really be buying all those presents?

Us Britons spend upwards of £2.1 billion a year on toys - half of that figure is accounted for in the three months leading up to Christmas. Small wonder then that the average child's bedroom contains nearly £1500 worth of gadgets and toys. One insurance company estimated that parents today have spent more than £20 billion pounds on goodies for their kids - four times the amount that their parents spent on them when they were children.

So are we spoiling our children? Some say yes, letting our kids grow up in an age where their every material need is catered for has had damaging effects: witness the ever growing need for Supernanny. Parents who don't know how to say no to their children's demands end up with kids who never learn boundaries.

On the other hand there has never been a time when we invest more in our children. The myth that parents today spend less and less time with their kids doesn't bear up to scrutiny. In the 1970's parents on average spent 25 minutes per day with their children, today that figure is up to 99 minutes.

So what should we do this Christmas? Of course we could donate to developing world support agencies and buy our kids a goat or a water well and as long as that's not all we get them it's not a bad idea.

But as usual it's all about balance. It's about letting kids spend less time in front of the TV and video games and more time with play that encourages social interaction or creativity. That goes for adults too. Maybe it's time to put the Nintendo on the shelf and dust off those board games. Anyone for Scrabble?