Young Yves St. Laurents, for example, can practice on Fashion Plates, which teaches them to produce designer clothes. And young subcontractors will gain valuable experience from the Tuff Stuff Tool Kit, with its string-powered rotary drill.
The tool kit is just part of the extensive Tuff Stuff line, which also provides plastic implements for would-be doctors, bus drivers and, depressingly, journalists.
The best of "when I grow up I want to be" genre is a $40 dollhouse fashioned to teach youngsters how to be interior decorators in the best suburban snob-zoning tradition.
Called "Smaller Home and Garden, the house features "high ceilings, large windows, and airy skylights," not to mention lots of imitation redwood panelling. Hanging plants optional and Cuisinart not included.
Games with boards, pieces to move, and dice seem to be in decline. They had one at Woolworths called Don't Tip the Waiter, and another in which mountain climbers tried to avoid falling rocks, charging goats and other alpine hazards; but otherwise there are only the traditional Monopolies, Scrabbles and the like.
Monopoly, though, seems outrageously tame next to Adorable Dora. A plastic hippopotamus in a low-cut dress, Dora dances-- "Swings"-- and mouths the lyrics that you, four or older, are actually singing from a nearby plastic microphone.
Though it features no endangered species, Dynomike works on much the same principle. A wireless microphone, it transmits "your voice through any (nearby) AM radio." By Christmas evening your neighbors may have decided that the novelty has worn off.
Less functional but more good-natured is Strolling Bowling, an alley with pins at one end and a bowling ball wearing orange platform shoes at the other. Wind up the ball and he hops down to the pins.
A few action toys still clutter the toy departments--Night Rescue Chutes Away, for instance, comes complete with a helicopter, a floodlight, and a half dozen survivors.
But for the most part, all the toys of yesteryear are being replaced by electronic games. Two years ago, Simon was a big hit. Now, its Pocket Simon that's driving them wild, or would be, if the Jordan Marsh help remembered to replace the batteries on the demonstrator model.
The electronic games--which range up to a $105 Thoroughbred Horse Race Analyzer in a leather case--are distressingly alike, with their red lights, their tinny beeps and honks, and their $30 and up price tags.
An exception, though, is one totally mysterious digital game with a bespectacled plastic hen perched on its dashboard. It's called I Took a Lickin' from a Chicken, and when you're outperformed the bird does a little convulsive dance and cackles throatily.
Two kids were perched over the chicken computer last week, groaning when they lost, time after time. "Why's that chicken taking so long to make his move?" one said. "He's thinking, he's just thinking. Don't go and rush him," his partner replied.
Finally the boys decided they had outfoxed the silicon chips. "I got you, you stupid chicken," one sang. But, by means fair or foul, the bird went into its victory dance anyway. "Motherfucking chicken," one kid muttered as he stalked away.