As toys change, has play itself fundamentally changed? For that matter, does the early attachment to grown-up toys in some way shorten in the imaginative world of childhood, with its pretend tea parties and make-believe cops and robbers?

The protected space of childhood slowly eroded, as children were increasingly exposed to the consumer market - through comic books, then radio, then television. In the accelerating rush toward more wired play, it is not so much childhood that is under threat, some say, as society's idealized and perhaps sentimentalized view of it.

In fact, the move away from reading "The Secret Garden" in a quiet corner, and toward the public extravaganza of Harry Potter - the books, the movies, the action figures and video game - has been going on for a long time.