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Columnist Hugh Dixon looks at some of the toy crazes that have plagued parents down the years, as well as some old favourites of his own.

Sometimes grown-ups can be really mean. Children – boys and girls both – just want to have fun, but very often adults just seem to want to take it away from them.

Take the case, recently reported by the BBC, of the Chinese crossbows. An enterprising toymaker decided to create a gadget at once educational and fun: a miniature wooden crossbow, about the same size as an adult hand.

You pull back a string until it slips over a catch. You place a toothpick inside the mechanism. You pull a trigger, which releases the catch and