Left unfettered  , Anthony Konieczka, 9 years old, would happily play his Game Boy Advance or PlayStation 2 from the minute he gets up to the moment he goes to bed, 14 bleary-eyed   hours later. Anthony's box is stocked with traditional toys--board games, puzzles, art supplies--and as far as he is concerned, they are relics of Christmases past. His sister Michaely, 6 years old, still likes dressing her Barbies. But once she starts playing Game Boy, it's hard to get her away. Play patterns like this could take up another Christmas for the toy department. Through September, toy sales were down 5% compared with the first nine months of last year, according to the NDP Group. Meanwhile, the video-game industry is heading for another record year. Thanks to hot new games like Halo 2 for the Xbox, the industry is light-years ahead of the toy business when it comes out. While some new toys emerge every holiday season, toymakers are heading into this one without a monster hit  . Indeed, there has not been a Furby-style frenzy   in years. Of 10 toy segments only two, arts and crafts and dolls, have generated sales growth over a recent 12-month period. Some of the weakest categories like construction sets and action figures are the ones aimed at boys, who suffer the most from the video games. Analysts expect one of the top stocking stuffers this season to be not a traditional toy but the new generation of Nintendo's Game Boy, the DS, which hit stores last week. The deeper issue is that shifts in play patterns are forcing toymakers to fight for shelf space in a tightening market. Boys in particular seem to be abandoning traditional toys at earlier ages in favor of consumer electronics, video games, PC software and the Internet. The fact that kids are growing more tech-savvy  , a trend called "age compression  ", has troubled toy companies for at least a decade. Action figures, for instance, used to be considered healthy for boys up to age 12. Now the items are mainly marketed to boys 4 to 6. A recent study found that nearly half of the US children start on video games at 4 to 5 years old--and 20% at age 3 or younger. Toy companies, of course, have long seen this trend. Several of the toys expected to sell well this season are, in fact, those that involve video gaming and DVD technologies. Mattel's Fisher-Price introduced a game system called InteracTV this year, featuring DVDs with characters like Dora the explorer. Hasbro came out with a portable color1 video player called VideoNow and has been putting classic games like Battleship and Yahtzee into hand-held electronic format. What has been bothering toymakers for almost ten years?
The Internet addiction. The trend of age compression. The sales of action figures. The new generation of Game Boy.