A tough test for today's top toys

This year's best-selling Christmas presents include pogo sticks and candyfloss machines as well as the inevitable Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings spin-offs. Lena Corner and a team of youngsters put them through their paces

It's 2pm on a late November day, and year six of Victory School in Walworth, south London, should be sitting down to double geography. However, with the countdown to Christmas well under way, some other, more pressing matters have arisen. Year six – a typical class of inner-city 10 and 11 year olds – have agreed to lay down their pens and set to work test-driving this season's top-selling toys.

Their brief is simple – to undertake an unbiased and thorough examination of each item, to put each toy through its paces, to check the small print and read between the lines, to push each toy to the limits of its capability, and then to deliver a verdict. In other words, it's all a great excuse to pretend that Christmas morning has arrived early this year.

With the marketing campaigns already in full swing, it's difficult to see past the hype as everyone from Hamleys to the British Association of Toy Retailers is furiously printing off their top 10 bestseller lists. Inevitably, the Harry Potter Lego merchandise features heavily, in particular Hogwarts Castle (£79.99), the toy widely tipped to have parents fighting in the aisles this year. It turns out that demand for this Yuletide must-have has so outstripped supply that parents who haven't placed an order already might well be disappointed. "This is the very last set we have, and possibly the last in the country," the woman at Lego gravely informs me.

First on to the testing table, however, is Mattel's Miracle Baby (£49.99). "Lifelike movement!" and "Realistic baby sounds!" screams the large pink box. Of course, batteries aren't supplied, but for those who've remembered to buy them, she'll gurgle, smile, blink, cry and display all the emotions, apparently, of a six-month-old baby. Not that any of our group seems particularly interested. Of course, the boys are hostile – "It's rubbery, fat, ugly and it's for girls," declared one – but the girls aren't impressed either. "I think she's disgusting, her arms are all squidgy," says Peju, who has Nike trainers at the top of her Christmas list. "I don't like toys like this," she declares proudly. "I grew out of them years ago."

And indeed Miracle Baby does appear old-fashioned. Despite the testers' best efforts – pinching, choking and battering her head against the desk – she remains disappointingly docile. Maybe she's scared. "When I was in Woolworths with my mum," reports one tester, "I put my hand into the box and one of the fingers snapped off. It's cheap, very cheap. And its eyes are really creepy."

More upbeat is the group with General Creation's Candy Floss Machine (£29.99). "Turns an ordinary day into the sweetest of holidays," says the instruction leaflet. Not instantly, though; it needs to be charged for eight hours before use. "I'd rip the box off because I'd be so happy to get it," says Cherelle, "and I'd want to play with it straight away; eight hours is far too long to wait." After a few false starts the machine begins to spin and 10 pairs of hands reach out for a single, minuscule lump of floss clinging to the pink bowl. We conclude that we may have used the wrong type of sugar; perhaps we should have used caster instead of granulated. For year six it doesn't really matter – sugar licked off the desk appears every bit as delicious as picking floss from a bowl.

After the success of the yo-yo in recent seasons, the fad item on this year's Christmas lists is the pogo stick, which has enjoyed a surge of popularity since its appearance on Big Brother in the summer. The Airgo "air-powered launch vehicle" (£89.99) is a frighteningly powerful update on the traditional spring-powered pogo stick of old. Beautifully constructed out of aluminium, it comes with a warning to wear a crash helmet at all times and instructions on "learning to fly". "Where's the off switch?" shouts Mr Armer, a teacher, as he bounces out into the corridor. "I would dropkick people on it," says Leon, suggesting a terrifying new form of playground combat. Another boy wanders past with the Miracle Baby, his fingers rammed down her throat; yet again she remains strangely quiet. I'm beginning to understand quite how tough toys have to be these days.

The Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle Lego (£79.99), meanwhile, attracts a predictably captive audience. One good thing about it is that it's designed to be built in separate parts, so that several children can work on their own small sections. The attention to detail is excellent – the chest of capes, for example, or the box of tiny gold keys that are used to unlock the treasure, are lovingly recreated.

The Lord of the Rings merchandise has passed year six by altogether. Maybe they are too young for it, or perhaps it's because it seems to be designed more with the collector in mind. Either way, no one here has heard of Frodo (£24.99) or Gandalf (£9.99), although this doesn't stop the children ripping open the boxes and putting the characters through their paces. "He's funny, I would use him to fight my dinosaurs," says one child of Frodo. "Look at this hole in his shirt," says another: "I think it's not good quality." Luckily Gandalf comes with a cloak made of tough-looking rubber, so he, at least, shouldn't have a problem.

The group who are testing the Game Boy Advance (£89.99), meanwhile, seems to have disappeared altogether. All that is left on their desk is the discarded box. Eventually they reappear, on the other side of the classroom, a heaving mass clustered tightly round Laolu, who has somehow grabbed the controls for himself and is playing the Harry Potter game.

Game Boy Advance gets a unanimous thumbs up, though the Harry Potter game itself is universally derided. "With, say, Pokémon Crystal," Laolu reports, "you catch them and fight them, but with this one you just run around and lose your mind." Everyone else seems to agree. "Did you waste your money on this?" asks Robbie. "I don't like adventures, only beat-em-ups." A heated debate follows on who spends the longest playing computer games in a day. "I spend five hours," says one. "I spend 10," says another. "Well," says Laolu, "If I go on to my PlayStation, I will not get off until four in the morning."

Every year, the British Association of Toy Retailers nominates a Toy of the Year. Last year, it was the interactive robotic dog Teksta; in 1999 it was Furby babies; the year before that the Furby itself; and before that the Teletubbies. Over the past four decades all the classics have won – the Rubik Cube, Transformers, the Sindy doll and even the Peter Powell stunt kite.

This year's winner won't be announced until January, but for year six, at the end of a hard day's play, a hot favourite has emerged. Though testing computer games against rubber dolls hardly counts as scientific experimentation, it is clear that, for our group at least, the Game Boy Advance is the runaway winner. This is followed by Harry Potter Lego, with the candyfloss machine and the pogo stick coming in equal third. Winner of the wooden spoon – or more likely with it jammed down her throat – is the poor old Miracle Baby, the least popular toy among the group. How times have changed.

Thanks to Hamleys (020-8752 2278; www.hamleys.co.uk)