O.K., Santa, Make My Day

By JAY COCKS

It is late Christmas Eve, the tree is up and listing at something less than 15 degrees. Not perfect, but acceptable. The kids will sleep until dawn. Insufficient but unavoidable. The pres- ents are wrapped, all but that one saved for last. A favorite. One that should be freshly assembled and brightly functioning when the kids charge into the room in . . . can it be just five hours?

Grab an eggnog and (anticipating technical problems) a few elementary tools, then sit down with Spacewarp. Picture on the box looks great. Grinning boys watching steel marbles roll over course that resembles a Disney World ride for reckless ball bearings. Open the instruction book. And -- the horror! the horror! -- it looks like something from J. Robert Oppenheimer's sketchbook. Maybe the words of Johann Stonehouse, national sales and distribution manager for Bandai America, will soothe: "You're not getting your money's worth if it's not hard. It's a challenge. It's a good item for a family project." There! That's it! Family project. Just the thing to work on with the children and perhaps, too, with some holiday phone help from Cousin Jonas, who has, among other sterling qualities, full tenure at M.I.T.

So wrap Spacewarp, settle down with another eggnog and consider the bounty under the tree. The regenerating myths of toys may have as many classical permutations as the collective unconscious, but the listings in most contemporary toy catalogs can be reduced to three basics. Spacewarp, for example, falls into a category that could be called . . . build it.

Here is where modernism and tradition meet as snugly as two curved tracks in a set of electric trains. It is a given that this is an age of futurism and intricacy in toys, and indeed some Transformers are wondrous and devilish at once. The Decepticon Trypticon (about $56) is a gray, green and purple animated dinosaur that turns -- with some flips, tucks and fast snaps -- into an entire city. Transformers (a mainstay of Toy & Hobby World's Toy Hit Parade) have lots of modern dash, but electric trains still have romance enough to lure any kid away from a video game. Purists note that Lionel may not be all it once was, but the H-O gauge lines of Marklin and Roco, Lima and Liliput, chug as reliably as ever, and the large-scale LGBs, made in West Germany, could be the grandest toy trains ever. A starter set (about $330) with a steam locomotive and two passenger cars is a richly detailed invitation to further excursions that can be plotted from the elaborate LGB catalog, which is a real itinerary for dreaming all on its own.

Childcraft's superb sets of large wooden blocks (ranging from $35 to $200) are crafted to be the foundation not only of manual skill but of imaginative construction that older kids can carry forward into Fisher-Price's excellent $5-to-$38 Construx sets. These will yield an armada from outer space that & might handily be reinforced by some vehicle from the cartoon-linked but still lively MASK series, or by the formidable Giant "vertical climbing system," a rumbling series of interlocking rough-roaders (scant assembly required) that can make it over cartons and well up walls.

A second section in the under-the-tree collection rests on the need to . . . baby it. Toys marketed for boys still hold the high-tech edge. In the girls' department, the wildly popular My Little Pony is a product line featuring simple anthropomorphic equines made to be fussed over, just as Cricket and Baby Talk are dolls meant to be cared for, changed and charged up with generous quantities of batteries to operate their voices and make their faces move. Baby Talk comes up with provocative dialogue like "I love you" and "Turn me over" (lines certain to elicit a lively first-time response from Dad); Cricket sticks mostly to songs and stories.

Intriguing for a while, perhaps, but nowhere near as commanding as Tomy's Omnibot 2000, an electronic marvel that's like a doll sent from outer space to beguile both boys and girls. Omnibot requires major bucks (about $450) and a little mechanical training, but it will repay all instruction-book diligence. Children will need help programming the Omnibot to perform some of its more exotic functions (such as answering the door or serving morning o.j. in bed at a preselected time), but the remote control is easy to operate after a minute's tutorial. Omnibot will raise its right arm, flash its eyes, open its hand, scuttle across the floor, make sharp turns, all at the press of a button or two. It will even speak with the child's taped voice and could conceivably serve as a referee for all the games that boil down to . . . blast it.

G.I. Joe is the nation's best-selling toy, but for kids serious about their shooting, Lazer Tag is the game to get. Out only three months and already No. 5 on the Toy Hit Parade, it is the hottest item of the season. Getting right down to bang-bang-you're-dead business, younger ones like to charge with StarLytes blazing, making the StarSensor glow and sound every time a hit is scored. Bigger kids (including daddies) prefer to lurk and prowl, hide and take careful aim. Either way, Lazer Tag is a more elegant way of working out aggression than the Rambo toys, and it sure is sleeker than G.I. Joe. It is the kind of game that could turn into a phenomenon. Keep your head down, and, oh, yes, more of those batteries at hand.

, Just make sure you save a few for Learning-Window, a computer introduction toy that offers 13 different activities as well as a voice module and three additional cartridges. It is meant for children ages six and older, but parents will also be intrigued with the variety of math, language and spelling games, including Hangman and Deduction. The grown-

ups should keep one thing to themselves, however: Learning-Window is educational. No sense in letting on about that. Who wants to mess up the fun?

With reporting by Megan Rutherford/New York