The year has passed swiftly, and the Holiday Season is just around the corner! What will be this year’s hottest toy? Something Star Wars? Legos and Crayolas are always good stocking stuffers. Anything Barbie is definitely on the list after the HUGE success of the Barbie movie (or should I say… the first Barbie movie?). But will anything this season match the explosive success of Tickle Me Elmo in 1996? With the half-million first-round Elmos sold long before Christmas, Parents beat up other Parents to get the last Elmo in stock, counterfeit Elmos flooded the market, and classified ads that looked more like hostage notes offered a possibly honest-to-goodness Elmo for just 10 times the retail price.

This year’s hot item just might squeeze Elmo out of the record books. But it’s not just one toy. It is a whole new category of toys. Toys with… Artificial Intelligence. Just about every toymaker is making an AI for Christmas, and quite a few new toymakers will exclusively focus on a Plastic Pal who is fun to be with! AI will be everywhere this year. Did I just hear a collective sigh of exhaustion from some parents?

OK, OK I get it! It’s been a bit… ahhh… challenging to deal with your child’s Internet habit. Minecraft, strange Tik-Toks that you don’t understand, group battles on Fortnite… hmmm… I kind of miss when limiting Facebook time was the biggest teen/parent fight. Anyway, this isn’t the same. Unlike all of the demonic influencers on the Internet, you PAY to buy an Internet Toy and then you pay for service. YOU are the customer, and they don’t want to lose the $100 to $1,000 that you pay for the toy.

Now, with the right subscription, you will be the one tirelessly whispering into your child’s ear. We can expect all sorts of add-ons… tutoring support, keeping an eye on your child’s interest, emotional support when you’re not around. Of course, some parents may want strict barriers to what the child is told. Sex education, politics, religious views. The high-end of this market there will definitely be room for a lucrative business in developing “premium information filters” and custom programming for the…. discerning parent?.

American culture wars aside, parents have been dealing with the issues of technology and childhood for the last century. Way back, parents distrusted phonograph and radio. Too many foreign ideas and strange music. It got worse when Television became the one-eyed babysitter. And then, we had computers, the Internet, and smart phones in fast succession. Now AI.

The big question is what kind of AI are we going to get in a decade or two? Will it be the always-loving and comforting Teddy Bear from the movie “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”? Or should we expect the title character from “Megan”, an obsessive toy that will do anything to be your best friend? Or maybe we’ll get both. What do you think? How will parenting adapt to this new world?