Children now spend more than £125 million a year in pocket money and adults spend many times as much again on them. The enormous growth of the children's leisure market has had unforeseen consequences on three main industries - publishing, toys and television.

The most dramatic has been in the toy industry where the Father Christmas image has been decisively put out into the snow. Books boom. Television finds the strings of its conscience tweaked by puppets - the ones that go into those series that children can watch on the screen and at the same time into the many lines of character merchandise, from soap to jigsaws, that they can buy or cry for in the shops.

(A children's guide: page 3)