Lego Mindstorms NXT robot

While we're very equal opportunities at Shiny Towers, there does seem to be a male-female gadget divide. Sparkly pink DS-Lites are very much for the girls - or men very secure in their masculinity/fond of pink - while the boys get much more enthusiastic about bright torches than we do.

When I first saw the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot* I pegged it as a boy toy. While I wanted one, I assumed I was in the minority, as per usual. But when I bought one for my boy for Christmas, he'd barely got the poor thing assembled before his mother, sister, and grandmother were fighting over the right to be the next to play with it.

You use the Lego pieces to build any one of a number of robots, all of which you can tailor using the bits included, optional extras, and your own ingenuity, and then it's yours to command as you please. Seriously. There are degree-level programmes in programming the bot, but the included software is easy to use. So easy, in fact, that I had taught it to avoid walls and pick things up within an hour of the boy grudgingly handing it over to give me a turn.

Programmes are transferred to the robot via USB or Bluetooth, and the boy was very impressed to learn he could make it do his bidding from his phone, scaring animals and small children in the process. You can also buy more brain blocks and link them together, making your bot ridiculously powerful for a toy that only costs £180 (for the basic version).

I can't say enough how much fun this is - it comes with wheels, and pincers, so you can build and drive a robot lobster. Or bot lobster, as I insisted on singing way past the time it stopped being funny. Buy one, and tell your grandkids you were an early adopter of programmable home robotics. This way lies the future.

* The website says the bot's not available in the UK, even though I bought mine from it before Christmas. Don't know what's going on there. But it's also on sale at Toys R Us, Amazon, and a host of other places.