Toy industry moguls are already eyeing each other up as the race begins to find the top toy of Christmas 2001. As the Harrogate Fair gets into full swing, STEPHEN LEWIS peers into his crystal ball.

IF there's one thing you can be sure of in the toy business, it's that you can't really be sure of anything very much at all. This time last year Tracey Island wasn't even a gleam in the toy manufacturers' eyes. The toys everyone was talking about back then were Pokemon, the little 'pocket monsters' developed from the Nintendo computer game, and Buzz Lightyear, Woody and their pals from Disney's Toy Story 2.

Pokemon in particular was a 'dead cert' to be the year 2000's number one best-selling toy, predicted Jon Salisbury, publisher of UK Toy News magazine.

Which just shows how many pitfalls there are in the predictions game.

Pokemon was a monster hit in the first half of the year, it's true - but by the time the all-important Christmas season began to draw near, it was already past its peak.

Suddenly everybody was talking about micro scooters and the Poo-chi and Teksta cyber dogs.

Then along came the repeats of the 1960s Thunderbirds puppet show on TV - and suddenly Tracey Island was the 'must have' Christmas toy.

So if you ask anyone at the Harrogate Fair (formerly known as the Harrogate Toy Fair) this weekend to stick their necks out and say what they think will be the big toy of Christmas 2001, you're not going to find many takers.

"Every year people ring up and ask what's going to be the hit toy next Christmas," laughs Toy Fair spokesperson Julie Pittilla. "If I knew that I would be on my yacht now!"

Like many things in life, the toy business is a gamble. People who accuse toy manufacturers of deliberately claiming they've run out of stocks of 'must have' Christmas toys so as to stimulate demand are doing them an injustice, says Malcolm Naish, chairman of this year's fair and publisher of Toys 'n' Playthings magazine.

Vivid Imaginations, the manufacturers of Tracey Island, had to instruct their factories in the Far East as long ago as June last year how many of the toys they needed making - long before anyone knew Thunderbirds was going to be THE Christmas craze.

They made a judgement based on the number of reasonably firm orders they already had - and optimistically decided to manufacture four times that amount, Malcolm says. As it turned out, it still wasn't nearly enough.

Fortunes can be made if you back a winner, like Tracey Island - and lost, if you back a loser. Just such a loser in the toy market last year was the Star Wars licence for The Phantom Menace. "That was a big flop," Malcolm concedes, "and it damaged a number of toy companies."

So guessing right is important: and it's around about now that most of the major manufacturers - and the all-important buyers for the big toy chains like Toys R Us, Woolies and WHSmith - begin to flesh out their plans for the Christmas ahead.

Harrogate is one of the first of a handful of international toy fairs over the next month or so - culminating in New York in mid-February - at which manufacturers and designers will be showing off the prototypes and new ideas that they hope will catch the eye of one of the big buyers this year, and make them a fortune.

Not all of them will succeed. The road to Tracey Island is littered with wrong turns. "I've got a storeroom full of things that must be worth a fortune!" says Julie. "There are things in there, somebody's wonderful ideas, that never saw the light of day."

It's not all guesswork, of course. Those in the toy business have to be pretty good at judging the future market, or they'd never make any money.

Toys that are spin-offs from major films or TV series are usually fairly safe bets (though you always get the odd Star Wars coming along). So The Smurfs could be big this year, as could Bill and Ben and Noddy, who are all returning to our screens.

If any of those sound eerily familiar to you from your long-lost childhood days, it is because 'retro' is likely to be in as well.

Nostalgia often works because the toys are proven past winners - and parents might want to buy them almost as much as the kids (just look at Thunderbirds).

Those perennial winners Action Man and Barbie will continue to be big, as will other traditional toys like Lego.

Tonka toys are coming up with a great range of chunky action vehicles - hi-tech, battery-powered versions of the Tonka toys of old - and there will always be demand for 'pocket money toys': things kids can afford to buy themselves without having to pester parents into spending big bucks. So boomerangs, glove puppets, masks, water pistols and the like will continue to find a market.

But if you had to place your money, at this early stage of the race, on one toy to beat the rest this year, look no further. I'll whisper it in your ear.

A film is in the making about an unassuming, bespectacled English schoolboy .... who just happens to be a wizard.

The toy spin-offs are being kept jealously under wraps this early in the year, but as Christmas approaches again, any bets on Harry Potter?

Updated: 10:47 Saturday, January 13, 2001