Toys influence on children?

I wonder how much influence the toys we play with as children have on our grown up mentality? I just say a TV ad for a supermarket checkout till, in plastic, aimed at 5-6 year old girls, that prompted them to "put through the milk now", "now put through the red item", "well done!". And this was an educational toy! At first I thought this was aimed at the number one pastime of younge people today, shopping. But no, the child is not shopping, they are operating the till. In my day nobody wanted to grow up to work the tills in the shops, I hope things havn't changed so much that this reflects the aspirations of todays kids.

On a related theme, I read an article somewhere that was asking if electronic toys were any good for children. The conclusion was that those that just commanded them to do things were not, being told what to do it not play after all, but that any toy that the child could control and use as part of their imaginary world was just fine. Makes sense to me.