Hot Wheels have gone high-tech. When should we digitize playtime, and when should we just let it be? Do you need a fresh, new, digitized version of Hasbro's The Game of Life - one with a space for your iPad, which then serves as spinner, money-counter, and player of clips from "America's Funniest Home Videos" which serve to deliver good fortune or bad? "Need," of course, is probably not the right verb in this context. But Hasbro is hoping that you'll want it - that you'll transfer your own memories of of playing the classic board game, with its clicky spinner and plastic cars filled with tiny peg families, to a belief that this "zAPPed" Edition will bring the same joy to your modern family. And Hasbro is not alone. As Stephanie Clifford describes for the Business section, toy manufacturers are adding "upgrades" to classics like Barbie, Hot Wheels and Monopoly "meant to entertain technology-obsessed children." But these tempting digitized toys have less staying power than the classic versions. Like so many other things we find ourselves buying, many are one-day-wonders: a thrill to open and take out of the box, never to be touched again. A Barbie with an embedded digital camera is a Barbie that requires parental help plugging her into the computer and downloading software versions, and a Barbie with a broken embedded digital camera is trash. A regular Barbie is always ready for play, and a broken, headless Barbie? She's a gender-bending Ken waiting to happen. The result is a country full of cluttered playrooms and "storage solutions," and children who still sometimes like to play Angry Birds, sometimes prefer Candyland, and don't need more of either - in spite of the fact that we can buy a physical game of Angry Birds and a virtual Candyland (and I admit I have). Will you buy Life's "zAPPed" edition or a digital Barbie for the children in your life this year? Are these re-imagined classics tempting, or repellant? I find myself somewhere in between, conscious of both a packed game cabinet and three upcoming birthdays. But while it may be, as Sandra L. Calvert, the director of the Children's Digital Media Center at Georgetown says, helpful for children to see a link between the virtual and actual worlds, not everything in life needs to reflect that link. When should we make playtime high tech, and when should we just let it be?