As a concept to get girls from the age of nine to obsess about their looks to a hysterical level, and pester their parents for cosmetics, fashionable clothes, pole dancing kits, leg waxes, and bedroom furniture from Woolworths' "Lolita" range for kids, this game excels. I couldn't recommend it more.

What a great way to improve the nation's economy, boosting sales of all sorts of products in the real world, and no doubt the game is ingeniously designed with this outcome in mind. The girls have to buy their hot virtual character everything she needs to compete in the looks but no brains department. As a strategy for life, they choose looks and never choose books.

The players must buy diet pills, in order to be stick thin, but because this can mean a reduction in other areas, they must also get their characters surgery so they have breasts like basketballs. Yes, I know breasts don't like basketballs. In fact they see them as rivals, but this is a game I am talking about. And like basketball, it involves being a dribbling idiot and going through hoops in order to win. A lot of critics slam this as junk.

In France there are 1.2 million bratz playing Miss Bimbo and the new UK site has 200 thousand fans so far. The players aim to create "the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world" and that means getting a virtual job somewhere like in a beauty parlor or being a party planner, while attempting to ensnare a millionaire. Leisure time is spent trying to be the most attractive female in a club, which must necessitate an entertaining level of bitchiness. What fun! I would have a go myself if I could spare the time. And what a fantastic life for a girl to aspire to!

I have been imagining how an alternative version "Mr Bohunk," which would be aimed at the younger teen boy market, might work. Let's see, you have to be a babe magnet and impress Miss Bimbo. So buy your character a massive penile extension. Get rich with a well paid job, preferably as a rock star, so she knows you can pay for all her vanities. Get a flashy car or ten and work out at the gym, with added necessity for pectoral muscle implants of course, and steroids.

Somehow I don't think many boys would be into this game. Back to the drawing board on that I fear.