The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 91

VI CosAtujclcs (Times Thursday, November 26, 1987 Part Jack Smith Hot for the Holidays A Wish List of Toys for the Large and Small Will a Burglar in the Know Know Better? By DAVID LARSEN, Times Staff Writer In what may well be the biggest comeback since Lazarus, video games are predicted to be the triumph of the toys this holiday season. The craze that captured the nation early in the decade only to fizzle into relative oblivion is seen by industry experts as the leading buy this year. Local stores already are reported to be having a hard time keeping in stock the Nintendo Entertainment System (about $140 for the deluxe set, plus $25 to $50 for cartridges). And Atari Corp. (which started it all with Pong in the 70s) is enjoying similar success with its new XE video game system (about $150 for the system, plus $20 for cartridges).

Sega also has a video entry (system about $100, cartridges $30 to $40). "Retail sales to consumers for the video game industry are expected to reach $825 million this year, much of it during the holiday shopping period," said Bonnie Powell, spokeswoman for Nintendo of America Inc. Sales Comeback That doesn't quite match the $3 billion that was spent at the peak of the craze in 1982, but it will be a big improvement over the valley of $100 million that sales of the video games plunged to in 1985. "Besides," said Frank Reysen, editor of the toy industry trade publication Playthings, "there hasn't been a holiday single blockbuster since the Cabbage Patch doll in 1984 and Trivial Pursuit the year before that." Rick Anguilla, editor of the trade publication Toy Hobby World, added that there probably won't be any such triumphs in the four weeks ahead either. "Cabbage Patch was like Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak," he said.

"Anybody who comes close will be doing pretty well. Cabbage Patch and Trivial Pursuit were aberrations. You can't expect an encore every year." So what else will Christmas and Hanukkah shoppers for toys (both for children and adults) have to choose from? What's hot, what's not this season? and you-know-the-rest: Hammacher Schlemmer in Beverly Hills is offering a hydraulic helicopter amusement ride that enables a child to pilot it to a height of 7 feet and travel 5 feet. The price is $5,400 and it is not recommended for indoor use. "For someone older," store manager Jeff Overdorf said, "you might want to consider a talking scale with memory After up to five members of a family each programs in what he or she weighs, every time that person steps on it, the battery-operated scale announces how many pounds have been gained or lost.

And, even if you don't feel you've earned it, the scale signs off with: 'Have a nice The ever-popular pasta machine, after a run of about 25 years, is a definite out this year, according to Hammacher Schlemmer spokeswoman Susan Sanders. "Our market analysts identified the trend a couple months ago," she said. "People don't want to spend the time with the machines. What we've replaced it with this year for the first time is an automatic bread maker You simply put in flour, yeast, salt and shortening, and in four hours the machine comes forth with a one-pound loaf of homemade bread, complete with the aroma throughout your home." Hot Dog Cart Aroma of a different kind, and different price, can be obtained also from Hammacher Schlemmer with a Delancey Frankfurter Cart complete with umbrella, a familiar sight in New York City for decades, and increasingly being seen on the streets of Los Angeles. For further exotics, F.

A. O. Schwarz in Costa Mesa is offering (for $1,500) a 56-inch replica of a double-hump camel. The same store also is selling a 2-foot-high, 24-karat gold musical carrousel, complete with 16 miniature animals, 128 blinking lights and stereo cassette player with two speakers. Price: $12,000.

And Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories, for $6,000 to $12,000, will let you select a back seat from one of your favorite cars of yesteryear, and convert it into a couch Please see HOT TOYS, Page 22 li i i. Starting at the top, for those with champagne wishes Before going on vacation, I wrote that any burglar who broke into our house would not find much of monetary value, and little else to his liking. I did not mean to imply that burglars in general are culturally deprived, yet I doubted that most burglars would care about the complete works of Shakespeare, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the recorded works of Mozart and Beethoven, and several hundred cook books. Superior Judge Ron Swearinger writes that he proved my point. "I took the list up to our courthouse lockup," he says, "and asked several convicted house burglars if they would be interested in the stuff.

they all said." As a result of that little experiment, Judge Swearinger has thought of a way in which my assumption might be used by anyone contemplating a vacation. "Since The Times publishes all kinds of advisals, how about a section called 'Notice to wherein folks about to go on vacation could advise as to what might be in their houses? This might be a serious deterrent to crime, since there is really not much worth stealing in the average American home." The judge says his own house contains nothing that would catch the eye of the average burglar, if there is such a person. "The stuff in the house is mostly carelessly accumulated Borax furniture, a 20-year-old TV set and a VCR that doesn't presently work very well. My wife's jewelry, such as it is, will be around her neck at the Grand Canyon and the wedding silver is in the shop having all the dents and dings hammered out." The judge says a burglar would score better by hitting his garage than his house, and even then he would find few tools, since most of them would be over at his son's house, as usual. I would do more than place an ad in the paper.

I would be willing to publish a list of articles a burglar might look for, giving their locations, so as to save him time and avoid the vandalism likely to accompany a reckless search. He would be doing me a favor if he took my telephone answering machine, which has never worked; my video recording machine, which is too advanced for me; my wife's Cuisinart, which she almost never uses, and which she undoubtedly feels guilty about because I bought it for her, and my stationary bicycle, which I never use and which I feel guilty about because she bought it for me. If a burglar can find anything at all of value in our garage, he is welcome to it. I wish he would back a truck up to our garage door and take everything in it. My wife might regret the loss of trunkf uls of cloth and a few old hats, but my life would be gloriously lightened.

We do have two television sets that still work, but I should think a television set was rather hard to make off with, unless the man had help, and a man seen carrying such a bulky object from a house might inspire suspicion. I'm not trying to get anyone arrested here; I'm just trying to simplify my life. As for jewelry, we have three watches between us. One is a Mickey Mouse; one is a digital that doesn't work, and the third is the watch I received after 30 years on the job. I recently paid $50 to have it repaired, and it has stopped again.

My wife does not wear rings. She has a few necklaces of semiprecious stones, some of which I bought her and some of which she got through mail-order houses, and a few sets of earrings. She has no diamonds. There is never any money in the house, except the few dollars my wife has left over from doing the grocery shopping. All I buy is the wine and beer, and I use a credit card.

We have no silver, no antiques and no art that I would consider negotiable. I have a few paintings by friends, but I doubt that any would catch a burglar's eye, or a dealer's. Again, I don't mean to suggest that all burglars are culturally illiterate, but I suspect that few burglars, except specialists, would know a David Hockney from a Hieronymus Bosch, and specialists wouldn't be working our neighborhood. I even have an idea that if we had Van Gogh's "Irises" hanging in our living room, it would be perfectly safe. THOMAS KELSEY Los Angeles Times Mark Bartos finds Portable Tabletop Croquet ($219.50) a challenge.

Jeff Overdorf enjoys headphone ($179) hooked to CD player The more extravagant gifts include a $1,350 mini Indy racer, top, tested by Richard Freit, 11, and a $5,400 helicopter, the choice of Rob Freit, 9. Night Life in D. C. Moves From Formal to Functional Vmf: pi IT- I 1 ill Strip that Split the Cartoonists By CHARLES SOLOMON Since his comic strip, "Bloom County," debuted in 1980, Berke Breathed has consistently infuriated Christian fundamentalists, political conservatives and even his fellow artists. In the process, ironically, he's become one of the nation's most popular and successful newspaper cartoonists.

When the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded Breathed the 1987 prize for cartooning, members of the Assn. of American Editorial Cartoonists attacked the decision with unprecedented anger and bitterness. (When Garry Trudeau became the first strip cartoonist to receive the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, for "Doonesbury," the group merely passed a resolution protesting the award.) OliphantLed Way Former Pulitzer winner Pat Oli-phant led the way by denouncing "Bloom County" as "a highly derivative comic strip makes the pretense of passing off shrill potty jokes and grade school sight gags as social commentary." Yet "Bloom County" appears in more than 1,200 newspapers with an estimated daily audience of more than 40 million. If Breathed sometimes seems to alienate most everybody, that doesn't seem to bother most of his readers. Based on "The Academia Waltz," a strip he drew as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, "Bloom County" premiered in the Washington Post, replacing Please see STRIP, Page 42 By BETTY CUNIBERTI, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON One hundred Washington luminaries clad in tuxedos and shimmering evening gowns finished their supper.

A marble-top table was cleared of flowers and candelabras, making room for the singing belly dancer. The ambassador leaped up to join her, doffing his tie, unbuttoning his shirt to the waist, and soon he was leading a conga line of the nation's elite through the embassy halls. The scene took place about 15 years ago in the glory days of "dancing diplomat" Ardeshir Zahedi, the caviar-slinging Iranian ambassador to Washington. Decline of a Decade Decades of glamorous and competitive party-giving in Washingtonwhere one wore the label hostess with pride seemed to climax like a fireworks finale with the bashes thrown by Zahedi, who thought nothing of pinching the breast of a female journalist at one of his barbecues, saying, "Yum, yum!" It had been an impressive run: Perle Mesta dueling Gwenn Cafritz in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Alice Long-worth and Zahedi. But for a multitude of reasons, the art of glamorous, imaginative, enjoyable party-giving has been on the wane in Washington, tumbling in a steady decline for more than 10 years.

Parties are less formal, more functional and bigger obese, in fact. Post-Watergate changes in campaign laws, limiting individual contributions, have made political fund-raisers as prolific as they are bland. Please see PARTIES, Page 14 Inside View ABBY: Page 16. ANN LANDERS: Page 43. ART BUCHWALD: Page 2.

BOMBECK: Page 40. HOURS weekend events Page 36. Informal bike ride. Irvine Children's films, South-Central Los Angeles Doo Dan Parade, Pasadena You Features: 10 Holiday Catalogues. Page 24; Legal View, Page 30; You Can Help, Page 27; Your Coins, Page 35; Your Collectibles, Page 34.

More features in VIEW II. Anoclited Prcsi JODY BOYMAN 1987 Berke Breathed with friend Bill the Cat, featured in his "Bloom County" strip. In 1976, Elizabeth Taylor danced with ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi at Iran's embassy..