Our presents to children

Recently i attended a birthday party and seeing the gifts made me wonder. There were gifts which i thought outright useless, others bearable but stupid. And then i thought the gifts we select to give represent us, what we are and maybe what we have missed when we were children. Our desires in terms of our presents and I saw that people get as happy with their present as the child who gets them. We proudly show around what we have given, proud of a selection that we made? What i wanted to select was so different then what my wife wanted to select. Is this the difference in our childhood that is coming up. I saw in a discovery documentary that a research showed that male child usually select (out of a wide range) toys which are constructional while female child goes for something which they can hug. There is so much programmed in us what we do "routinely". I think there is nothing routine, everything is a calculated result of your history and genes.