Ever had a hankering to own your own light sabre or Dalek? Check out a store which is helping to put the fun back into shopping, as well as catering for serious collectors.

POPCORN is fun. This is a shop where cinema meets toys, with nearly every item tied in to a film or TV show. The Monopoly is Simpsons or Scooby Doo. The chess is Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Shelves are crowded with characters from WWF (recently renamed WWE - World Wrestling Entertainment - after a wrangle with the Worldwide Fund for Nature), X Files, Spiderman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Janis Joplin, who seems these days to rank alongside the Undead.

There's Jaws with his teeth in a body, a basket full of Stone Cold Steve Austins, racks of wrestling belts, legions of Star Wars characters, Chucky the infamous Childs Play doll, Eminem and Slim Shady. As well as a mass of Beanie babes and even some dear old Daleks. Toys for the best sort of people - those who've never grown up.

Popcorn in Stockton was started seven years ago by Sarah Agar and her father Graham. Sarah's husband Carl Brennan joined some years later.

"At first it was very much based on home cinema, laser discs, that sort of thing. " says Carl, "There were just a few Star Wars action figures as a subsidiary line."

Gradually the toy lines took over. "Sarah is just a brilliant buyer." Star Wars plays on the video. You can build up dioramas of stage sets and movie scenes, some of them seriously disconcerting. Not the sort of thing you'd get in the Early Learning Centre

Carl himself - business brain meets the boy who never grew up - particularly loves the serious top-of-the-range terribly technical Lego such as models of some of the most fearsome space ships from Star Wars, fiendishly difficult and which take weeks to assemble.

Small boys wander in for packs of collectors' cards - they have masses. Mothers clutch written instructions on toys they haven't a clue about, but Carl cheerfully puts them right. And in the middle of it all is a mini skateboard park. Popcorn is big on fingerboarding - which is a sort of skateboarding's answer to Subbuteo.

After a trip to America, Carl - who once had a seriously grown up job in computers - decided to go big into skateboarding.

"It's one of those crazes that comes and goes but never goes completely and is due to be big again. It's just such a great sport."

The shops at Northallerton and in Durham market particularly have a wide range of boards, clothing and accessories.

"We're not talking the toys here but something better, built to order and to take the strain, custom decks to suit the style of skating. You can buy every bit individually and build exactly the board you want."

Prices range from around £70 to £160.

And when skateboarders can't get out, they can go fingerboarding instead. You can buy the slopes and ramps individually and build your own table top skateboard park. Carl bounces round the board demonstrating niftily.

They've organised fingerboarding contests and try and get involved as much as possible in local children's charities.

Right now, of course, he's pre-occupied with the new Star Wars film and associated merchandise. It's all the usual stuff plus he hopes to get some of the limited edition master replicas such as the blaster rifle. "Only 1500 being produced and they are absolutely awesome."

Boys of all ages would no doubt agree.

* Popcorn also has an excellent website www.popcornlive.co.uk , recently voted one of the best for toys in the country. Best sellers - including pre-orders - include:

* Yu Gi Oh Booster £2.99

* Jangos Slave £24.99

* Simpsons Monopoly £31.99

* Unchained Fury £64.50

* The Swamp bath £12.99

* Wind-up Homer £24.99

* Popcorn, Silver St, Stockton; 224 High St, Northallerton; Indoor Market, Durham.

Better ways to relax than washing up

TRIED AND TESTED

AROMATHERAPY WASHING UP LIQUID

Sainsburys 79p

"Wash away your stress," says Sainsburys, "The first ever washing up liquid that contains natural aromatherapy oils to help clear your mind and plates."

Can washing up really de-stress you? Can you stand there up to your elbows in grease and suds, breathing in the smell of citrus and mint and say "Gosh, I feel spiritually refreshed" as you fish bits of food out of the plughole?

Well, no actually. We expect washing up liquid to get the dishes clean, not soothe our souls at the same time.

Having said that, this worked well on the dishes and it smelt nice, which is about as much as one could expect.

Maybe if someone else did the washing up and we just stood alongside breathing in the smell...