Invention is the mother of necessity. Just because if it’s been manufactured, we must have one. A look at the spending frenzy Sunday night at Santa Fe’s Best Buy convinced me that the world is ending tomorrow, and if people don’t buy their gadgets immediately, there’s no hope.

For the most part, I’m a practitioner of shopping at home, but what I needed was not available locally. As I saw people grabbing up flat-screen TVs, for less than $200, I wondered why the serious jolt to the economy doesn’t seem to have hit Santa Fe or Las Vegas.

Remember when TVs resembled goldfish bowls? They bulged out and were more round than square. The cheapest, smallest color TV set went for $350, back 30 years ago, when that amount was much dearer to us. With each upgrade of a computer, TV, iPod or cell phone, somehow we must have the latest version.

That was the case with the item I bought: the older version was obsolete, and all of the new software is no longer compatible with the earlier version. But I’ll stop specific descriptions here, because, well, it’s a secret, not to be opened until Christmas.

Kids’ tastes run on the flush (as in expensive) side. If letters to Santa Claus, being printed in the Optic this week, are any indication, Santa had best buy zillions of electronic gadgets. There are eight pages of letters, set in 10 point type, requesting things whose versions are so-oo last year and whose current version will expire in another 12 months.

The items in huge demand among local writers to Santa are electronic games called Nintendo DS, X-Box 360, Wii, iPods and Play Station 3. Surprisingly, few requested cell phones; is it because every kid in Las Vegas already has one?

To be sure, girls still wish for a Barbie. The quintessential super model was born in 1959 and celebrated her 50th birthday this year. She’s begun to sag, and cellulite is taking over her thighs.

According to a researcher, Betsy Gallup, Barbie, who some day may marry Ken, probably “will never have children. Based on research done by Rader Programs, the percent of Barbie’s body fat would be so low, she would have ceased to menstruate — that is if she ever started.

“If Barbie were a real person, she would be 6-0, weigh 100 pounds, and wear a size 4. Her measurements would be 39-19-33.”

What was the most popular brand name product requested by Las Vegas area girls in the early ‘80s? Barbies, naturally.

In 1986, writers to Santa were also asking for a hot item: AM-FM radios. They asked for VCRs, which have been replaced by the DVD, which is likely to get deep-sixed  when micro technology gets honed. Girls also asked for Cabbage Patch dolls; boys requested Transformers; many kids asked for 10-speed bicycles. And, 23 years ago, Sergio Quintana wrote to Santa Claus: “I’ve been pretty good. I don’t want much but it’s pretty expensive. For Christmas I would like . . . a V.C.R.V.H.S Video camera and a Commodore computer with a disk drive, a computer printout, and a color monitor.” Sergio was probably a pre-teen when he wrote this.

It’s hard to say whether Santa delivered these items to Sergio, but they seem well chosen. Quintana, a Robertson graduate now living in San Francisco, works with audio and video equipment, even having stopped by the Optic recently to take footage of the newsroom for a documentary he’s putting together.

What did most boys want in 1981? That’s easy: a Rubik’s cube, a contraption with 27 attached blocks in different colors. The goal is to twist and turn the cube in such a way that each of the six sides shows only one color.

Almost as durable as Barbie, the cube now has an electronic version. It looks like a great buy, if you wish to spend $150 for it.

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In 2006, this column mentioned a message on the Bank of Las Vegas time-and-temp sign: “We’re big athletic supporters.” They surely meant that they belong to booster clubs and cheer for the home team. But any male who’s played sports knows that “athletic supporter” carries a different meaning. Athletic supporters are not in the stands but rather on the football field, girding the waists of offensive linemen.

Well, my friend Judee Williams alerted me to another interesting sign, this one hand-painted, on the Douglas Avenue side of the Bank of Las Vegas, which calls Frosty the snowman “a jolly happy sole.”

You read that right. The decorated windows contain the lyrics to “Frosty the Snowman,” the ditty written by Steve “Jack” Rollins and Steve Nelson. “Frosty” refers to the snowman as a “soul,” not the bottom of your shoe or the fish that people sometimes fillet.

“Frosty,” often sung by Gene Autry, was written in the mid-20th century, as a corollary to “Rudolph.” ‘Tis a pity that some of these yuletide icons often get picked on. Why would anyone refer to Frosty as a sole, anyway? That’s demeaning.

I wonder if the culprit could be Rudolph’s mean-spirited sleigh-mate, Olive, “the other reindeer” who “used to laugh and call him names …”