Children — those sticky, mucous-leaking, disaster-prone calamity goblins! — tend to have an unhealthy fixation with their parents’ gadgets. By ‘unhealthy,’ I mean for us, and not for them: no matter how many times your pudge-kneed toddler drops your iPhone into the toilet, common decency prevents us from clobbering the little monster for the affront. The only thing to do is buy yourself a new iPhone, then try to distract your feral, post-fetal doppelganger from indulging his or her innate impetus to destroy it with a plastic toy simulacrum.

Toy makers have been banking on just this for years. Consider all of the plastic laptops and cell phones and MP3 players on the shelves of your local Toys ‘R’ Us. Every gadget under the sun has a bright plastic analogue, ready to be sacrificed to your child’s agency of destruction and save your most cherished gadgets.

Apple’s new iPad, when it is released, is going to be a particulaly tempting object for the average kid to mindlessly throw, smash, bend, smear bodily fluids upon, or all of the above. But Fisher-Price — old saws at this game — have you covered. They’ve just announced their own iPad-inspired device for children, called the iXL.

It looks pretty good. It allows kids to look at photos, read e-books, play music and games, and even dink around with remedial art and note taking programs. Of course, since your kid’s probably just going to smash the dog in the head with it, then use it to blow up the microwave when you’re not looking, the $79.99 price tag might seem a bit much… but it’s better to be out $80 than $499, don’t you think?

Don’t search for Horticulture vs. Necromancy or Vegetables vs. Decomposition, but if you go to the App Store now, Plants vs. Zombies is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch for only $2.99.

Trust me, that’s an absolute steal. Pop Cap Games’ wonderfully goofy tower-defense game — in which rows of flowers and funguses must cheerily hold off wave after wave — was the most addictive game of last year, and not only does Plants vs. Zombies feel more intuitive to play on a touchscreen, but the iPhone app costs 85% less than the desktop port.

For iPhone gamers, this is news that should be met with nothing less than hysterical shrieking and full-on bladder evacuation. Buy Plants vs. Zombies here, then join me in the comments where I’ll explain my patented, never-fail Gloomshroom defense.

Ever since carriers became just a pipe for Apple’s iPhone, they’ve attempted to regain some of their lost control over customers. Now comes word that two-dozen major carriers – including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint – want to build an App Store rival, enticing developers with an unspecified “open technology platform.”

Analysts are already sounding warnings, cautioning with so many sharks swimming so close together, there’s bound to be trouble. “I do question whether such a large group of mobile operators will be able to achieve the level of cooperation and integration required to make this initiative a success,” said Informa Telecoms analyst Mark Newman.

“Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich gave something for his seat mate to gawk at as he sat at 36,000 feet editing the latest animated tale of plaything adventures.

With not a second to waste — the release date is June 18, 2010 —  Unkrich worked on a MacBook Pro, with what looks like shortcut color codes for Avid Media Composer.  (Crane as I might, all I ever see are Excel spreadsheets. Need to get upgraded from Economy more often, perhaps.)

Apple products often feature in Pixar movies (perhaps in a nod to history?), the trailer for Toy Story 3 already has a nice bit of iProduct placement.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — The guys at Topaz Labs thought business would be slow at the first Macworld without Apple, so they packed only 250 CDs of their software.

They sold out in the first few hours of the first day.

Worried it was just an opening-day rush, and that day two would be dead, they had just 250 more overnighted to their hotel. But those too quickly sold.

“It’s been awesome. I’m exhausted,” laughed Ivan Randall of Topaz Labs. “It’s been a great show.”

Almost all the vendors we talked to told the same story: Macworld 2010 has definitely been worth the money. Many had low expectations, but turnout has been great and business is brisk.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Macworld 2010 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces on the show floor.

Above: These two Macnewbies are enjoying Macworld for the very first time. They’re impressed.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Much of the buzz on the Macworld floor this year has to do with audio and how Apple products and platforms create a nearly endless array of creative possibilities to leverage audio in documenting and networking people’s lives and endeavors.

One of the more exciting products we’ve come across in that regard is the new Mikey from Blue Microphones, an external stereo microphone for iPod and iPhone that brings stunning clarity and flexibility to portable audio recording.

Just moments after getting a review copy of the device and downloading Blue Microphones’ free field recording app from the AppStore, we recorded this interview with Stanford University professor Dr. Ge Wang talking about Smule, his iPhone app company, the future of music collaboration and Apple’s upcoming iPad.

Check the clarity of Wang’s responses and how they stand out from the cacophony of dozens of other people yapping within feet of us as we chatted on the Macworld expo floor.

SAN FRANCISCO — Veteran Mac programmer Bill Atkinson took the stage at Macworld for the first time in 23 years to show off PhotoCard — an app for sending fine-art postcards through the mail.

Written by Atkinson himself (he’s the genius behind early and great Mac software such as QuickDraw, MacPaint and HyperCard), PhotoCard allows you to write a postcard on your iPhone. When you hit send, a beautifully printed postcard is sent through the mail.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Programmer Bill Atkinson, one of the lead authors of the original Mac system, says the iPad will be a big success — and that you have to play with it to understand the magic of the multitouch interface.

“This guy is going to be a real winner,” he said, holding up a model he’d made for himself to visualize how his PhotoCard app would look on the device. Atkinson took part in Guy Kawasaki’s Friday morning keynote presentation.

“Once you get it in your hands and play with it you don’t want to set it down,” he continued. “I think Apple’s got a hit on their hands here.”

Atkinson said he’d played with an iPad for a couple of hours. It’s not a laptop and its not an iPhone, he said, but an entirely new, third device. The magic is in using your fingers to directly manipulate elements onscreen.

Returning to using a mouse is like using a remote control, he said — clumsy and awkward.

We cap the week with a trio of top deals. First is Apple’s 802.11n Airport Extreme wireless base station for $129 from the Apple Store. Next up: Mac Pro Xeon Workstations starting at $2,549 for a 2.93GHz quad-core. Finally, a new batch of App Store freebies, including AmAze, a GPS worldwide turn-by-turn app.

Along the way, we’ll look at other bargain gadgets, such as the 4 Door Media Road Mouse and Low Grav Racer 2. As always, details on these and many other deals are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.