The upcoming holiday gauntlet is about the most dreaded time of the year for this father of four monkeys. That extends from finding the right toy, ordering the mountain of temporary excitement, financing it (I didn’t say “paying for it” as the amount typically exceeds the joint liquid assets of the ZIP code I live in) and watching it disintegrate into a thousand pieces (rounded down).

Amazon has just launched a cool feature that at least will ease the pain of finding the right toy — the Holiday Toy List offers a rich browsing experience for the year’s most popular toys (which is what you should be sticking with if your child needs to compete in the schoolyard toy arms race).

Using age, price, category, characters and brand you can narrow the season’s hot 400+ toys down to your toy needs (well, those of your children). Selecting one or more of each facet dynamically updates your search results to show all qualifying products (it’s actually kind of fun to play with it — if only it would satisfy the kids …).

The selected products are then nicely carried over to the product detail page (only when navigating to them via the Holiday Toy List), allowing you to jump from one recommendation to the next without losing a beat (more importantly without that dreaded back button).

Product information is enhanced with a video that shows the product in action (the Lego Death Star clearly is the coolest present) — although some videos lack voice-over pitching critical product features (compare that trampoline video to this demonstration of a folding quarter pipe for skateboarders — which one looks more exciting?).

The standard customer reviews, recommendations for products bought by shoppers and browsers, tags and product discussions are on the page along with — and this is new — an “Am I Hot Or Not” for products. On this Lego Death Star listing Amazon pitches two grown-up toys against each other that you need to choose from. After a few rounds (based on prior choices by fellow consumers) you’ll get a recommendation for a toy that may be a good fit. Of course for me nothing beats the Death Star.

And if you don’t have the time to look at this season’s top toys download and print Amazon’s Holiday Toy List for the road. Just don’t show it to the kids or you’re doomed.

Of course this type of navigating to your money-sink-of-choice is not new. Toys R Us and eToys allow shoppers to quickly drill down by age, gender, category and/or brand. eBay’s Toy Finder pretty much only offers age or category as criteria while eBay Express doesn’t even prominently feature toys on the home page (guys — it’s Q4!).

The good news for Amazon 3P (third-party) toy sellers on Amazon is that there appears to be no additional qualification for participation or filtering in place for the Holiday Gift Finder: the product detail pages reflect the existing offering for this SKU on Amazon (if you’re an approved toy seller). And making finding and buying the right toy easier and more entertaining naturally drives more sales.

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