Toys, televisions, video games and prebooked holidays are contributing to faster inflation in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which sieves the data the Bank of England uses to set rates.
While that may be the mathematical outcome of some prices falling by less than they did a year ago, it doesn't match the experience in UK stores.
Sure, wages are rising, shops are full of customers and Britain's so-called summer is enough to drive anyone abroad.
Yet the birthday gifts I just bought for my godchildren seem like bargains: plasma screen televisions look like a cheap alternative to wallpaper for covering big walls, and video game makers all seem to be going broke.
Last week's June inflation figures showed consumer prices climbed an annual 1.6 percent, surpassing May's 1.5 percent, and the fastest pace since March 2003.
"Large upward effects came from games, toys and hobbies," the statistics office says.
"There was also a large upward effect from audio visual equipment. A further large upward effect came from package holidays." The report noted "the price of computer games rising".
Not so, says Roger Bennett, the director-general of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association in London, which represents the industry. "They've gone down. Even the top titles are cheaper."
Electronic Arts' recommended price for its Medal of Honor game, which drops you behind enemy lines after the D-Day landings in Normandy, is £34.99 (R390), according to Amazon.com's UK website. But Amazon will sell it to you for £29.99. Or you can pick up a copy at Dixons for £19.99.
"Software prices are coming down," says Dorian Bloch, a director of Chart-Track, which monitors daily prices to produce official software charts, in a market worth £1.3 billion last year.
The average price for a computer game in the second quarter was £21.87, he says, unchanged from a year earlier and down from £24.81 in the same period in 2002.
The average cost of a game for a Playstation 2 game is £23.63, down from £26.98 at the end of 2003 and from £26.09 a year ago.
The ONS said the figures reflect "a lessening in the negative effect on the annual rate".
Prices in the recreation and culture category rose 0.5 percent in June, compared with a one-month decline of 0.4 percent a year earlier. That added 0.13 percentage points to the annual rate, the biggest of any category.
The ONS says for "equipment for the reception and reproduction of sound and pictures, prices rose this year but fell a year ago, particularly on televisions".
"There's certainly no inflation in TV prices," says Hamish Thompson, a spokesperson for Dixons. "Deflation is a structural characteristic. New technology gets introduced, and over time the price falls. The same model costs less now than a year ago."
Dixons will sell you a 107cm plasma screen TV for £1 799.99. "If you go back six or seven years, you paid £10 000 pounds or more," says Thompson. "They're not going up in price."
What about toys, also blamed in the report for stoking inflation with a contribution of 0.7 percentage points because prices are falling by less than last year?
Hasbro's Beyblade has been toy of the year for two years. A shop assistant at Hamleys Regent Street store, says the basic Beyblade cost £9.99 in 2002. Now, you can pick one up for £7.99.
The average cost of toys and games in the UK in the second quarter was £6.65, down from £6.93 a year earlier, says Gemma Tyson, the account manager for the NPD Group, which collects and distributes prices on consumer goods. In the first quarter, the average price declined to £6.26 from £6.71 a year earlier.
That leaves package holidays as the last suspect, and here the evidence makes a "guilty'' verdict more reasonable. Figures show the average cost of a holiday was £447 in 2001, £456 in 2002 and £463 in 2003. This year, the cost is about £510, says Sean Tipton, a spokesperson for the Association of British Travel Agents.
Even here, though, there are mitigating circumstances.
"Normally, you wouldn't see holiday prices rise more than the average rate of inflation," says Tipton. "We've seen two very slow years. We're coming back from a very low base, which is why prices are rising faster."
Next month, the central bank publishes the quarterly inflation report. At its most recent meeting, its nine-member committee voted to keep the benchmark rate unchanged at 4.5 percent.
Yet the bank warned "it was likely the repo rate would need to increase further". Let's hope policy makers sample the pricing atmosphere in their local stores, as well as in their spreadsheets, to guide their verdicts. - Bloomberg