get the 6 year old a toy where it will expand their iq level rather than bring them into the world of consumption.
lego would be my first choice.
Yes or just a wooden box full of different sizes of wooden blocks, sanded but otherwise unfinished hardwood. They become all sorts of things as a kid plays with them: houses, skyscrapers, trucks, livestock, fences...
The nice thing about a box of blocks is that the child must imagine what to do with them. And, he or she will, assuming the imagination has not already been stifled by complex entertainment options created by adults whose own entertainment, as children, was simpler and required more imagination.
If a kid can produce drama from his iPod touch on demand, why would his three-year old brain settle for anything more explorative than pushing the real and virtual buttons on his toy? He trains his brain that when he pushes buttons, he makes exciting things happen on a screen. He may also have trained his brain to expect absolutely nothing to happen unless he commands it. Recipe for disappointment right there. Good luck with the household chores and homework gigs.
We have not yet fully discovered what we may reap from immersing children in gadgetry too soon. Are there upsides? Yes, clearly, but I'd say the minimum age for using something like an iPod touch is way past five years old. More like 8. Plenthy of time to develop motor skills, play a real piano or clarinet, find out that hitting someone with a pot lid hurts and invites retaliation that also hurts... all that stuff that is so not a video game.
The people who invented computers and built them in their garages and all that, they were not sitting in front of GUI / touchscreen devices they invented while they were two years old. No sir. They were banging old pots on the kitchen floor, wondering why this one didn't hold as many blocks as that one, and seeing how many blocks they could stack up before they all fell in a heap on the floor. And what shape was the heap? And why circular this time and splayed out like chicken feet yesterday? More experiments clearly needed!
We forget the advantages of our youth. Some of them we may wrongly classify in retrospect today as states of deprivation.