I SUPPOSE it had to happen sooner or later, especially at my advanced years, but I’m starting to feel out of touch.

See, in the past, I’ve always had a decent grasp of what my sons were into. Teletubbies? Sure, I can tell Tinky-Winky from Po in a heartbeat.

Postman Pat? I could even do the voices. And when they got into Doctor Who and Star Wars I was well ahead of them, even if they did prefer the Clone Wars cartoons.

Now, however, it’s all Ben 10. Specifically, something called Ben 10: Alien Force, which I’m assured in no uncertain terms is completely different from Ben 10, and even better.

Fortunately, we parents have Wikipedia and suchlike to help decipher what our obsessed offspring are on about.

So I can say with some confidence that the cartoon Ben 10 is about 10-year-old Ben Tennyson (see where the name comes from?), who finds an alien artifact called an Omnitrix.

This is a sort-of-watch that lets him transform into various aliens to fight other, badder aliens.

Ben 10: Alien Force is the same, but set five years later, and is a bit darker, which seems to appeal to my serious-minded six-year-old, who likes nothing more than to regale us with the properties of whichever is his favourite alien on any particular day.

To be honest, I can barely tell one from the other, despite his lengthy explanations. I can spot Fourarms (guess why) from Ben 10, but then Alien Force has sprung a whole new bunch on us.

At the time of writing, my son’s favourite is a green blob called Goop, but that could be yesterday’s news.

His younger brother isn’t sure if he prefers Brainstorm or Spiderman – and yes, he is talking about the Marvel superhero, not to be confused with Spidermonkey, who is in Ben 10. Er, I mean Ben 10: Alien Force. You see why I get so confused?

Anyway, it was my eldest boy’s birthday at the weekend, which meant all manner of Ben 10-related goodies were on his list, and any cake which didn’t feature a particular animated hero was going to be looked upon with disappointment and derision (I blame the parents).

All of which has left me wondering if my own parents were equally mystified by my childish crazes.

My early obsessions, like the Lone Ranger and Champion the Wonder Horse, were based around my dad’s love of Westerns, so that can’t have been a culture shock.

But were they then puzzled by my Toy Story-like progression from cowboys to astronauts, as the travels of the Tardis and the starship Enterprise caught my imagination instead?

Did they really have problems telling a Dalek from a Cyberman, or a Klingon from a Romulan (actually, even I’d have problems with the latter these days).

Maybe they did, but I doubt it was as bewildering.

And besides, when I was six my favourite cartoon was Sinbad Jr. The only other character in that was Salty the parrot. Pretty easy for any parent to follow.

(As an aside, I’ve just checked the series online and discovered that the voice of Sinbad Jr was Tim Matheson, who went on to be Vice President Hoynes in the West Wing. How’s that for a cool CV?) Just to make me feel very old, I had a conversation with my eldest son the other day, trying to explain what it was like when I was his age, and the Banana Splits was cutting-edge kids’ entertainment.

We didn’t, I explained, have things like Cartoon Network, Sky+, or DVDs. In fact, I realised mid-lecture, we didn’t even have home videos, a technology which has been both invented and rendered obsolete between my formative years and my children’s, which is scary.

He thought very deeply about this for a few seconds. Then, with brow furrowed and a voice laced with concern and pity, asked: “But how did you watch Ben 10?”

You can’t say the boy isn’t single-minded...