After building them, I think Lego's Pokémon Smart Play sets might be ideal for Poké-mad kids

When Lego dropped the Smart Brick and debuted it at CES earlier this year, it wasn't hard to start imagining the many ways in which it could leverage its new tech-enabled system. In the end, it started with Lego Star Wars, which was no surprise, but now there's a new wave of Smart Play sets, and it's very much focused on Pokémon.

The idea of Smart Play is to enhance kids' instincts to play, with more feedback and systems for them to discover, and some observers and testers felt that side of things was a little lacking in the Star Wars sets. Having built a couple of the latest Pokémon sets, though, it looks to me like Lego's heading in the right direction.

Lego has actually dropped a huge range of new Pokémon sets in the last few weeks, having started off the partnership with vanishingly expensive adult collector sets. It now has dozens of kid-friendly sets at lower prices and brick counts, but only a few of these come with Smart Brick functionality in the box, although almost all of them will work with Smart Bricks bought separately.

The biggest set of the new wave is Charizard vs. Jolteon Ultimate Battle, and I built it this weekend to get a better sense of how the Smart Brick works when Pokémon is concerned.

The build is pretty fun, too, although as an 8+ set it's obviously less involved than something from an Ultimate Collector Series or similar. The play-scale Charizard, in particular, is really quite excellent, with poseable joints and a jointed tail that makes it equally playable on foot or flying through the air.

Jolteon is simpler but still cute and well-realised, while the training structure they can interact with is a little more simplistic and framelike. The key, though, is that Smart Play functionality.

Each of these Pokémon, like almost all of the others in the current range, has a part of its body that can be removed to swap in a Smart Brick. Doing so pretty much instantly gets you some feedback, with the brick lighting up and the Pokémon making a noise to fit its in-game cry.

Once they're in, the gyroscope sensors will give you feedback on a variety of actions. In this bigger set's case, you can initiate a battle between the two monsters, complete with music that syncs and comes from both Pokémon (regrettably, though, it's not a recognisable tune from the games, probably for licensing reasons).

While battling, you can swoosh the Pokémon towards one another to register attacks, and colours on the Smart Brick will indicate each one's health. If that runs low, you can top them up with an included Potion, built during the set, and this gives the Smart Play functionality some depth and staying power.

If you're feeling cynical, it's probably fair to point out that the Smart Brick inclusion does clearly make the bricks-to-price ratio a little steep in this set and the Training House with Pikachu set that also brings a Smart Brick in the package, but the prices are still more approachable than I feared they'd be.

That said, the nature of a kid's fandom for something like Pokémon does make me think that the best starting point for choosing one of the Lego Pokémon sets would be to pick their favourite monster from those available on the Lego store. If it's Smart Play compatible or even comes with the system included, happy days; that's some extra fun for them to figure out, but if not, then they might well never really miss its absence.

I think that's an important approach – making the Smart Brick additive, rather than definitive, and it looks like Lego's got the direction right with these Pokémon sets. If a kid in your life is a fan of the franchise, this could be an ideal gift, and I'd expect more waves to come in the next couple of years, too. Perhaps there'll be a whole Pokédex's worth, eventually.