I apologise for the lack of articles recently, I've been really busy with my final assignments and haven't had time to post as regularly as usual. I'll be back to a more regular schedule soon though! Anyway, people who know me well know what I am a die-hard fan of anything Lego, or anything that imitates it. It's especially cool when they combine it with really awesome licences. The Lego sets of The Simpsons are great, and check out this cool Sonic The Hedgehog Pixel Bricks set below:
It's always really nice to see our favourite passions crossover, and little did I know Pokémon did the same thing! Yeah, Pokémon Lego bricks, can you believe it? Well, you don't have to believe it, because sadly, it wasn't Lego who made them. It was Mega Bloks! Yahoo! Wait, hold up... Remember Mega Bloks? My cousins and I definitely remember, although our memories aren't particularly fond ones. To quote one of my cousins: 'Mega Bloks has good designs, but the bricks are shit'. He couldn't have been more correct. Maybe they've changed their quality a bit since, but either way, they have also made a name for themselves in recent years for making licensed products that have little to no rebuild value. However, beef aside, check this set out:
Yeah. I don't know about you, but that looks bloody awesome. Of course, with this series being something cool, it meant that by sod's law it had to more or less be exclusive to Japan. Only thing I'm not quite sure about is the Pokémon themselves being bricks. To make things better, here's another awesome set featuring a constructible Charizard and a mini figure of May. You can also change Charizard into a plane or a helicopter. That is so bizarrely genius. Thank you, Japan.
The west did get a few sets, although they were nowhere near as good as what Japan got. They were called Build 'n Battle and just featured constructible versions of the starters (from Ruby and Sapphire) and Pikachu which you could transform into one of their evolutions.
That doesn't look so cool. In fact, it looks a bit rubbish, especially compared to the Charizard above. It looks like there is also some kind of game involved as it comes with a die and some kind of flat tile piece with different coloured pegs on it. Perhaps you played the game with a friend who had the other models. I can't imagine it caught on much. We also got this:
This isn't something I'd buy now to display on my shelf, but as a kid I probably would have loved this. It is more of a puzzle than an actual construction set. I also love the old school Pokémon anime pictures of Ash and Pikachu on the box. It reminds me of all the merchandise that they sold to tie in with the franchise back in the day. Apparently there were variations of this set featuring different Pokémon like Charizard too. Not bad.
These sets were released all the way up until the Diamond, Pearl and Platinum era, but it seems nothing was released after that. Check out this absolutely badass Dialga:
Why on earth did they keep this Japanese exclusive?!? I would have dropped my prejudice towards Mega Bloks and bought this in a heartbeat. Silly people. Anyway, after doing some more research it appears that the Pokémon licence has been passed on to some other companies, it looks like two, in fact. One of them is a company called Ionix. I checked out some of their sets, and I wasn't too keen on the way they looked. This Bulbasaur and Venasaur (that can be transformed into its mega evolution form) was pretty rad though:
And then we move on to Nanoblock. You may have seen them before. They are like Lego, but really really tiny (similar to the Pixel Bricks featured above). They have some bigger sets based on the X and Y games, but these little individual Pokémon sets are cooler. It isn't pictured, but there is a Snorlax one and I made a point of buying it because Snorlax is a proper legend.
That pretty much concludes this geeky little look into the world of Pokémon themed bricks. So, what is my conclusion, you ask? Lego should have the license instead. Sure, all of the sets featured above are pretty damn cool, but we all know that the Lego scientists could come up with something that could really pay tribute to the world of Pokémon in a much more fitting manner. One last thing, while on my journey through the internet to find information for this article, I stumbled upon something else Mega Bloks released exclusively in Japan: a constructible RX-78-2 Gundam!
