5 mobile titles and franchises that would benefit from physical interactive toys

Unless you've been living under a rock (or somewhere else without a decent wi-fi connection), you'll know that Rovio has officially announced Angry Birds Star Wars II.

Rather unsurprisingly, this sequel will feature all manner of characters and locations from George Lucas's underwhelming trilogy of Star Wars prequels.

Rather surprisingly, however, Angry Birds Star Wars II will feature support for Skylanders-style physical toys.

Using Hasbro's Telepods technology and your device's camera, you'll be able to 'transport' more than 30 real-world novelties into the Finnish developer's latest app.

This got us thinking. What other mobile and portable games or franchises would benefit from a range of interactive physical toys?

Here's what we came up with...

If we didn't know any better, we'd swear blind that Hasbro's portal technology was created especially for Nintendo's series of handheld Pokemon RPGs.

Imagine how cool it'd be to bench Pikachu and unleash Charizard mid-battle just by scanning their respective real-world toys with your favourite smartphone, tablet, or portable console.

There are now more than 600 different pocket monsters in the Pokemon universe, so - much like with Pokemon cards - you'd have to trade with friends to collect them all.

You know exactly where we're going with this, don't you?

That's right - you scan a small model of a Bugatti Veyron, a Mercedes-Benz SLS, or a Ford Focus with your device's camera, and it appears in your in-game garage.

Pretty simple.

PopCap's exemplary tower defence game is jam-packed with lovable plants and colourful pieces of greenery that we'd love to see transformed into real-world gaming pieces.

We'd definitely dig being able to scan these pieces into the game in order to set up our defences, and - hopefully - keep any pesky zombies that wander onto our freshly cut lawn at bay.

We'd all pretty much sell our right arms for a miniaturised Threepeater or a cute-looking real-world Melon-pult.

If you've played the Lego Harry Potter series or any of Traveller's Tales's other Lego-centric adventure titles, you'll know that they're packed full of hundreds of different characters.

These characters have a variety of different skills, so you have to utilise large numbers of them to overcome puzzles and complete everything on offer.

Who wouldn't love a little Lego Captain Jack Sparrow or a bad-ass Mace Windu figurine sitting on his work desk? Exactly.

Jurassic Park Builder is, as its name suggests, a build-'em-up in which you're encouraged to construct your very own dino-filled tourist attraction.

Currently, you unlock different dinosaurs in Jurassic Park Builder by completing various missions. You can purchase them from the in-game store, too.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if you could add an Abrosaurus or a Carcharodontosaurus to your park just by scanning its cute little face with your blower.