I'm sure every generation is jealous of the ones that succeeds it, but, oh to be a kid today!

While much CES "innovation" can be dismissed as rubbish best suited to the pages of SkyMall, a few newfangled inventions will make the lives of kids today that much better.

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While many would balk at the idea of robots looking after children (iRobot's Robbie, anyone?) not many could argue against robots educating the younger generation to code. After all, the world they are growing up in depends on it, and it's still not -- for the most part -- being taught or mandated in schools. There's even an argument to be made that computer literacy is becoming as important in today's world as traditional literacy.

But code is complicated, right? Wrong. Or so say the CES robo-toy crowd.

Ozobot, for instance, is a tiny robot that teaches kids the essence of code with not much more than some colored marker pens. The company claims its robot teaches kids "code language, robotic behavior, and deductive reasoning while effortlessly playing on multi-dimensional environments."

How does it work? The robot interprets different colors as different commands. Draw lines in various colors, set the robot on the line, and it will follow these commands. So, if say, a black line simply means "follow this line moving forward at a set pace," suddenly splicing in a bit of blue line could tell the robot to accelerate, or red could tell it to rotate in place. The key is for kids to understand that different sequences represent different actions.

The robots can also interact with lines drawn on a tablet or mobile phone, and the company offers various digital games that the tiny robot can interact with. It's incredibly cute, and really quite addictive, all for around $50 a robot.

Another fantastic robot/code platform for kids on show at CES was the Wonder Workshop Dash and Dot. Designed for kids ages 5 and up, the two-piece robot set is purportedly "engineered for possibilities" with all kinds of accessory add-ons that can make the robots musical, transformer, audio-visual recording devices, and much more.

Packed with sensors, the robots can be easily programmed by kids using a smart device (connected to the robots via Bluetooth), with a very simple user interface.

The company describes their purposefully gender-neutral offering as "part friend, part pet, and part robot," and while perhaps on the expensive side at $260 for the starter pack, the apps, games, and possibilities really do make them something of a wonder toy.

Design engineers and professionals, the West Coast's most important design, innovation, and manufacturing event, Pacific Design & Manufacturing, is taking place in Anaheim, Feb. 10-12, 2015. A Design News event, Pacific Design & Manufacturing is your chance to meet qualified suppliers, get hands-on access to the latest technologies, be informed from a world-class conference program, and expand your network. (You might even meet a Design News editor.) Learn more about Pacific Design & Manufacturing here.

A regular speaker on the tech conference circuit and a Senior Director at FTI Consulting, Sylvie Barak is an authority on the electronics space, social media in a b2b context, digital content creation and distribution. She has a passion for gadgets, electronics, and science fiction.