LEGO Pokémon 2026 - Rumours & Discussion

[BrickBob Studpants]

37 minutes ago, squiz18 said:

Think people are assuming the worst with this as trying to buy pokemon cards is a nightmare at the moment. 

Could be a coincidence, but the first-ever pre-orderable GWP being a Pokémon one is suspicious They’ve probably seen the horrendous videos recorded at Costco and decided not to subject LEGO Store employees to this madness

[Meaf]

Seeing the sets pretty much just solidified how I felt when we first got descriptions (namely that the starters should have been separate sets), although Pikachu also looks kinda bad imo. Also also the bases for Pikachu and the starters feel a bit like they're mostly just there to jack up the price, although I won't deny that they look nice. I dunno, I love Pokemon and I'm glad they're doing a Lego line, but none of these sets interest me at all. Hopefully the rest of the year's sets are a little more exciting.

[danth]

Eevee looks great.

Pikachu looks kinda bad. The others are just okay. 

Really sad to see Lego struggling to match Mega designs. 

[Virginia_Bricks]

Till we get comparison videos, I hesitate to say Lego is struggling to match Mega. I think the Eevee and Trio are better than anything Mega produced.

Now the Smart Play Pokemon sets might disappoint because of how the large Smart Brick messes up designs.

Edited January 12 by Virginia_Bricks

[danth]

I think these look better than the Lego sets:

[MKJoshA]

So far these are all an easy "pass" for me. Way too much money for sets that are just ok.

Have you all seen the commercial yet? That is so cringe. Openly marketing to millennials and calling them out for still being obsessed with the toys they grow up with (of which I am one, I admit) doesn't seem like a great marketing strategy. 

[MAB]

5 minutes ago, MKJoshA said:

So far these are all an easy "pass" for me. Way too much money for sets that are just ok.

Have you all seen the commercial yet? That is so cringe. Openly marketing to millennials and calling them out for still being obsessed with the toys they grow up with (of which I am one, I admit) doesn't seem like a great marketing strategy. 

I don't see the problem with the advert. Directly targeting the people the sets are aimed at seems sensible to me. 

[strangely]

Pikachu looks rough, but Eevee and the others look good. Too bad I have no interest in Pokémon statues.

Please Lego, give us some minifigure scale sets. I would love to get Animal Crossing style builds for Pokémon Centers, Gyms and other buildings from the Kanto Region with minifigures of the gym leaders and other game characters. It would just suck to get a bunch of brick built Pokémon and nothing else.

[Virginia_Bricks]

27 minutes ago, strangely said:

Pikachu looks rough, but Eevee and the others look good. Too bad I have no interest in Pokémon statues.

Please Lego, give us some minifigure scale sets. I would love to get Animal Crossing style builds for Pokémon Centers, Gyms and other buildings from the Kanto Region with minifigures of the gym leaders and other game characters. It would just suck to get a bunch of brick built Pokémon and nothing else.

Would people be fine with this if it might mean 1 - 2 Pokemon per $40-60 set? Animal Crossing hasn't yet repeated a mini-figure but across all of its sets has only released 26 minifigures in total. The unique molds eat up a lot of the budget.

Edited January 12 by Virginia_Bricks

[Scarilian]

I'm kinda glad honestly because I'm a massive fan of Pokemon, yet none of these appeal. The closest would be Eevee, but the head is too square when it should have been handled similar to the curved body.

The three fully evolved starters, each probably about £150ish individually, being shoved into a singular set with a base and calling it £580 is insane.

Especially when you can still buy the three versions of each Kanto starter from Megabloks for around £40 each.

Which do you choose, Nine posable and detailed Pokemon figures for £120 OR £580 for three brickbuilt Pokemon statues with barely any movement and a base.

1 hour ago, Virginia_Bricks said:

Would people be fine with this if it might mean 1 - 2 Pokemon per $40-60 set? Animal Crossing hasn't yet repeated a mini-figure but across all of its sets has only released 26 minifigures in total. The unique molds eat up a lot of the budget.

Megabloks did this and it was pretty cool, so I dont really see why Lego couldn't do this. Perhaps a mixture of molds and mixed style building techniques.

The way it is currently they are not achieving the level of accuracy needed, especially for the pricing they are asking.

2 hours ago, MAB said:

I don't see the problem with the advert. Directly targeting the people the sets are aimed at seems sensible to me. 

I think its an evil tactic to depict your target audience as focused entirely on the monotony and the only thing that can save them is buying your product. 'You should ditch your responsibilities and bills because you have to buy lego'

Its not simply having a sense of fun as an adults, its neglect everything else and focus entirely on buying Lego to build them all.

Edited January 12 by Scarilian

[strangely]

1 hour ago, Virginia_Bricks said:

Would people be fine with this if it might mean 1 - 2 Pokemon per $40-60 set? Animal Crossing hasn't yet repeated a mini-figure but across all of its sets has only released 26 minifigures in total. The unique molds eat up a lot of the budget.

I mean, the leaked set list for summer is only 1-2 Pokémon per set, so I didn't think my suggestion was particularly outlandish.

[squiz18]

Preorders for the big 3 set are exhausted on the US, UK and AUS lego sites. 

[Renny The Spaceman]

I don't know if this registers for anyone else but I think a big issue with the adults welcome era is sets frequently don't justify their price, I don't mean in terms of poor value but as in was this the scale this set needed to be. Big sets like Rivendale, sure can only be what they are at the scale they are but all of these Pokemon sets? They simply don't look good enough to be this expensive and they're not forced to be in scale with anything but themselves, like the quality of the shaping and builds could easily be achieved for at least half the price for all of these just at a smaller scale (as shown by the mega blox sets) but they're upscaled because fans are ravenous enough to pay that. I feel the same about the Star Trek set and a good few others.

[BrickWild]

Pikachu's tail can be changed depending on the 'gender'.
The male has a flat-ended one and the female has a notched one.

[BrickBob Studpants]

1 hour ago, BrickWild said:

Pikachu's tail can be changed depending on the 'gender'.
The male has a flat-ended one and the female has a notched one.

That’s an awesome detail to include!  I always appreciate customisability options ^^

3 hours ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

I don't know if this registers for anyone else but I think a big issue with the adults welcome era is sets frequently don't justify their price, I don't mean in terms of poor value but as in was this the scale this set needed to be.

Sure, the scale is arbitrary, just as it is with Star Wars UCS sets, but the starter trio wouldn’t look anywhere near as impressive at a lower piece count  

[Renny The Spaceman]

4 minutes ago, BrickBob Studpants said:

Sure, the scale is arbitrary, just as it is with Star Wars UCS sets, but the starter trio wouldn’t look anywhere near as impressive at a lower piece count  

Kinda, but a big part of the UCS sets is they can only be so hyper detailed at the scale they're at. The Starter Trio really doesn't look impressive to me because it's  3 slightly upscaled Mega Blox Pokemon sets on a black base, Like if we look at the big Bowser or Mario in his kart set they're smoother and more accurate to the shaping which makes them impressive as builds, I get why they're expensive even if I wouldn't buy them but this set really feels only impressive in it's price which makes it feel more tacky to me. More excessive than impressive from my point of view I guess 

[BrickBob Studpants]

8 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

More excessive than impressive from my point of view I guess 

Yeah, that’s in the eye of the beholder  Opinions are definitely divided, but personally I think they nailed the designs and I can’t wait to build them!

[MKJoshA]

39 minutes ago, BrickBob Studpants said:

Sure, the scale is arbitrary, just as it is with Star Wars UCS sets, but the starter trio wouldn’t look anywhere near as impressive at a lower piece count  

In a vacuum I'd be inclined to agree with you. But the problem is Megablocks showed great shaping, detail, and articulation can be done at a smaller scale. To be lacking in these areas compared to one of their competitors and then charge x times more is what bothers me.

[Virginia_Bricks]

We have 20 rumored sets this year. 5 have now been revealed and 10 were leaked to be Smart Play sets. The final 5 might also be Smart Play sets or something different, we don't know.

Lego doesn't want its products to be similar to Mega sets currently on shelves to invite unnecessary comparisons, so it makes sense to start with Smart Play sets and large 18+ sets. Mega didn't do either.

Also, included in one leak was that there might be a Pokemon minifig set to be leaked before the end of January (that and Ganon are the only things left on that list). I'm holding judgement on Lego Pokemon till a few years in (thought I do live the 18+ sets already).

[BrickBob Studpants]

5 minutes ago, Virginia_Bricks said:

Also, included in one leak was that there might be a Pokemon minifig set to be leaked before the end of January […]

I think a mistranslation or other misunderstanding is to blame here, as minifigs being included never made sense when the sets are either large-scale display models or smart-brick-enhanced buildable figures  Someone must’ve thought the Pokémon Center came with minifigs, not realising it was a microscale Insiders bonus set

[Renny The Spaceman]

34 minutes ago, MKJoshA said:

In a vacuum I'd be inclined to agree with you. But the problem is Megablocks showed great shaping, detail, and articulation can be done at a smaller scale. To be lacking in these areas compared to one of their competitors and then charge x times more is what bothers me.

Yeah exactly my point, even if you really love their look they are just aping what Mega did at either an equal or slightly worse quality but for ridiculously more. They have more pieces but they're not really any better looking, they don't display better and they definitely aren't more playable

 

 

[MAB]

15 hours ago, Scarilian said:

I think its an evil tactic to depict your target audience as focused entirely on the monotony and the only thing that can save them is buying your product. 'You should ditch your responsibilities and bills because you have to buy lego'

Its not simply having a sense of fun as an adults, its neglect everything else and focus entirely on buying Lego to build them all.

These are fans that have lived with the "Gotta catch 'em all" slogan of the franchise they follow. I think the advert taps into the nostalgia quite well, showing some adults remembering what they used to be like in days gone by, and modifies the slogan slightly to put it into LEGO context. If anyone sees the advert and thinks LEGO is telling them to ditch all their adult responsibilities and that they should neglect everything else in their lives, then they probably have some serious issues. 

[CF Mitch]

Finally they're revealed!
As most of you say, Pikachu lookks off. I do like the general look of the set, with Pika coming out of the pokéball.
Eevee definitely looks better, I miiigght get them.

Then there's the starter evolutions    
I actually think they're done very nice, but still not worth that amount of money...
I think 

The GWP and insider sets are also nicely done  

Regards,
Mitch

[Scarilian]

6 hours ago, MAB said:

If anyone sees the advert and thinks LEGO is telling them to ditch all their adult responsibilities and that they should neglect everything else in their lives, then they probably have some serious issues. 

The advert opens with demonstrating all the adult responsibilities and it ends with him actively choosing to ditch all of those responsibilities, including his work uniform, and instead meet up with his coworkers to get Lego Pokemon while someone expresses concern at his actions. 

Trying to insult people who acknowledge the adverts content doesn't change the adverts content.

Here is a popular fan commercial by John Wikstrom that encapsulates what they were going for better, the idea of revisiting your youth while also showing the passage of time such as reading a kindle as opposed to playing a gameboy.

6 hours ago, MAB said:

These are fans that have lived with the "Gotta catch 'em all" slogan of the franchise they follow.

The slogan was never intended to be a chore, it's a dream, an adventure and a journey. You can have the 'Gotta catch/build 'em all' as a slogan, but pairing it with how they handled the rest of the advert and the release it makes it feel extremely manipulative. No real time to view the sets prior, released during a working day, a GWP exclusive to the larger set and in a limited number, all of it's designed to create FOMO and rush people into spending without letting them think. Even the sets themselves which really should have been focused entirely on the Pokemon include unneccessary display areas and shove multiple Pokemon together to inflate the pricing.

[BrickWild]

Here's my idea for a 'Cosplay Pikachu' tail marking!
Cosplay Pikachu originally debuted in Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire.