Lego Pokémon bosses talk the divisive Smart Brick, sets for adult fans, and what’s next

Lego Pokémon is something I have wanted for as long as I’ve been aware of both brands. It’s perhaps the biggest cross-section of my interests, which means when the original sets were first rumoured last year, I couldn’t believe my luck. I’m far from the only person in this boat.

By most metrics, Pokémon is the largest media franchise in the world. Combining that with Lego is a dream for fans, but when the line launched earlier this year, not everyone was on board with how Lego and Pokémon’s partnership has begun.

At the Pokémon World Championships 2026 & Pokémon XP in San Francisco, California, I sat down with Siddharth Muthyala, design director at Lego, and Mike Kirk Andersen, senior interaction designer, to chat about Lego Pokémon, the fanbase-dividing Smart Brick, and the future of adult-focused sets.

So, with more than 1000 Pokémon to pick, I wanted to know how the team at Lego went about picking the debutants for this new area of Pokémon merchandise, after the names Pikachu and Charizard were placed firmly at the top of the list.

“Tough question right off the bat,” Muthyala laughed. “As you mentioned, there’s a lot of Pokémon to choose from. I think for us, it all came down to an assortment and a range of Pokémon that children find exciting, can identify with, can recognize, and have a connection to.

“So it wasn’t chosen out of the blue. We did have multiple Pokémon that we’ve been playing with and did a lot of playtests and I think we’ve done playtests with several hundred children. We always ask them, right, what’s your favorite, which one? And then through that, favorite surface, and then we also work with The Pokémon Company to work through our list of Pokémon as well.

“But it all comes down to play. So what’s the most fun Pokémon you can build that fits in a child’s hand, that can fly, that can swim, that can walk, and all of that, and make a list from that.”

Lego Pokémon comes at a time of major transition for Lego. The recently introduced Smart Brick, which debuted in the Lego Star Wars line last year, has divided fans. For younger members of the audience, it is a new, forward-looking way to interact with Lego, turning the building brick into more of a digital toy.

A Smart Brick can play sounds, react to other Smart Bricks, and more. It’s an evolution of the technology found in the Lego Super Mario line from a few years ago. However, adult fans still aren’t entirely convinced. The Lego Pokémon line has so far been split between Smart Brick sets aimed at a younger audience and a series of larger, collector’s models aimed at older fans.

I asked the Lego team when it was decided that Smart Brick would be so integral to the Lego Pokémon line.

“Yeah, it was actually very early on,” Anderson told me.

“I think as soon as we started meeting kids and we started to also understand what they want to play. We learned that they want to be the trainer, and they want to go on the journey as a trainer with their Pokémon and the Smart Brick, and that technology just fits so well into that storyline when we can bring them alive.

“I also think when we started really understanding that we have something is then after the test they wouldn’t like go to sit and I and say thanks for playing they would go to the Pokémon that they had been spending time with give them a little high-five and say to us, ‘Hey please be careful with my Squirtle,’ I think that’s when we start to really understand we’ve got something special here.”

Having now spent more time with the Smart Brick technology, I am confident that if this existed in the early 2000s, I would have been obsessed with it. Sure, the number of actual interactions between the Pokémon aren’t going to wow older fans, but it’s very easy to imagine the depth it adds to imaginative play.

It still isn’t massively appealing to me as an older fan, but Pokémon is a franchise built on its ability to introduce itself to a new generation of kids every couple of years. Today’s Smart Brick Pokémon sets will be what teenagers a decade from now find nostalgic, in the same way I long for my Lego Star Wars prequel sets. It’s not really for us, and that’s fine.

However, one element of the Smart Brick that surprised me was the noises that the Lego Pokémon make. In the video game side of Pokémon, Pokémon almost universally let out a unique cry. This has been the case since the debut of the franchise. When the Pokémon anime was introduced, it was established that Pokémon would only say their own name (save for a few high-profile exemptions). When it was announced that the Smart Brick Pokémon would make sounds, many fans assumed it would be one of the other; however, it’s neither.

“Something that is like super cool about the Smartbrick is that actually what sits inside it is a synthesizer,” Muthyala explained. “So it is like an instrument.  We do not record anything. There’s no audio in the brick. Everything is created when you’re playing with it.

“So when Pikachu does something, it basically presses one of the keys. And that’s why, truly, actually, when Pikachu comes alive, it’s slightly different every time because it’s been done on the go, and that’s how we can scale it across so many Lego Pokémon, and we can still fit the form factor. So it’s really us trying to create a new language that fits within the technology and still is true to the voice of the Pokémon.”

While the Smart Brick Pokémon sets might not be for the older fan, Lego aren’t ignoring the massive, and no doubt very lucrative, older fanbase either. So far, the largest sets in the Pokémon line have been aimed at older, nostalgic fans via a large focus on the first generation of Pokémon.

However, recently, a set featuring Rayquaza and Zinnia was released. While plenty of fans will know Rayquaza as the box legendary from Pokémon Emerald, most Pokémon fans will have no idea who Zinnia is. Debuting as an important NPC in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Zinnia is more known to modern fans for her appearances alongside Rayquaza on Pokémon Trading Card Game cards.

By any stretch, this is a deep cut. I suggest to Lego that while Rayquaza is clearly a popular pick, the idea of including Zinnia as one of the first Pokémon minifigures must have come from a huge fan.

“I think that’s precisely it,” said Muthyala. “So our team, so Mike and I work with a team of, I would say, easily 40 to 50 designers, not just model designers, it’s elements, it’s graphics, it’s interaction, it’s building instruction designers, researchers, all of that.

“So it’s a massive team, which also means that we have a lot of people on the team who are fans of Pokémon. So the deep-cut ideas, the references to the lore, it’s all there on purpose because it’s stuff that we’ve grown up with and things that we want to see as well, and references that we think should exist.

“We put that out ideas and then we work with The Pokémon Company International as well to stress test ideas. ‘Can we put in these minifigures?’  But for us it is doing something authentic to the lore and doing something that’s magical, unexpected and do something for us, for kids.”

Anderson added, “Like we have the kids lineup but then we also recognize that everyone wants to build and be part of the journey so we want to do that in different ways of course.”

The latest wave of Lego Pokémon sets will be released on October 1.