It feels like the two brands should be a natural fit together, so how come LEGO don’t produce Pokemon sets? The Pokemon franchise launched way back in the late 1990s and quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. In addition to the best-selling games, it’s been turned into a long-running anime, a series of animated movies, comics, toys and much, much more.

The franchise is finally set to receive a live-action feature too with Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) voices the title character and there’s already talk of sequels and other spinoffs, should the movie prove to be a success. Detective Pikachu is receiving warm reviews from early screenings, so the odds of Pokemon conquering the big screen is looking good.

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One movie that felt like it would never work was 2014’s The LEGO Movie, from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. What seemed to be a clear ploy to sell toys turned out to be one of the funniest, freshest comedies of recent years, thanks to energetic direction and a great cast. LEGO has produced sets from a lot of iconic films, TV and comic properties, from Star Wars to Batman and The Lord Of The Rings. One strange omission from that line-up is the lack of an official Pokemon LEGO set.

A Pokemon LEGO set sounds like it would be a license to print money, but it will likely never happen. The license to Pokemon is held by Mattel’s Mega Brands, a rival to LEGO. A LEGO Pokemon Center was a concept that was once pitched by Savath_Bunny on LEGO Ideas, but despite gaining a lot of support and fan interest online, the company soon shot the notion down.

They stated that since Pokemon is a property owned by a competitor, it wasn’t in their interest to pursue a license to produce the set. That’s not to say a Pokemon LEGO set is something that could never happen, but the odds of it being produced in the near future looks bleak. While some fans might be disappointed by this, there’s still an almost endless number of official Pokemon toys and video games to play around with. They can also give the Mega Bloks Pokemon sets a try too.

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Another thing that should ease the pain about a lack of Pokemon LEGO sets is Pokémon Sword and Shield, the next entries in the game franchise set for release in late 2019. Starter Pokemon include Sobble, a water-type chameleon, grass-type monkey Grookey and fire-type rabbit Scorbunny.

Key Release Dates
  • Detective Pikachu (2019)Release date: May 10, 2019
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About The Author


Padraig Cotter
(3484 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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