adidas is not doing one Pokémon shoe. It is doing sixteen of them at once, on Tuesday, September 22, and the spread tells you exactly who the Three Stripes thinks is buying: the Superstar and Samba crowd that has carried the brand for three years, plus the running-nerd fringe that wants a ZX 8000 in Mewtwo purple. Sneaker News posted the full store list on Monday, September 21, and it reads like a map of the modern adidas business: adidas.com, Foot Locker, SNIPES and Champs on day one, then a second wave for boutiques and Drift House on Thursday, September 24.
What's actually in the box
Sneaker Bar Detroit has tracked this collection since July, and the final lineup covers nine Pokémon across ten silhouettes. Pikachu gets the widest spread: a yellow Superstar (KI2858), a white Superstar (KI2857) and a Pro Model (KI2862). Mewtwo takes the Samba OG in Ice Lavender (KI8220), a Handball Spezial (KI8213) and a ZX 8000 (KI5326) at $170. Rayquaza rides an F50 Tunit Mega (KI5325) at $180 and an adiStar Control 5 (KI8179). The ghost line, Gastly, Haunter and Gengar, lands on the adiStar Control 5 and the adiStar XLG 2.0 (KJ5609) at $150.
Then there is the Charmander evolution chain on three Superstars: Charmander in cream and orange (KI2855), Charmeleon in scarlet (KI2856), and Charizard (KI2861), which SBD describes as having "an orange scale-covered upper, green around the collar, and removable wings placed over the laces." That one is $180. The Superstars otherwise sit at $110. Nice Kicks has the Pikachu Superstar and the Mewtwo Samba listed for Tuesday as well.
The Samba tax, explained
Look at where the money is. The Samba, Superstar and Spezial are the shoes that dragged adidas out of the post-Yeezy hole, and this collection is designed to sell the same three silhouettes to a fourth audience: people who were eight years old when Pokémon Red hit Game Boy in 1998 and now have adult money. The full-family sizing, which SBD confirms runs from adult down to kids, means a parent can buy the Pikachu Superstar in their size and their kid's size at the same register. That is the entire strategy, and it is a smart one.
It also explains the price ladder. $110 for the volume shoes, $150 to $180 for the pieces with real tooling changes. The Charizard wings and the ZX 8000 are the collector bait; the Superstars are the ones that will be on every middle-school floor by Halloween.
Retail geography
The two-wave rollout is the tell. Tuesday belongs to adidas direct and the mall chains, which is where adidas moves units. Thursday is the boutique window, and Sneaker News lists Drift House as in-store only. That is the reverse of how a Jordan collab rolls, where the boutiques get the first look and the general release cleans up. Here the general release comes first because adidas is not trying to build heat; it is trying to sell 16 shoes to as many people as possible before the holiday quarter.
For a Black-owned boutique, the Thursday allocation is where the margin lives, if the allocation is real. Watch which shops actually get Charizard pairs versus a case of Charmander Superstars.
The take
Pokémon is a $100-billion-plus licensed franchise owned by The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures. adidas is paying for the right to print Pikachu on a Superstar, and the Superstar itself is a shoe that Run-DMC made a global object 40 years ago without a licensing check ever going to Hollis. The collection will do numbers because the silhouettes are already doing numbers. The question worth asking Tuesday morning is the same one worth asking every time a heritage shoe gets a cartoon on it: who gets paid when the culture that built the shoe is not on the invoice?
If you are buying, the ZX 8000 Mewtwo and the Charizard Superstar are the two pairs with any chance of holding value. Everything else is a wear-it shoe, and that is fine.
## Sources - Where To Buy The adidas Pokemon Footwear Collection — Sneaker News, September 21, 2026 - Where To Buy The Pokémon x adidas 30th Anniversary Collection — Sneaker Bar Detroit, updated September 14, 2026 - Pokémon x adidas Superstar "Pikachu Yellow" KI2858 — Nice Kicks, September 2026 - Pokémon x adidas Samba OG "Mewtwo" KI8220 — Nice Kicks, September 2026

