The LEGO Group’s design director has explained why the first wave of Pokémon playsets doesn’t include minifigures.
Arriving six months after the first batch of 18+ LEGO Pokémon display sets, the initial wave of Pokémon display sets are hooked to SMART Play, a concept first introduced by LEGO Star Wars back in March. But where those sets from a galaxy far, far away embrace SMART Minifigures, the Pokémon sets gloss over them entirely in favour of brick-built characters – a decision made with kids in mind.
"Every time we speak with children and fans, what they want to be are Pokémon trainers," the LEGO Group’s Design Director Siddharth Muthyala told Polygon. "And then when you dive a little deeper into that, what does it mean to be a trainer? It's finding Pokémon, catching them, nurturing them, training them, and of course, you go into a battle with them.
"The intentionality goes so deep that we don't have any minifigures in the assortment because children are the trainers. So it's a Pokémon world you're entering and all the children out there in the world, they are the humans, they are the trainers who are catching these Pokémon, bonding with them and battling and training with them. So that was also a choice."
There’s also the small matter of scale: pop a minifigure next to any of these brick-built Pokémon and you’re looking at a sort of inverse scenario where the animals send the humans into battle. Minifigure-first playsets would have been a completely different proposition, like an arena filled with minifigures and tiny moulded Pokémon, which might have looked neat on display but probably wouldn’t have been as much fun to play with.
Why wave around an Ash minifigure when you could be Ash? That’s the idea behind these SMART Play LEGO Pokémon sets, but whether it pays off come August remains to be seen. And it’ll only be seen in six countries at launch, because SMART Play sets – whether Star Wars or Pokémon – are available first in the UK, US, Australia, Germany, Poland and France.
You can watch the sets in action and check out our thoughts on them in hand over on our YouTube channel. Of course, it's worth remembering that just because these initial sets don't include minifigures, it doesn't mean they're off the table permanently. Even Super Mario is finally getting minifigures in 2027...
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