It took 30 years for LEGO to partner with Pokémon. After such a long wait since the original announcement in March 2025, the set that should’ve been the jewel in the crown — Pikachu, the single biggest icon of the franchise — is a bit of a letdown.
In a perfect world, it would’ve been a slam dunk. With the benefit of hindsight, the promotional video from a few weeks ago should’ve given the game away. In the trailers, we saw relatively free movement from the brilliant Eevee set, as well as Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise from the showstopper finale. However, the mid-sized Pikachu just listlessly stared at the sky, as if it were being abducted, or had found religion.
That’s because in real terms, the Pikachu and Poke Ball set (72152) makes the franchise’s headliner into a solid and near-immovable object. If you lift its right arm up, LEGO Pikachu looks like a friendlier version of the Donald Sutherland podperson in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
For all the hard work the designers have put into it, it just doesn’t quite work. If you don’t like the way it looks as a display piece, as a lot of people don’t, you won’t get much from this one, especially because the build itself is probably my least favorite from LEGO in the last couple of years.
LEGO Pikachu and Poké Ball (72152) specifications
Pieces: 2,050
Price: $199.99 (€199.99, £179.99)
Dimensions: 13.5in (35cm) tall, 10.5in (26cm) wide, 15.5in (39 cm) deep
Estimated build time: Five to six hours
Bags: 16, split as such:
- 1-5: Pikachu’s body, arms, and feet
- 6-9: Head, ears, and optional stand
- 10: The Poké Ball
- 11-16: The lightning-shaped stand
In its early stages, the LEGO Pikachu and Poké Ball (72152) set can be filed under “gubbins (general)” — you get all the colors of the rainbow in bag one, which has a distinct Technic feel. It makes you appreciate the design work that’s required below the surface, even if the first bag’s outcome looks like a two-stroke engine.
It’s a surprisingly demanding build in the first four bags, as you start to flesh out Pikachu’s shape — its arms appear in bag three, followed by boring hips and cute feet in bags three and four. Its fat ol’ back follows in bag five, and you start to feel a little bored by the symmetrical building. It’s always a danger with LEGO, though, but 72152 doesn’t really let up.
As you start to construct the head and ears, things take a slightly surprising turn. It’s a mish-mash of small bricks and crossbeams that don’t feel secure, and this becomes a common theme. You often wonder why there aren’t more bracer blocks; you have to be careful with certain sections for long periods, otherwise they fall off or come apart.
Bag seven finally gives Pikachu its face, and you finally get a bit of character. Bag eight adds sideburns and other aesthetic choices that don’t feel all that secure. By this point, Pikachu’s body is more or less complete, but it isn’t steady on its feet — far from ideal, as you need to put it somewhere. After mine fell over twice, I laid it on the carpet, face down, as if it had one too many tequilas. Bag nine finally delivered a slot-in stand, which really should’ve been in the instructions before the head was even attached.
You then add the tail, which comes in male and female finishes (jagged vs. B-shaped flash). As a child of the 90s who fell in love with the LEGO-Pokémon collaboration because it solely featured monsters from the OG 151, this was completely lost on me until a younger, more relevant friend explained how things have changed, and that I’m very old — only Nidoran is gendered in my head — but it’s a great touch. Still, there’s no wiggle in the tail at all; it’s completely fixed.
The Poké Ball in bag 10 is calamitous and keeps falling apart in your fingers because of the counterpressure you need to apply when adding each side. There’s an option to keep the ball closed entirely, not that you would, but however you display it, your patience may be really challenged by this section.
Bags 11 through 16 create the base, arm, and final flourishes, complete with a subtle but brilliant “25” on the top of the bolt-shaped stand to recognize Pikachu’s Pokedex entry. Again, there are lots of last-minute bracing pieces, and it relies entirely on patience and a flat table to construct it on. Still, it’s very nicely made, even if the posing arm, which you push straight up Pikachu’s jacksy, has confusing instructions. The final bag, in a nice touch, gives you a space to fold the smaller stand into the base — very clever, but you’ll wish the rest of the set had the same sparks of ingenuity.
An impossible task?
For such a big build, you want at least some flexibility. Sure, Mario from the excellent Kart build couldn’t stand up, but at least he had decent articulation in his arms and head. In a lot of ways, I feel like LEGO gave itself the enviable task of creating something that really couldn’t be captured in bricks.
That said, another part of me reckons LEGO set out its plan to make three sets — one small, one medium, and one big boy — and then worked backwards to figure out which Pokémon would fit into these grades. Eevee (72151) was an inspired choice for the cheapest set, while the largest build was always going to be a showstopper — which the Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise (72153) idea delivers, even if the base accounts for a lot its real estate.
With Pikachu and the Poké Ball, despite best intentions, LEGO may have painted itself into a corner. Pikachu always needed to be in the initial line-up, but even in the character’s modern, lithe iteration (I remember when it was an absolute unit), Pikachu is still incredibly limited in its movement — small feet and arms, massive head, and chunky body. What’s more, at the $200 price point, the scale just doesn’t quite work. Element options are limited, so sacrifices must be made for the design, at the expense of familiarity.
The designers made a decent-enough attempt at the brief, and I still think it looks broadly fine in its finished form, but let’s be honest: it doesn’t look as good as it should. That’s not me saying it could look better at this scale — really, I think LEGO has done its best at this size — but you only need to compare it to the Mario Kart set, which is more or less the same brick count, and you can appreciate the art of the possible. I don’t think the Master Builders are necessarily to blame here — it’s tricky the source material.