Pokémon x adidas Samba OG Puts Mewtwo on the Tongue and Never Says His Name

adidas has spent this Pokémon capsule building shoes around specific characters and then declining to tell anyone which character it is. The Samba OG is the clearest case yet. There is a face drawn on the tongue label, a Poké Ball clipped to the laces and an eyelet arrangement no Samba has ever used, and adidas’ own product page describes all of it as bold storytelling without naming a single Pokémon anywhere on the listing.

The Samba is the shoe adidas sells more of than any other, and its history is the one that gets collapsed most often. adidas dates the original to 1950 and named it for how it handled icy pitches, but the shoe anyone actually wears is the 1972 redesign, the one that introduced the three-zone profile outsole. Two different shoes, twenty-two years apart, filed under one name. Decades of being a plain football trainer is also what makes the Samba a strange place to put a licensing deal. Its whole value is that it disappears under whatever is above it, and a shoe that disappears is a poor canvas for a cartoon. Which is why the interesting decision here is one adidas did not make. It did not put the Pokémon on the outside. Walk past this pair and it reads as a pale lilac Samba with tonal Three Stripes and a translucent outsole. Every piece of the license is tucked where the wearer sees it and a stranger does not.

The upper is leather and coated leather in Ice Lavender, with a sheen adidas calls out in its own copy, and a glossy violet heel tab that is the only high-contrast element on the shoe. The collar is lined in purple terry. On the tongue label sits a line drawing of Mewtwo’s head above a tonal Pokémon logotype, both pressed into the same lilac as the upper, so the graphic reads as texture until it is looked at straight on. A small enamel Poké Ball hangs off the laces at the throat, which adidas lists in its features as a lace jewel. The detail doing the real work is the eyestay. Rather than a standard column of eyelets, the shoe carries a cluster of three holes set off on their own, and Sneaker Bar Detroit reads that as a nod to Mewtwo’s three-fingered hands. adidas does not explain it. The sockliners carry Trefoil and Pokémon branding, and the pair ships in an adidas x Pokémon box with a printed wrap and the charm packed separately.

This is the third time in one capsule that adidas has built a shoe around a named character and then shipped it under a product name that is only the silhouette. The Superstar “Pikachu” is not called a Superstar on its own box. The pair adidas lists as a Superstar II Mid is a Pro Model by any reasonable reading. Now a Samba arrives with Mewtwo on the tongue under the name adidas Pokémon Samba OG Shoes. Whatever the licensing logic, the effect on a buyer is that the shoe is undiscoverable by the one thing that makes it worth buying. Search adidas.com for Mewtwo and six results come back, all of them Little League jerseys and socks. The naming work gets pushed onto resellers and blogs instead, which is an odd outcome for a brand that has just rented thirty years of somebody else’s equity. Mewtwo also has a ZX 8000 and a Handball Spezial in this collection, so the pattern is not a one-off.

adidas.com lists the Pokémon Samba OG at $110. A general release Samba OG on the same site is $100, so the license, the shimmer leather, the terry lining, the enamel charm and the custom packaging together add ten dollars. Across the capsule the footwear runs from $100 for an Adistar Control 5 up to $180 for the Superstar II Mid and the Superstar Vintage, and the Samba carries the tightest premium in the range over its own general release. adidas priced the shoe that will actually move like the shoe it is, which is the right call and a rarer one in licensed footwear than it should be.

The Pokémon x adidas Samba OG released September 22, 2026 in Ice Lavender / Ice Lavender / Violet Fusion under style code KI8220, priced at $110. It is live now at adidas.com and across the wider Pokémon collection page, with further styles from the capsule still rolling out. The Megaride F50 “Pikachu” from the same collection followed on September 24.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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