Gengar already has an adidas shoe in the Pokémon 30th anniversary run. The Adistar XLG 2.0 arrived carrying the ghost’s face across its sidewalls, a trick that only resolves when you look down at your own feet. What went almost unremarked is the second one. The Pokémon x adidas Adistar Control 5 in Purple, Energy Ink and Magic Lilac is live on adidas.com under style code KJ5611, and it hands the same character the shoe the XLG has spent three years imitating.
The Adistar name is older than most of the shoes wearing it now. adidas has been using it since 1976, when the Adistar 2000 track spike arrived with removable pegs and a shark skin outsole, and the label has since been hung on spikes, racing flats and stability trainers without much regard for lineage. The Adistar Control series is the part that matters here. It launched in 2004 as adidas’ entry in the motion control category, the shoes built for heavier runners and for feet that roll inward through the gait cycle. The Control 3 followed in 2007, and the Control 5 landed in 2008 with AdiPRENE+ in the forefoot and a 3D Torsion system through the midfoot.
That history is visible in the shoe rather than buried in a press release. The mesh is open because the thing had to breathe through a long run. The plastic cage panels along the sidewall are there because something had to hold a foot in place, not because a designer wanted a flat surface to hang a graphic on. The shape has aged strangely well as a result. What read as bulky orthopaedic hardware in 2008 now reads as close to the exact silhouette the current running revival keeps chasing, and adidas has not had to soften anything to make that true. Plenty of the noughties runners being brought back right now were drawn for looks first and are being sold back to us as performance heritage. This one has the receipts.
The Gengar treatment works with that rather than against it. The upper runs a deep purple open mesh with tonal cage panels over a Magic Lilac midsole that reads closer to grey in daylight. The tongue does the most work, a suede panel cut into a jagged crown that echoes the spines down Gengar’s back, with the Pokémon logotype stamped across it in gold foil. A Poké Ball jewel sits in the lacing, small enough that it does not announce itself across a room. Turn the shoe over and the outsole carries a salmon section through the arch, the one loud colour on an otherwise tonal pair. The shoes ship in a co-branded adidas and Pokémon box with a rubber Gengar charm and a sheet of printed tissue paper.
What is worth noticing is how much weight adidas has quietly put on this silhouette across the collection. Four Adistar Control 5s sit on adidas.com right now: this Gengar pair, a kids version of the same makeup under KK0680, and two Rayquaza colorways under KI8179 and KI8186. That is two characters and two size runs on a single silhouette.
The feeds spent August on the Superstars and on the XLG, and the runner adidas kept coming back to went largely uncovered. That says something about where the noughties running revival has actually landed. The Superstar is the shoe that sells a licence to people who already know the logo. The Adistar Control 5 is the one adidas trusts to carry separate character briefs without the design falling apart, and that is the harder thing for a silhouette to earn. It is also the cheaper lesson. A Superstar collaboration has to fight forty years of other Superstar collaborations for attention, while an Adistar Control 5 arrives with almost no collector memory attached, which means the character does the work and the shoe does not argue with it.
Retail is $130, which sits below both of this silhouette’s other recent outings. The Adistar XLG 2.0 Gengar carrying the same character was listed at $150, and Larry June’s Watermelon Smoothie Adistar Control 5 was listed at $160 earlier this month. The kids version of this Gengar makeup is $100. The spread matters because the Pokémon run has generally priced its licensed pairs close to the base silhouette rather than charging a collaboration premium, and a shoe shipping with a charm and custom packaging at this number holds that line rather than quietly abandoning it.
The Pokémon x adidas Adistar Control 5 Gengar is available now at adidas.com under style code KJ5611, in Purple, Energy Ink and Magic Lilac, for $130. The kids makeup of the same pair is KK0680 at $100, and the two Rayquaza colorways on this silhouette are KI8179 and KI8186. All four are listed on the adidas Pokémon collection page.
Where To Buy
Affiliate links open each retailer’s live search, so they always resolve. We may earn a commission.
Find This Pair
- eBaySizes Available
Live retailer stock, refreshed hourly. Stock and prices change fast. Some links are affiliate links and we may earn a commission.
