Pikachu has already taken two Superstars and a Pro Model in adidas’ Pokémon capsule, all shoes a casual buyer can name on sight. The fourth pair is a Megaride F50, a shape most people could not pick out of a lineup. It arrived September 24 with a lightning graphic that starts at the character’s cheek pouches on the heel and travels the full length of the upper. It is the loudest shoe in the collection sitting on the least familiar silhouette.
The Megaride is not a new idea dressed up as a heritage one. adidas pulled it out of its early-2000s running line and brought it back for the cushioning system it is named after, a segmented pod setup the brand’s own press materials call exaggerated. That is an unusual admission from a brand, and it is accurate. The revival did not arrive as a single shoe either. When Willy Chavarria’s cream Megaride AG landed on January 30, 2026, it read as a designer one-off, and eight months later adidas had built five more products on the name. The family now splits into the AG, the S2 and the F50, each a different answer to how much shoe the cushioning wants to be wrapped in. What adidas has never done is push the Megaride on its own merits. It hands it to collaborators. Chavarria got it first, Coca-Cola got an F50, and now Pokémon has one. The Megaride F50 is the silhouette adidas reaches for when it needs volume and a blank surface, and a licensing partner with thirty years of visual shorthand behind it is exactly the tenant it was built for.
The upper grades from graphite at the collar down to deep gold across the toe, with the bolts rendered as a three-dimensional haptic print rather than a flat graphic. adidas describes them as emerging from Pikachu’s cheek pouches, and the product photography backs the description up. A small enamel Pikachu head sits on each heel tab with two bolts firing out sideways across the panel. The Three Stripes are picked out in flat yellow across the forefoot and are the only element on the shoe behaving like ordinary adidas branding. Underfoot, the cushioning pods glow yellow through a smoked cage, which sells the electricity idea better than the print above it does. adidas also specifies a transparent TPU heel plate, Pokémon-branded laces and two interchangeable sock liners. Both liners photograph yellow, one carrying a Trefoil and the other a Pokémon wordmark, so the swap is a branding choice rather than a comfort one. The shoebox gets a Master Ball worked into its graphic, which is the kind of packaging detail that matters more on resale than it does on foot.
Two things here are worth watching. The first is the casting. Pikachu is the safest asset Pokémon owns and the Superstar is the safest shoe adidas owns, so pairing them is the obvious move, and adidas already made it twice. Sending the same character out on a silhouette buyers cannot name is a bet that the character carries the shoe rather than the other way around. If it lands, adidas gets a Megaride F50 in front of an audience that would never have looked at one. The second is where it can actually be bought. adidas’ US site returns nothing for this style code, and the US Pokémon landing page carries the Superstars, the Adistar Control 5, a Samba OG and a ZX 8000 without a Megaride F50 anywhere on it. The shoe is live on adidas’ UK store. Whether that is sell-through, a staggered rollout or a straight region split, the pair that drew the most coverage is the one American buyers currently cannot get from adidas directly.
adidas’ UK store lists it at £170. The brand has published no US price, and Sneaker Bar Detroit is the only outlet carrying one, at $200, which stays unconfirmed until adidas posts it. For scale, a general release Megaride F50 sits at $180 on adidas.com US right now, so a $200 collaboration would be a twenty dollar premium covering the haptic print, the heel plate, the second sock liner and the box. Measured against what licensed capsules have been asking in 2026, that is restrained. The Pokémon Samba OG in the same collection runs $110, which says plenty about where adidas thinks the volume is.
The Pokémon x adidas Megaride F50 “Pikachu” released September 24, 2026 in Core Black / Carbon / Cloud White under style code KH6544. adidas lists the launch through the CONFIRMED app, adidas.com and select retailers. It is live now on adidas UK at £170, with nothing returned for the style code on adidas US at the time of writing. A second Pokémon Megaride F50 in green sits alongside it on the UK site, so the shape is getting more than one turn before the capsule is done.
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