ADIDAS' THIRD MEGARIDE COLLAB IS A PIKACHU PAIR

ADIDAS' THIRD MEGARIDE COLLAB IS A PIKACHU PAIR

Pikachu is the sixth release adidas has put on the Megaride F50 tooling since the shoe's January debut, and only the third named collaborator to get one. The black and yellow colorway, style code KH6544, lands September 24, 2026, two days after a green and yellow Rayquaza pair opened the Pokemon collaboration on September 22. Both pairs ship through the adidas CONFIRMED app and select retailers, the same channel every Megaride collaboration has used since January.

Lightning Graphics Replace the Spider's Stability Cage

The Megaride F50 Spider cage, the ribbed overlay borrowed from adidas' mid 2000s football boot line, gets redrawn in yellow lightning bolts across a black synthetic upper. A small embroidered Pikachu sits near the heel, and yellow Three Stripes run the length of the midfoot in place of the usual white. The insole carries a co branded Pokemon footbed, the one piece of the shoe that changes materially between this pair and the Rayquaza colorway released two days earlier, since both share the same cage, tooling and last. Both retail at 200 dollars, 20 dollars over the Megaride F50's original 180 dollar inline price at its January launch. Neither pair swaps in leather or premium suede; this stays a synthetic build the way the F50 line always has, which keeps the retail number well under the 250 to 300 dollar range a Superstar collaboration in leather usually commands.

Three Collaborators, Six Releases, Eight Months

Willy Chavarria got the platform first, twice over: the Copa Mundial Megaride and the Willy Mega Low in June, then a pink Megaride AG XL in August that sold exclusively through willychavarria.com instead of adidas.com. Hellstar followed with the Megaride S2 on August 7, its fifth collaboration with adidas overall and the first built on Megaride tooling rather than the Superstar. Pokemon is the third name and the only one to get two colorways in the same week. Three collaborators and six releases on a shoe that only went in line on New Year's Day is an unusually fast build out for a platform still young enough that most shoppers have not seen the base colorway. adidas has run this exact play before with a different silhouette entirely; the adidas Samba spent seven decades collecting the same kind of guest list before it became shorthand for the whole brand.

The F50 Spider Was a Football Boot in 2004

Before it was a sneaker, the F50 Spider was a boot built for the pitch, its cage designed to lock a foot down through a sharp change of direction rather than to look good in a lookbook. Megaride itself is older still, an open tunnel midsole system adidas built for running shoes in the same decade, engineered to flex through the tunnels instead of compressing flat like standard EVA foam. adidas fused the two lineages into one shoe and put it out on New Year's Day 2026 in two colorways for 180 dollars, calling it an in line debut rather than a limited drop, the kind of framing usually reserved for a shoe adidas expects to sell for years. Every collaboration since has kept that tooling untouched and swapped only the upper and the story printed on top of it, which is the honest answer to whether a Pikachu graphic changes how the shoe rides. It does not.

Willy Chavarria's Pink Pair Skipped Adidas.com Entirely

Where the pink Willy Chavarria Megaride sold only through the designer's own site as a statement about who controls distribution, Pokemon's pair goes the opposite direction. It ships through adidas CONFIRMED, the brand's own release app, alongside ordinary retail partners, the widest channel any Megaride pair has used since January. A football boot cage and a running midsole built for an app queue and a mall storefront, instead of a designer's own storefront, says plainly which of the two collaborations is chasing volume and which was chasing scarcity. Hellstar's August release split the difference, one day exclusive to the brand before a worldwide adidas.com drop the next morning.

Pokemon's Chairs Made the Same Bet First

Two days before Pikachu's Megaride released, 100 Thieves and Modernica put four Pokemon characters on fiberglass shell chairs, part of the same 30th anniversary calendar driving the adidas collection. Both bets lean on a familiar character to sell a category the license had not touched before, chairs for Modernica, a football boot silhouette for adidas, and both landed inside the same week without either brand crowding the other's news cycle. On unchanged tooling with a synthetic upper, the Pikachu Megaride is not a construction upgrade over the inline pair; it is a license printed on a shoe that already earned its keep in January. Buy it for the graphic, not the ride, and expect a fourth name on this tooling before the year is out.