GoKawiilToday I'm not a CNET journalist. Today I'm a Pokemon trainer.
Under a railway arch in London, just down the road from where the CNET UK team used to play Pokemon Go on our lunch breaks in 2016, I'm now holding my very own Eevee, preparing to take on Charmander in battle.
I'm still playing, of course, but this time with Lego. As the company announced at SXSW London on Tuesday, it's continuing to expand its Smart Play universe with the addition of a slew of recognizable characters from the world of Pokemon.
Lego is introducing 12 new sets -- two all-in-one playsets with a Smart Brick included, and ten smaller sets with the Smart Brick available separately. They range in price from $15 all the way up to $120 (full pricing and availability below), meaning there should be something available for Pokemon fans on any budget.
Lego debuted its Smart Brick back in January at CES 2026, marking the first major update to the fundamental Lego parts since the introduction of the Minifig in 1978. The Smart Brick is a standard 2 x 4 Lego brick, but with an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, chip inside. It also packs sensors, speakers and LEDs, allowing you to transform compatible Lego builds into entirely interactive toys.
Put a Smart Brick into one of the Pokemon, and a tag inside the model will spark the Brick to light up and make noises unique to each character. Lego has worked hand-in-hand with the Pokemon Company to ensure the traits of each creature is reflective of what you might know of them from elsewhere -- TV or games, for example.
In introducing its Smart Play system to the world, Lego has struck up partnerships with popular franchises to help familiarize children with the mechanics of the Smart Brick. At CES, the company showed off Star Wars Smart Play sets, and Pokemon is the second partnership to come to fruition.
This is the most expensive set at $120. Katie Collins/CNET
It was a no-brainer collaboration, explained Julia Goldin, the Lego Group's chief product and marketing officer, in a briefing ahead of unveiling the collection to the world -- after all there's an 80% crossover between Lego and Pokemon fandoms, with multigenerational interest in both.
All of the Pokemon Smart Play sets are interoperable -- making them appealing both to collectors and to children who want an extended universe of creatures to battle. That's how, after throwing a Pokeball to capture Pikachu in the long grass and driving Squirtle around in its car, I ended up in battle with Charmander.
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