Brick by Brick: A Closer Look at Be@rbrick

By Penny Wong  •  03 Oct 2011 in Design

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Leave it to Japan’s MediCom Toy to create a cutesy bear that’s made for the guys (and girls who have outgrown their love for fluffy toy bears)! Be@rbrick is a variation of MediCom’s Kubrick design with nine points of articulation, including the torso, head, arms, hands, hips, and legs. The head and waist swivels while the arms and legs rotate on a ball joint.

Images Be@rbrick

The first Be@rbrick was released on 27 May 2001 as a free gift to visitors of the World Character Convention 12. Since then, Be@rbricks have been released in different sizes and materials. While most are made of plastic, there are figures that come in wood, felt, glow-in-the-dark plastic and even metal!

Be@rbrick has become so iconic that they often collaborate with world renowned artists and designers to create design schemes for their standard mold. Contributors include visual artist H.R. Giger, graffiti artist Stash, and also couture fashion designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Vivienne Westwood. Due to their limited production and the participation of artists, Be@rbricks are generally considereddesigner toys and therefore predominately collected by adults.

Besides that, each Be@rbrick series includes figures in different themes like Basic which featuresa solid-colour figure with a letter in a second colour on itschest and when all nine figures are placed in a row, they spell the word Be@rbrick (awww….). Jellybean is a solid colour figure molded intranslucentplastic while in the Flag series, each Be@rbick is painted as anation’sflag. Movie-themed Be@rbrick series include Horror wherethe figures are based upon well-knownhorror films and also SF(science fiction) which depicts Be@rbricks as science fiction characters like Darth Vader.

With legions of fans across the globe, Be@rbrick is set to be most sought after collectible toy since action figures!

Be@rbrick is available at Action City, The Gardens Mall and Tokyo Street, Pavilion KL. For more info, visit www.bearbrick.com.