Bear Brick Brink A Clash of Plastic and Imagination Once upon a Friday afternoon, between the grungy underbelly of street culture and the neat rows of a collector's shelf, I found myself in a peculiar existential debate with a Bearbrick. Yes, you read that right. A toy, shaped like a bear, looking like it dropped straight out of the coolest block party ever, was giving me a side-eye. Or maybe it was just the paint job—I could swear it had a twinkle of rebellion in its gloss. Bearbricks are the kind of collectibles that laugh in the face of conventional toy pedigrees. An art toy, they say. What does that even mean? It’s as if someone decided to slap together a teddy bear and a LEGO figure, then dipped it in paints concocted from the dreams of pop-art enthusiasts and urban graffiti aficionados. Each Bearbrick stands there, a silent storyteller, narrating tales of mischief and misadventure, all wrapped up in a five-point articulation. I spent a good half-hour in a standoff with one particularly brazen Bearbrick—its body a chaotic swirl of neon colors, like the aftermath of a rave nobody wanted to end. I found myself intrigued, thinking of it...