Designer Toys, also called art toys, are toys and collectibles created by artists and designers that are either self-produced or made by small, independent toy companies, typically in very limited editions. Artists use a variety of materials, such as ABS plastic, vinyl, wood, metal, latex, plush, and resin. Creators often have backgrounds in graphic design, illustration, or fine art, but many accomplished toy artists are self-taught. The first Designer Toys appeared in the 1990s in Hong Kong and Japan. By the early 2000s, the majority of Designer Toys were based upon characters created by popular Lowbrow artists, forever linking the two movements. Bearbrick (rendered Be@rbrick) is a collectible toy designed and produced by the Japanese company MediCom Toy Incorporated. The name is derived from the fact that the figure is a cartoon-style representation of a bear and that it is a variation of MediCom's Kubrick design. The at sign in the place of the letter a is a visual device that is a part of the Bearbrick brand, and as such, a trademark of MediCom Toy. The figure is an anthropomorphized bear with an extremely simplified form and a pot belly. Each plastic figure features nine parts (widely referred to as tools in the toy industry): head, torso, hips, arms, hands, and legs; These nine tools allow eight points of articulation: swivel head, swivel waist, ball joint arms, swivel wrists, and ball joint legs. In the seventies, Jean-Michel Basquiat (New York, 1960–1988) created enigmatic graffiti in the city of New York along with his companion Al Diaz, signing them with the pseudonym SAMO©, an acronym for the expression ‘Same Old Shit’. In addition to graffiti, Basquiat painted postcards, his own clothes, doors and window frames, and large canvases. Today, this non-conformist and self-taught artist, coming out of lower Manhattan in a post-punk context, is one of the most representative artists of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1981, Rene Ricard published in the prestigious magazine Artforum the definitive article describing him as ‘The Radiant Child’. Success rapidly followed, and in 1982 he became the youngest artist participating in Documenta, Kassel. Alongside his raw and vibrant images, brief inscriptions on his canvases point to his interest in music, cinema, television and literature. His paintings combine visual strength with fury and rage. Although brought up in middle-class Brooklyn, the origins of this African-American artist go back to Haitian and Puerto Rican culture. Associating with well-known artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, he died of a drug overdose aged just twenty-seven years. His first solo exhibition took place in 1982 at the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York’s SoHo. That same year, he participated in Documenta, Kassel. He continued to exhibit widely until his death, since when there have been numerous group and solo exhibitions. Among the latter are the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1992), Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (2005), Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art (2006), Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2010), Barbican Centre, London (2017) and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2018), among others. Collections include the Gagosian Gallery, New York; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Vancouver Art Gallery, ”la Caixa”, Barcelona; MOCA, Los Angeles; MoMA. New York; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; and MACBA, Barcelona.