BE@RBRICK Andy Warhol "Brillo"

What You Are Getting

A complete two-figure set of Medicom Toy's BE@RBRICK Andy Warhol "Brillo" 100% & 400% — the original May 2020 release, not the later rerelease. The 400% (~11"/28 cm) and 100% (~2.75"/7 cm) figures are covered head-to-toe in an all-over print of the iconic Brillo Soap Pads commercial packaging — the literal subject of Warhol's 1964 sculpture series that arguably ended modernism and launched conceptual art as we know it. Each figure carries the printed Andy Warhol signature graphic with the artist's headshot icon, and the © Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts mark on the lower leg.

Critical provenance note: the back-of-box model code reads MEDB@000AW-Brillo100+400 with copyright ©2001–2020 Medicom Toy Corporation, definitively identifying this as the original 2020 production run — the more sought-after edition. The 2023+ rerelease carries different copyright dates and box graphics and trades at a lower premium on the secondary market. To informed collectors, the original is a different SKU.

Each figure was decorated using a hydro-dipping (water-transfer print) technique, which produces a slightly different pattern wrap on every single unit — meaning no two figures in this edition are visually identical. Fittingly given Warhol's themes around mass production, every collector receives a singular object. Both figures are brand-new and unopened, with embossed BE@RBRICK foot stamps verified and original Medicom Toy packaging intact.

Figure Details

About the Work — Warhol's "Brillo Boxes" (1964)

In April 1964, Andy Warhol filled the Stable Gallery in New York with stacks of what appeared to be ordinary commercial cartons of Brillo soap pads. They were not. The boxes were hand-built from plywood and silkscreen-printed by Warhol's studio to be visually indistinguishable from the cardboard originals (which had themselves been designed, in a fitting twist, by an Abstract Expressionist painter named James Harvey, who supported his fine-art practice with commercial illustration work).

The philosopher Arthur Danto famously argued in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981) that the Brillo Boxes ended a particular epoch of art history — they made plain that the difference between an artwork and a non-artwork could no longer be located in the object itself, because Warhol's box and the supermarket box were perceptually identical. The work became the foundational text of conceptual art. Original 1964 Brillo Boxes have sold at auction for over $3 million each.

Medicom Toy's BE@RBRICK release wraps the Brillo Box's red, white, and blue commercial graphics — "Brillo soap pads / with rust resister / shines aluminum fast / 24 Giant Size Pkgs." — around the iconic ursine silhouette, completing a 56-year loop: an object designed by an artist (Harvey) was claimed as art by another artist (Warhol), and is now re-issued as a designer toy. Few BE@RBRICK collaborations carry this depth of art-historical referent.

About the Hydro-Dip Finish

The decoration here is not a pad-printed or stickered application — it's a hydro-dipping (water-transfer) print process. A film carrying the Brillo graphics is floated on the surface of a water bath; the figure is dipped through the floating film, which adheres around the figure's complex curves. Because the film deforms slightly differently on each dip, every figure in the edition has a subtly unique pattern — different brand-mark placements, different fold lines, different rotational alignment. The Warhol-Bearbrick joke writes itself: a series of mass-produced objects in which no two are identical.

About Medicom Toy & BE@RBRICK

Founded in Tokyo in 1996, Medicom Toy launched the BE@RBRICK platform in 2001 — a stylized bear-form vinyl figure built as a deliberately blank canvas for collaboration. The Andy Warhol Foundation has licensed more than a dozen BE@RBRICK collaborations over the years, including Flowers, Marilyn Monroe, The Last Supper, Camo, Sticky Fingers (with the Rolling Stones), and the Warhol × Basquiat series. Within that family, "Brillo" is the canonical reference — drawn from the single Warhol sculpture series most often cited by art critics and philosophers.

The original May 2020 release sold out quickly through Medicom's primary distribution channels (Sideshow, Toy Tokyo, MediCom Toy Plus) and entered the secondary market at a premium. A rerelease followed in the 2022–2023 cycle with updated copyright dates and box graphics. For collectors prioritizing provenance, the 2020 original is the version to own.

What Is Included

• (1) BE@RBRICK Andy Warhol Brillo 400% — sealed in original Medicom Toy outer box
• (1) BE@RBRICK Andy Warhol Brillo 100% — sealed in original blister packaging
• Original Medicom Toy outer box styled as a Brillo soap pads carton — "24 Giant Size Pkgs · Shines Aluminum Fast" — with the Andy Warhol signature graphic and headshot icon printed on the front, and the original ©2001–2020 model code on the back
• Embossed authentication — BE@RBRICK + MEDICOM TOY foot stamps verified, ©/®/TM Andy Warhol Foundation mark on figure leg
• Gauntlet Gallery custom protective shipping packaging — double-boxed with rigid foam to protect the hydro-dip print surface

Shipping & Handling

Ships within 1 business day from San Francisco, California via UPS Ground (insured, signature on delivery). Double-boxed with rigid foam — the hydro-dipped print surface is glossy and vulnerable to scuff transfer in transit, so we pack accordingly.

International buyers welcome — please message before purchase for a customs-compliant quote. Returns accepted within 14 days if the item is materially not as described; buyer covers return shipping.