Brick (term)

I left my arms back at the office!

Brick is a fan term, usually derogatory, used to describe a Transformers toy that has particularly low articulation. Most examples of bricks tend to be smaller toys that have been given limited articulation to keep costs down. The Throttlebots and the Duocons are prime examples. Some larger toys, however, can also be described as bricks, such as Powermaster Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus.

Due to the limitations of the toy technology of the time, bricks are usually molds originating in Generations 1 and 2 (some older toys were bricks not just to keep costs down, but to make the toy more stable for safety reasons); however, some more modern toys such as Armada Super Base Optimus Prime and Overload have earned the same description. When modern toys are bricks, it is usually because a gimmick of some sort makes it difficult to add more articulation or because they are made for very small children (such as the Cyber Slammers and Rescue Bots).

Bricks have seen a resurgence in more recent years particularly in the gimmick-based assortments of lines such as Age of Extinction, Robots in Disguise and The Last Knight, partially as a result of cost-saving measures on behalf of Hasbro.