Darling

But Elmo, after cheerfully surrendering his old toys, sees that the children who swapped toys with him are playing with his toys “wrong”! They’re imagining entirely different make believe scenarios! They’re pretending the football is a dinosaur egg instead of a rocket ship! Aaahhhhh!!!! And this is so distressing to poor Elmo that he does the unthinkable: He does swapsies-backsies and takes all his toys back!

This being Sesame Street, he learns that you can’t control how other people play pretend, but you can join in if you want to! And if you don’t want to, that’s ok, you can just play pretend your own way by yourself or with someone else who wants to play that way too. You can still be friends with people who play pretend differently than you (and aren’t being mean/harmful/etc, do not bad-faith-read this 🤨).

This story has everything.

The largest known star wars Lego collection being sold (estimated worth between $100,000 - $200,000) on consignment at a Bricks & Minifigs store

The american healthcare system sucking ass

A father and son' (Eric and Bryan Mansell)'s massive Lego collection being sold on consignment (presumably to pay for the old man's cancer treatment) which somehow VANISHED overnight due to

A seemingly hostile franchise takeover facilitated by Bricks & Minifigs corporate, in Salem, Oregon where the new franchisee owners threatened to call the cops if the old owners didn't vacate immediately instead of letting them take inventory and make sure everyone was made good

Crusading YouTuber Reckless Ben trying to get justice, uh...very recklessly (the video part 1)

Including throwing a lottery raffle for one of the star wars Lego sets that should have been at the store in order to turn this from a civil issue (business deal gone bad) to a "criminal crime," to force the cops to investigate the business stealing from the lottery.

New owners say they don't have the legos. Old owners said they were kicked out before they could complete inventory and make good on any remaining owed payout and ALSO that they don't have the legos. Corporate also says they don't have the legos.

Oh wait maybe they have SOME of the legos (new owners and corporate say.)

Corporate says franchisees aren't supposed to do consignment at all, meanwhile their contract says it's okay if they get corporate approval and corporate LITERALLY promoted and advertised the consignment of this collection

Local town police corruption dealing with Reckless Ben trying to get the legos back which was documented on their body cams and those videos got leaked. Also reckless Ben filmed some of their nonsense.

They arrested reckless Ben for being the Lego thief despite him being the one trying to figure out where the Legos were and not even having been in the state or town when the franchise takeover occurred. Also they refused to let him have someone serve legal papers to the new franchise owner.

The judge let him go, but then the police department put out ANOTHER arrest warrant for him and so he fled to Mexico

City hall meetings where residents are furious about their terrible police and the lawsuits they assume the city will have to pay for as a result

Possibly related to the Mormon church (the cops involved and new franchise owners are all Mormon?) some of this took place in American fork utah bc the franchise owners live there? Oh also corporate BAM is located in utah. Idk I've seen ex mormons mention "Mormon mafia energy." (Corrected bc I confused which parts were in American fork and which were in Salem oops)

Honestly probably some bad record keeping by former owners like it sounds like it was a little messy but not intentionally malicious or theft

CEO of BAM literally has an evil handlebar mustache that twirls up at the ends and says things like "and I acknowledge that sounds like a (legal) threat, and, well, it is." Or maybe that was the new franchise owner

So many legal threats from new owners and corporate honestly

Store location got permanently closed

Bricks & Minifigs corporate is now suing Reckless Ben and BRYAN MANSELL, GUY WHOSE LEGOS HE IS SELLING TO HELP PAY FOR HIS DAD'S MEDICAL TREATMENT for a civil RICO case as result of Reckless Ben's videos documenting his search to locate the missing "$200,000 worth of legos." Yeah. Criminal conspiracy. It's for like a million dollars or something insane. Rather than corporate just sending someone to just do the fucking inventory and return bryan's legos, they just kept going.

Reckless Ben is banned from continuing his investigation and attempt to reclaim the legos and putting out part 3

Also some people are insane and started threatening basically all the other bricks and minifigs stores even though it's not directly related, don't do that wtf.

Oh also they got the GoFundMe for the Mansells taken down to help pay for medical stuff presumably because they are literally cartoon fucking villains

Also bricks and minifigs tried to get a takedown on reckless ben's patreon as part of the temporary restraining order and the CEO OF PATREON TOLD THEM TO "STUFF IT." Like I'm crying literally the CEO went paraphrased: "yeah our lawyers looked at it and actually you can stuff it. If you don't like it, sue us about it. PATREON OUT." ✌🏻 I mean that's basically just blatantly "fuck you and fuck your mother," in corporate speak.

Like I'm sure the business case and probably the legal cases resulting from this entire debacle are going to be studied for years to come.

Kotaku

Quick recap vid

Do we know them coverage/explanation (the girlies are very afraid of getting sued again, hence the protective language)

This short video about the legal bits (re patreon response) was good

Fucking...coffeezilla made a video, who is basically THE financial scam / business crime / grift investigation YouTuber did a video about this since reckless ben's lawsuit means he can no longer talk about anything that happened. Like normally this guy covers like, ponzi schemes, Bitcoin/memecoin grifters, and failing banks. Like moistcritikal/penguinz0 covering this I expect, but coffeezilla also?? Lmao. The top comment on this video sums it up really well:

Coffee getting involved feels like the YouTube version of FBI taking over a local case

Also legal eagle covered it as well as The Emily show (major YouTube lawyers)

This is me lmao

You could not POSSIBLY handle public relations any WORSE than bricks & Minifigs corporate has done. At every possible turn it's like corporate asked: "how can we utterly destroy all customer trust in our franchises and our good reputation and also bury everyone else in lawsuits? Bonus points if we probably collapse under the loss of business due to everyone fucking hating our guts."

Even if Reckless Ben possibly did illegal or harassing things to try and locate these legos, even if he tapdanced on the line of defamation of the business or went too far in any of what he did — the entire public opinion is not going to care about that, because just give that man his legos back.

Just look for the legos. Do the research. Figure out how many sold. Return anything remaining and pay out anything he was owed even if it was debt from the previous franchisee. Take the loss if needed because lawsuits are expensive and make you look evil.

BUT NO THEY DIDNT DO ANY OF THAT

*

*

the woke left: young and fashionable. visible tattoos. often enjoys matcha, lavender flavoring, oat milk, and cold foam. pretty decent customers.

sweet old man: drinks very sweet iced lattes, pays in cash, puts all of his change in the tip jar. sometimes orders hot coffee and i get scared that his shaky old man hands will spill it and he'll get burned but that has not yet happened and god willing never shall.

evil old man: only wants drip coffee and declares it ridiculous that any other form of coffee exists. some variants only want americanos and these variants are even scarier. watch out.

sweet old woman: might need her daughter's help to order but is very bubbly and open to trying new things. compliments baristas freely and frequently.

evil old woman: does not want coffee and only wants sweet tea or soda. will not tip even if she spends three hours in the shop repeatedly asking baristas to fetch things for her.

errand husband: either stiltedly recites an order to you or shows you the order in their texts/notes app. needs to step out of line and make a phone call if you ask any follow-up questions.

grindset girlie: always wearing scrubs, an apron, and/or a name tag. orders the exact same thing every day and knows the exact change she'll need to pay for it. her regular order is both extremely caffeinated and extremely sweet.

#mamabear: is actively wrangling two to four children while ordering. order changes repeatedly because the children cannot decide if they want a muffin or a cookie or apple juice or chocolate milk etc. for some reason these women are always wearing an article of clothing or carrying some personalized item that says "mama" on it.

schoolchildren: band of two to eight adolescents hanging out after school. extremely indecisive but generally quite polite and tip well.

amnesiac in love: grown adult who needs their partner to tell them what they like. gets asked a question about their own preferences and turns to their partner to answer for them. generally acts like a shy child looking to their guardian for behavioral cues if you try to interact with them and only wants to talk to mommy i mean their wife.