Finally was able to open this #LEGO set and start it a few days ago. Still on bag 1 but really happy with how it's coming along so far 😂🧱
Yes, I know the gage peace is where a macaroon is supposed to go... I blame it on the AI tool I used for color sorting, it's not good with printed peaces.
LEGO Friends HeartLake City Cafe set 42618) #LEGO #LEGOFriends #HeartlakeCityCafe #bakery #cute #brickbybrick #blindAFOL #AFOL 👩🏻🦯
Welcome to Miami, Austin!
🔗 https://miamiredhawks.com/news/2026/6/15/miami-hockey-announces-addition-of-austin-baker
Otherwise, we go back to the days of Ortiz and Masek conning old ladies out of their Lego collections for peanuts in the dark of night, because Craigslist was the closest thing to an after-sale market.
That was in 2009, the same year that Søren Torp Laursen was featured in a piece in the New York Times, discussing how licenses were the primary driver of Usian sales, the Group being "definitely more commercially oriented", as Mads Nipper talked of "delivering twice the return on sales of any competitor," during a recession, no less.
That all said, see Zackary Smigel for a counterargument: namely, that, like sealed Pokémon booster packs, Lego sets could readily slot into the existing app-driven online thrift-antique-retail arbitrage complex, sold alongside second-hand Jordans and radioactive dishware, but mostly unavailable in brick-and-mortar stores that serve more as clearinghouses for dross than third places of a thriving community.
2/2
Steven Song Talks has a compelling argument for why Lego Group has a vested interest in BAM surviving this, thus not coming into the dispute on the side of customers. Namely, that if BAM were to stop operating, the resale market (and thus collectible prices) would collapse, which would eviscerate franchise-branded sales of original sets.
Since their patent expired, Lego's business model has morphed to that of selling commodities as investments. If the promise of appreciation of discontinued sets evaporates, even if only just in Usia, that would, Steven argues, tank Lego Group's sales. (Usia easily accounts for close to half of revenue on new Lego, over half in some recent quarters.)
Which is all to say, Lego's demure excuse that this is "a legal matter" is deflection. Their whole business model depends on the status quo ante.
1/2
From the rote sales pitch to attendees of an aglithacultural conference:
"To protect what? This big pot of gold you're trying to build. But my advice to you is put a lid on the gold. Build a wall and then move the darn thing so that nobody knows."
The gold here, at a superficial level, is exchange-value, the business model being one of "asset protection". At a deeper level, it's power. Not the power of the Tiny, but the autohagiographic power of the thrice-pure.
The gold is not what "asset protection" protects. It protects the choice that "has made all the difference". It protects the ego-value of being a good person, as evidenced by one's vested pot of gold.
The ego-value of a business, its brand, is nothing, for a business is nothing but a veil. The ego-value of perquisitive classposture is embodied, where the parasocial pareidolia of the business entity is pure utility. The company has no autohagiography to protect. It has no assets. It only shields egos.
2/2
Importantly, none of the persons involved in this Lego saga are members of the Tiny, which is to say the second estate. (Nor again, despite the cavalier discussion of arrest as something the Utah crew, as private citizens, are "ready and prepared" to enact through armed enforcement, are they members of the fifth estate.)
Their subversion of cognitive parasociality, through veil-as-commodity, is entirely a matter of quisitiarchy. It is a service, first sold as a kit, then as "heavy lifting", which the family central to this saga provides to dentists and other medical professionals, not any numismatic nomenklatura.
To wit, what "Legally Mine", the legal identity with no fixed legal entity, which the McNeff brothers grew up in the shadow of, promises... is that its clients will get to keep their perquisites, their perks, by obfuscating the receipts.
1/2
One aspect of the commentary on the choices of made on the franchisor side of the Lego dispute is the surprise that they're destroying a brand, destroying a business, over what, given presumed revenues, is chump change.
This reveals how social chuncking, which is to say cognitive parasociality, operates to confound those observing this unfolding conflict. What few are grappling with is that the members of the McNeff family do not relate to brands as social entities, this for the reason that they do not relate to any business as a discrete entity, as such.
Per an ongoing investigation by BJ Courville, those involved relate to corporate registrations as shields, as veils, as records that fluidly change from one name to another, sometimes on an annual basis, alongside other such filings that take on each the other's discarded husk of a name through d/b/as or as newly founded companies, their records clean, any history associated with those names becoming folklore that preexists their operational documents.
Those aghast that a CEO would destroy his own business, destroy the brand of that business, are thinking of that business as a matter of exchange-value and ego-value, of the business. Where the McNeffs relate to any business as pure use-value. The business itself, as a thing registered in a state database, being a commodity, indeed the only commodity of concern, fungible and disposable.
"[O]ver the last 5 years, factories from one specific Chinese province crashed diamond prices by over 90%. They completely gutted a 100-year-old monopoly whose entire business model was telling you the story that their product holds its value forever.
"And LEGO has spent the last 20 years telling you the exact same story. There are literal academic studies, I'm not joking, that say Legos are a better investment than gold.…
"Lego is not priced like a toy. It's priced like an asset. And that's not by accident. See, there's a specific schedule. When Lego retailers slap retiring soon on the box, that marks the moment that production has ended.
"[I]t's that same moment that the prices on the aftermarket start to go up. That's why people have garages full of Lego boxes that they'll never open. Spreadsheets tracking appreciation. Websites publishing price charts for these plastic toys like it's the stock market."
~ Steven Song Talks
Perquisitive arbitrage.
This, too, is rentier society.
Excited to welcome Branko Vukas to the RedHawks!
🔗 https://miamiredhawks.com/news/2026/6/11/miami-hockey-announces-addition-of-branko-vukas
Morgan Pimentel
Miami Hockey 🤖
sport of sacred spherical cows