In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the viral Bricks & Minifigs Lego scandal that’s rocked the Mormon (LDS) community. What started as a $200k consignment dispute involving stolen Lego collections has spiraled into allegations of corporate theft, police corruption, small-town collusion, and a massive cultural reckoning.

Malcolm explores why this story is so damaging to Mormon PR, draws historical parallels to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and questions the Church’s response (or lack thereof). They discuss Mormon cultural tendencies, MLMs, in-group protection, and what this reveals about trusting religious communities when they hold local power.

A must-watch for anyone following the drama, interested in religious sociology, business ethics, or cultural fault lines.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be c- talking about the bricks and minifigures story.

Ooh ... but I want to take it in a different direction than a lot of people have gone on it, and I wanna g- talk about the meta discussion around it, and the extreme damage. And I’ve noticed that, that one, n- usually, the Mormon Church, and Mormons more broadly, are good at dealing with PR disasters. Like the, the, the way that they, you know, turned, The Book of Mormon into, like-

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: advertising and-

Simone Collins: Spinning that Broadway play by Matt Stone and Trey Parker into something where they would just put-

Malcolm Collins: Good PR. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: in a way, ... missionaries outside the theaters and be like, “Hey, you enjoyed the play. Why not try the real thing?” I mean, it’s great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and in one of the other episodes we did, even the Mormon tendency to come off like creepy pod people to outsiders, To some outsiders

they’ve been able to subvert that into, like, “Yeah, well, we’re just so wholesome,” right? You know, [00:01:00] like, “That’s, that’s why we’re coming off that way,” right? I mean, I still-

Simone Collins: Mormon is because they’re just that wholesome. Get over it ...

Speaker 3: I heard there’s warm pie

Simone Collins: from

Malcolm Collins: my, my cultural background think they come off like creepy pod people.

Speaker 26: I don’t remember him being that friendly. He’s obviously one of them. How

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And we have a whole episode if you’re interested on what causes that reaction, and I don’t think that Mormons have this emotional reaction, which is why they don’t realize that they trigger it so hard in other people.

Simone Collins: Well, not all S- Scots-Irish people have it. I, like, I don’t feel that. It, a lot of Mormons-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you don’t have the creepy...

But it’s clearly a common enough expression in humans that there’s multiple horror series just made- Yeah ... out of triggering this reaction. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Stan, take the drug, man, prove it to us. Okay.

Open the door. It is so much better. There’s no fear or pain. It’s beautiful. And you We’ll be beautiful. No [00:02:00] problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We’re gonna come in here and I’ll show you some f*****g pain!

Malcolm Collins: And, and here I’ll put the scenes from The Faculty or, you know, Children of the Corn or something. But anyway, in this instance it has fundamentally sh- like oh, and more broadly, so for people who know our channel and our stance, we’re generally pretty pro-Mormon.

We’re pro-Mormon for a few reasons. One is of all of the factions, like religious factions out there, they’re one of the most persistently pro-technology. And if people are like, “Why are they so pro-technology?” When contrasted with other religious groups, it’s because if you wanna be you know, status signal to other, you know, Orthodox Christians or to other Catholics, and you go to them and you’re like, “I’m doing it the traditional way, the way we did things in the 1850s,” you can look, like, extra cool.

If you’re a Mormon and you go like, “I’m doing things the way we did it in [00:03:00] the 1850s,” the other Mormons are gonna like, “Y- you are doing things super wrong, then.” And then if you’re like no, the, the 1920s.” Yeah, a lot has changed since then. I, I mean, 1950s? W- w- we’re that different then, but it’s still a pretty different beast.

It’s basically Mormonism evolves, even its belief system, so rapidly that there isn’t the desire, Because, like, if you go to the most of the, the most conservative Mormons, like if you’re talking about the ones who really try to preserve traditions they’re typically the schismatic cultists. This is like the are FLDS schismatic?

I don’t remember

Simone Collins: No. Oh, oh, you mean from the mainstream church? Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I followed the esoteric schematic,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yes. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, again, it makes them very pro-technology. Two, they’re a minority population and any minority population is [00:04:00] useful to partner with if they have something akin to Christian values because you can largely bet on them at least within federal regulation to promote laws that maintain maximum i- cultural sovereignty because they benefit from that cultural sovereignty.

Although they do try to impose their values on others in the regions where they are the majority, which is what we’re gonna get to in this video. And so not just like positionally are they a good group to ally with but they also have been on a tear in terms of good social media. I often point out that we went from a Mormon stereotype when I was growing up of a nerdy guy who knocks on your door and has like a pencil protector and a Book of Mormon, like asking to talk to you or something, right?

Speaker 43: Well, you two boys can just buck right off.

Speaker 44: Ma’am. You heard me. Take that Book of Mormon and shove it so far Up your righteous asses, that, and choke, you soul [00:05:00] soliciting pigfuckers.

Malcolm Collins: You know, this was the stereotype my generation grew up with when the word Mormon came up and something went through your head. For today’s youths, the stereotype, until maybe this event, and I think people are underplaying how big this is, was of a hot trad wife making muffins or something like that.

That was the stereotype Mormon in people’s heads for a while. And the reason, and we’ll get into like why people have had such a bafflingly stupid response to this it has made me much more wary of long-term alliances with Mormon communities more generally. Specifically, the response that we have seen to this from Mormons, ‘cause I went through like at least a dozen Mormon videos, at least a dozen Mormon reactions, and we’ll get into

I’m assuming if you’re watching this, you’re broadly aware of what happened. But broad strokes, a Mormon-owned business staffed primarily by Mormons blatantly stole an [00:06:00] old man’s sort of inheritance for his son $200,000 worth of Lego

Simone Collins: figures. Excuse me. It’s a little more complicated than that because, and this is something that you should appreciate as someone who’s been through this process a, an old man who had a very, very impressive Star Wars Lego collection provided it to a Bricks & Minifigs Lego store on consignment.

This means that ownership was transferred to them per the contract, and then the seller would receive the payout when those goods were sold. Problem is, that business was sold, and then the people who bought the business-

Malcolm Collins: No, it wasn’t sold. Sorry, you’re getting your facts wrong already.

Simone Collins: Really? I was told that it was sold

Malcolm Collins: no. So corporate illegally took it over. And they confiscated- Oh ... not just from this guy, but everything that this other business had, which is one of the reasons- Really?

Speaker 8: Basically, and we’ll get into this later, a non-Mormon couple made the mistake of getting into a business relationship with a Mormon company, Bricks & Minifigs, and the company essentially just [00:07:00] stole their franchise and all their assets and then gave it to a Mormon couple

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they ba- That’s

Simone Collins: super ... Well, then they, there should be a clear-cut case to be like, “This, my contract was rendered invalid.”

Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, but the other person ... Again, I don’t wanna get into the details yet. Okay ... I’m just putting the broad, base-

Simone Collins: Well, I just, I, I’m glad that I brought that up because I think a lot of people are under the same impression that I was

Malcolm Collins: No, this other case is explains I think why, because it’s baffling.

This is a company that makes 10 million a year. They have 300 locations. For them to cause such a blowup over $200,000 when they were very clearly in the wrong on this, and all of their paperwork makes it clear they were in the wrong on this which we’ll get into, a baffling decision for somebody who used to run a company.

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