Bricks and Minifigs CEO Went on Fox 5 News... And Made Everything Worse

Added: 2026-06-09

[00:00:00]Aean McNaf, the CEO of Bricks Minifigs, who we all know by now, was just on a Fox News interview revolving around the whole Bricks and Mini Fig situation, the whole scandal. And this was just a few days after Reckless Ben was actually interviewed by the same person over at Fox. So now Aean is being interviewed.

[00:00:20]And let's just say he doesn't do a great job. You know, this might be better than his first interview on AOB, but that's not saying much. So, with that being said, let's get into all the different claims he makes and the story he's trying to convey and why I think it just doesn't add up. And it also shows that Aean is kind of trying to be a little manipulative with what he's saying in this interview. So, first of all, he is asked why Bricks and Mini Figs didn't try to resolve this whole situation outside of court. You know, why not try to resolve it and not have to do this big lawsuit, right? And Aean basically says that Bricks Mini Figs has been trying to cooperate with Brian Mancel since, you know, a year ago, but he's not working with him. And he also offered Brian the rest of the LEGO collection that was left in the store, which was likely worth around $5 to $7,000, I've heard. And Brian didn't take that offer. And Brian probably didn't take that offer because it likely included something about him not being able to take further legal action against Bricks Manif figs. uh maybe an NDA to make him stop talking about it and all of that. So since Brian rejected that obviously crummy offer, now Aean can go on interviews like this and claim publicly that they made a fair offer to Brian and he rejected it. So he can basically claim, you know, Brian doesn't want to cooperate. He's being unreasonable and he's basically forcing our hand, which we all know that that offer is pretty dang crummy. I mean, $5 to $7,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to what Brian probably lost.

[00:01:56]So, that whole, you know, quote unquote fair offer, it's really just a good offer for Bricks and Minigs, not really for Brian. Because either way, whether he accepts it or rejects it, it helps Bricks and Mini Figs, at least a little bit, because now Aman can go on interviews and claim stuff like this, like Brian isn't ready to cooperate. So with that being said, he goes on to say that consignment deals aren't allowed or at least they're not recommended by corporate. You know, Aean and Bricks mini figs like whole statement revolving this is in the operations manual in the training consignment is argued against.

[00:02:30]It's not recommended. They're basically told not to do consignments in the training like don't do this, right? But the franchisee agreement says it's allowed or the franchise agreement says that consignment is allowed as we've all seen. So, to me, it kind of seems like Aean is saying one thing that's true while leaving out another thing that's true. That kind of changes the whole situation, right? He's saying corporate basically doesn't want their franchises to do consignment, but technically it is allowed in that franchise agreement, but he doesn't bring that up. He just talks about how it's, you know, not recommended, how they aren't supposed to be doing consignments and all of that.

[00:03:09]So Aean throughout this whole interview, his strategy that I've kind of seen from this is say a couple things that are true while leaving out crucial details like with the whole, you know, we offered Brian the rest of the Lego sets.

[00:03:21]He doesn't tell us exactly what that offer is. He just said we offered Brian the rest of the Lego in the store, which sounds like it could be a lot, right?

[00:03:29]But if it's only like $5,000, for example, and he's leaving that out, that's a crucial detail. if he's leaving out all the legal implications of that offer and how Brian probably couldn't take further legal action if he accepted it. That's a crucial detail being left out. So, he's definitely telling some white lies here, I'd have to say. And basically, the interview goes on and he's asked how the whole situation even happened, how Brian lost his collection, how everything came about. And he claims that Crystal, of course, underpaid Brian significantly for the portion of sets that she sold. and she claimed she sold roughly half of the collection before.

[00:04:05]So even if she did underpay Brian on the portion of the collection that she sold, there is still a big portion left of the collection after Crystal is out of the equation for the new store owners. But Aean wants to shift all the blame to Crystal seemingly. And he also says in the transition from, you know, Crystal to the new store owners since it was apparently such a messy transition and it was confusing. A lot of the collection was it was just lost, you know, it was just gone. The new store owners were just really confused. So, the collection was just lost in the scuffle. Makes sense, right?

[00:04:40]Not really. You know, it's kind of like, guys, focus on Crystal underpaying Brian, if that even happened. focus on Crystal underpaying Brian and just forget that we possibly sold a large portion of the collection and didn't pay Brian a penny for it. You know, focus on Crystal's wrongdoing, not our possible wrongdoing. I think that is really what's going on here. Especially considering there have been claims that the identifying stickers on all these sets that like there was like yellow stickers on all of Brian's sets in the store. Apparently they were all taken off by the new store owners Josh and Brandon which yeah I mean it really goes to show there is some hairlessness going on here. And I think in the Bricks and Minifigs blog from a few days ago it says gross negligence which I will say that is probably the most negative thing they've said about Josh and Brandon. But other than that, they haven't claimed really any wrongdoing for Josh and Brandon. Even in this interview, Aean doesn't say really any clear wrongdoing on Josh and Brandon's parts, the new store owners. He basically just says, "Yeah, in this scuffle, in the transition, everything was lost." He doesn't really, you know, talk about how careless they were for whatever reason, even though they've already parted ways with Josh and Brandon. Bricks and Minigs is a brand. So, like, why not be more clear about the wrongdoing anyway? And I don't know why he's still trying to defend them apparently. But that being said, at one point Aean is asked about the camera footage, the infamous camera footage where Kai from corporate says that corporate will take on any consignment deals when Crystal is being kicked out. So Aean is basically asked, "What's up with this camera footage?"

[00:06:15]You know, why did Kai from corporate, who is apparently pretty high up in the corporate ladder, why did he claim that corporate will take on consignment? And you know, instead of Aean completely lying like we've seen in the past, like saying that Kai is a low-level employee and he didn't have the authority to say something like that, which he definitely did from everything I've seen. Aean completely dodges the question. He doesn't even answer that or address that. All he really says about the camera footage is that corporate didn't know about the consignment deal until that camera footage took place. That's all he really says. He doesn't say anything about literally corporate basically saying that they'll take on consignment. Like I I don't know that that's just insane to me. And he just completely dodged the question. Um I will say he's getting better at PR. You know, dodging a question and trying to be sneaky with it is probably a little bit better than completely lying and embarrassing yourself. So Aean is definitely learning a bit of PR after that PR disaster on the ACOB interview.

[00:07:11]But clearly this isn't going to save anything. This isn't going to save the reputation of Bricks and Mini Figs and everyone can see through the demeanor and the story he's trying to tell here.

[00:07:22]But like I said earlier, what really surprises me is once again, you know, Aean doesn't claim there was much of or any wrongdoing on Josh and Brandon's part, the new store owners. Like during the whole interview, he doesn't name them. He doesn't say anything was really done wrong on their part. The closest that he comes to doing that is basically saying during the transition the new store owners were confused and bad stuff happened. He doesn't say the bad stuff happened because they were careless, which he does kind of say in the blog post. So, I'm surprised that it doesn't carry over to this interview. Honestly, it seems like Aean isn't always 100% on the same page with the statement that his company is putting out, which is definitely a red flag in my opinion. It just shows some unprofessionalism. And if there is one thing we can be sure of from this whole situation, it is that Bricks and Mini Figs isn't the most professional or by the book company. But with that being said, let me know in the comments down below what you guys think.