Tropes/Screwed by the Lawyers/ArgosyMTM Group

ArgosyMTM Group under Ellen Peck has become notorious for combining this trope, Executive Meddling, and Screwed by the Network in an attempt to make sure all subsidiaries conform to Ellen’s expectations, which includes not investing in blockchain or NFT ventures. No matter how you feel on NFTs or crypto, it’s kinda sad, because ArgosyMTM used to be known for giving creators and subsidiaries autonomy, and Ellen is a quite talented creator herself, and now, all they’re doing is screwing subsidiaries left and right because New Media Are Evil. Ellen is also quite fond of reassigning the executives who tried getting into NFTs to other, usually less-desirable, units of the company. This happens so often, that the Argosy fandom has a term for this: the “Wrath of Ellen”. In some cases, you can find the intended NFT artwork in the ArgosyMTM Artbook site, but it’s usually described simply as “cancelled [X] project” (for example, “cancelled Dr. Seuss project” or “cancelled Care Bears project”).

Advertising

 * The NBC station in Seattle, KING channel 5, is not owned by Argosy, but it occupies the same building as Argosy HQ, and they share several of the same technical staff. Many people noticed that the many, many crypto-related commercials aired nationally on NBC during Super Bowl LVI, were replaced by a “Technical Difficulties” screen in Seattle. Given Ellen’s feelings towards crypto advertising in sports, a lot of people put two and two together, and figured out that Ellen was bossing around technicians at a TV station she doesn’t even own. This was followed shortly by talks for ArgosyMTM to merge with Tegna, the company that does own the station.

Comic Books

 * Archie Comics tried doing an NFT collection in 2022. Archie Comics is owned by ArgosyMTM. Put two and two together… The intended partner PalmNFT got a pretty nasty C&D letter, as is becoming AMTM tradition.

Eastern Animation

 * Calvin Kim, creator of Canimals and Pucca, also got this. He was fired from Voozclub, the company he founded (now an unit of the Argosy conglomerate), after posting a tweet hinting at Canimals NFTs. And Argosy legally owns the rights to everything he made. Ouch.

Literature

 * In a blend of this and Screwed by the Network, Seussibles (a planned official Dr. Seuss NFT app) was screwed over less than a day after being announced, due to Dr. Seuss Enterprises happening to be owned by ArgosyMTM Group, a company which is run by Ellen Peck, a known blockchain and NFT skeptic. Dapper Labs and Tibles, the intended NFT partners, were both served Cease-and-Desist notices. To add insult to injury, a day later, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, along with Cloudco Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company (other subsidiaries which “coincidentally” both had NFT plans that Ellen had screwed over), were placed into the nondescript “ArgosyMTM Classics” division, headed by Ms. Ellen Peck herself, and former Seuss head Susan Brandt (who had the idea for Seussibles in the first place) was reportedly demoted to a role within The Asylum, Argosy’s Z-movie and Mockbuster division.

Music

 * Plans for Crazy Frog NFTs were also screwed over by ArgosyMTM management, though this was a justified trope somewhat, due to massive internet backlash towards the NFT plans. Similarly to what happened with the Seussibles incident, the intended partner, crypto startup Metabeats, received a cease-and-desist letter once the plans had been cancelled, in this case signed by Ellen Peck herself. The Metabeats website disappeared soon after.

Puppet Shows

 * Another victim of Ellen Peck: the Jim Henson Company, which had been acquired by ArgosyMTM in 2015, but retained its autonomy, planned to release NFTs in collaboration with a company called VeVe, and even had a press release out in early December 2021. Ellen found out, and the deal was cancelled, with VeVe receiving a C&D letter as usual. Later that month, the Henson division was merged with the Cloudco and Dr. Seuss divisions, as well as the Archie and Harvey divisions, to form “ArgosyMTM Classics”, which is really just a dumping ground for subsidiaries which Ellen “embraced, extended, and extinguished”. Henson “consumer products” exec, Melissa Segal, was re-assigned to a “design consultant” for Garbage Pail Kids.

Sports

 * The Seattle Kraken NHL expansion team wanted to release NFTs to reveal the team’s mascot. The operative word is “wanted”, because the team happened to be owned by ArgosyMTM Group. The deal with blockchain startup Orange Comet was terminated once Ellen found out, and as usual, said startup received a C&D letter.

Toys

 * One of the first of many examples of Ellen Peck and her lawyers screwing ArgosyMTM subsidiaries over due to her hate for NFTs, was in September 2021, when she screwed a LOL Surprise NFT project by the MGA Entertainment subsidiary in partnership with startup Ioconic, which (in what became a tradition at ArgosyMTM) received a cease-and-desist letter once the project was cancelled. MGA was unceremoniously merged with 3 other Argosy subsidiaries (Spin Master, Topps, and Jellycat) to create ArgosyMTM Toys later that month. Isaac Larian, the CEO of the MGA unit, was reassigned to writing for eBaum’s World, of all the things owned by Argosy. (Ellen seems to like placing subsidiary executives who tried getting into NFTs, into unfavourable positions within the company.)
 * Topps tried to dance around the ArgosyMTM censors by referring to their NFTs as “digital collectibles”, possibly to avoid being detected by Ellen’s ‘bots, but still got screwed over nonetheless in April 2022. Just before their livestreamed “DigiCon”. Ouch. This proves that the left hand of ArgosyMTM always knows what the right hand is doing.
 * AMTM claimed another victim in 2022. Sanrio was acquired in 2019, but was allowed to operate mostly-autonomously. That is, until they tried doing Hello Kitty NFTs in collaboration with RECUR, whose Nickelodeon NFTs have been referred to by Ellen as “child grooming”. RECUR got a really nasty cease-and-desist, and Sanrio became part of ArgosyMTM Classics.

Video Games

 * Due to ArgosyMTM Interactive having a vast network of subsidiary studios, they aren’t immune to this, either. DevSisters and ZeptoLab are both smaller studios within ArgosyMTM Interactive. They had blockchain-related plans that were screwed over due to not only Ellen Peck, but also Jihee Nam, the head of that unit, who (as with a disturbing majority of Argosy figures, including all the living Aaron Show voice actors and writing crew) shares Ellen’s views on crypto/blockchain/NFTs.
 * DevSisters (the Korean studio of AMI) was actually screwed twice, both times in late 2021; the first project to be screwed was plans for Cookie Run NFTs, and the second to be screwed was a job listing for a “Blockchain Engineer”. The first screwing was by Ellen herself in a tweet, where she also told Argosy fans to ping Jihee Nam instead of her for Interactive projects; the second screwing was by Jihee Nam, who tweeted: “When Ellen says “no crypto”, she doesn’t mean “delay the crypto”: she means NO. CRYPTO. The job listing has been removed. This is why we keep tabs on our satellite studios.”
 * In another incident involving Jihee Nam, ZeptoLab (known for Cut The Rope) was forced to cancel an NFT collection after Argosy fans on Twitter mass-pinged Jihee and Ellen. Jihee said “This isn’t happening. I’m in charge of AMTMI, so I make the rules.”; after which ZeptoLab deleted the tweet (under pressure from their corporate overlords). You can find the intended NFT art on the Artbook, however. The OpenSea page where it was originally posted remained open for a while before receiving a DMCA notice from “ArgosyMTM Group Inc.”, or someone claiming to represent Argosy.
 * Team17 (the makers of the Worms games) zig-zagged this. After they announced the NFT collection “MetaWorms”, several other game studios (many of which Argosy owned stakes in) cut ties with them via Twitter. Argosy tried (and failed) to buy Team17 before; however, it seems like even with studios they don’t own, they can (at least try to) influence their decisions.
 * Another screwage occurred in 2022, when after The Tetris Company registered a trademark for NFT-related plans, people figured out it was owned by Argosy, and started mass-pinging Jihee, leading to a trademark cancellation. Not even trademark registrations are safe from the memetic “Wrath”.

Web Video

 * The “SkyCorp Home Video” ARG series is an (uncredited) Argosy New Media production, and yes, this is important. While not confirmed, it seems like the “SkyCorp Home Living Collection” may have been created to sell NFTs, which is evidenced by the ArgosyMTM Artbook links in each video’s description, the fact that Argosy has dumped planned subsidiary NFT collaborations into the Artbook, and that a lot of the SkyCorp stuff in the Artbook could pass as legitimate NFT artworks. The producers probably knew that Ellen wouldn’t let them do NFTs, and therefore, these videos seem to exist only to link to the Artbook. One of the Argosy fans in the comments joked that “Ellen really wants you to see her Aaron Show concept art, and will direct you to it by any means possible, up to and including an elaborate ARG”.
 * ArgosyMTM Licensing also owns the rights to Dumb Ways To Die (through their Australian unit), and as is the tradition with ArgosyMTM subsidiaries, they tried doing an NFT project “Beans NFTs”… which Twitter noticed, leading to somebody pointing out Argosy technically owned the rights, leading to mass-pinging of Ellen Peck and Jihee Nam, leading to the inevitable “Wrath of Ellen”. The .io website for the NFT collection remained up for a while, before being redirected to a generic ArgosyMTM page saying: “This project has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Some of the planned NFT art ended up getting dumped into the Artbook.

Western Animation

 * Another victim of Ellen Peck’s hate towards crypto and the slow end of any and all autonomy within ArgosyMTM subsidiaries, plans for Care Bears NFTs in partnership with crypto startup RECUR got scuttled once an Argosy fan/NFT critic noticed Care Bears parent Cloudco was owned by AMTM, and pinged Ellen Peck’s Twitter account. RECUR reportedly received two C&D’s; one telling them to stop using the Care Bears IP, and one forbidding them from making any partnerships with anything even remotely connected to ArgosyMTM IPs. Cloudco was swiftly merged into the vaguely-defined “ArgosyMTM Classics” subsidiary, run at arm’s-length from corporate, ensuring everything had to cater to Ellen’s whim. The former Cloudco licensing head, Robert Prinzo, was reportedly reassigned to the “Alternative” film division (e.g. Troma and aforementioned Asylum).
 * Immediately after ArgosyMTM acquired Banijay, a plan for Mr. Bean: The Animated Series NFTs was put on the backburner. FOMO Labs, the intended partner, got C&D’d as usual. The stated reason Argosy acquired Banijay was to have more content available for a planned MTM broadcast television network. Argosy is now trying to go after Imagine Entertainment, which allegedly had NFTs in the works as well…
 * Fleischer Studios, owners of Betty Boop, got absorbed by AMTM in 2021. They tried to do a Betty Boop NFT collection “Boop and Frens” in 2022, which resulted in disputes with AMTM upper-management, and, inevitably, to the project being screwed over.
 * Now, AMTM is in talks to buy out FOX Entertainment. FOX Entertainment has a “Web3” subsidiary known as “Blockchain Creative Labs”, which Ellen has been quite critical of when they tried to sell Gumby NFTs. This means the future of Krapopolis, a project by the creator of Rick and Morty linked directly to a planned NFT project, is highly uncertain.

Real Life

 * The ArgosyMTM Labs unit, which used to be a space for experimental projects, has started doing this in general, due to Ellen taking more control. Wombo, Bluestacks, and several others, among many parts of ArgosyMTM Labs, have had NFT/blockchain/Web3 plans scuttled due to Executive Meddling from the higher-ups’ higher-ups (read: people trained as television animators, and with little-to-no knowledge of anything outside of television animation), in at least some cases due to Internet Backdraft leading to someone pointing out ArgosyMTM owned the company, which in turn resulted in Argosy/Aaron Show/classic MTM live-action/Warrior Cats Film of the Book/anything owned by AMTM fans mass-pinging Ellen Peck.
 * One particularly egregious example would be ArgosyMTM Retail, which was originally a Labs project run by Tai Lopez (no relation to Paul Lopez), under the name “Retail Ecommerce Ventures” (REV), dedicated to reviving dead and struggling retail brands, like Linens-n-Things, Pier 1, and RadioShack, as online stores by buying up the branding intellectual property rights. However, Lopez decided to use the RadioShack brand name for a crypto exchange… right in the middle of one of Ellen’s Twitter rants, where she was bragging about blacklisting a bunch of voice actors from Argosy for getting involved in “environmentally-friendly” NFTs (using a blacklist originally created during the start of the MeToo movement, and intended for sexual abusers). Ellen caught wind pretty quickly, and announced that REV would “graduate” Labs as the ArgosyMTM Retail unit… with Tai Lopez reassigned to writing articles for the revived Gawker (a then-recent acquisition). What’s sad is that “graduating” Labs used to be a honour, reserved for teams which had made something worthy of being sold commercially, like the people behind M.U.G.E.N. Some Argosy fans joked (referring to the conspiracy theory that Ellen Peck got Paul Lopez killed) that “this isn’t the first time Ellen offed someone named Lopez”.
 * Apparently, there is evidence of Ellen Peck (or someone at Argosy) using a bot to find any domains containing the word “coin” registered to ArgosyMTM Labs, and cancel the domain registrations, to make it so that she can screw Labs projects trying to get into crypto, without even knowing about them in the first place. “ToonCoin” was a victim of this; note that it was created by the people behind the ToonMe app, which is yet another project of Argosy Labs. As a result, the crypto community is extremely wary of coins connected to Argosy Labs projects, because Ellen can make these disappear at any time.
 * Ellen managed to screw over Bluestacks (another Labs unit), because they allegedly used popular Discord bots to advertise a “play-to-earn” game called “Piggy Gold”, which caused mass panic on Twitter. “Piggy Gold” no longer exists, of course, thanks to ArgosyMTM’s tradition of shutting down any subsidiary projects involving crypto.
 * What’s especially scary, is that one thing among the vast portfolio of Argosy subsidiaries is Cogent, acquired in 2009, which is not only an important “Tier 1 Network” for the whole Internet, but also controls a root name server, meaning that theoretically, in a world without Net Neutrality, Ellen and her crew could just block all traffic to crypto exchanges, and nothing could be done about it. Ellen has said she supports Net Neutrality, but she’s also in favour of throttling bandwidth to crypto transactions, which, despite crypto’s many flaws, is the exact opposite of net neutrality. Oh, and Argosy acquired Hurricane Electric, which controls much of the next-generation IPv6 infrastructure, in 2018.
 * In late 2021, Tucows (the old download site, now a massive domain registrar, second only to GoDaddy) was acquired by Cogent, which is owned by Argosy. Quickly followed by several crypto or NFT sites mysteriously losing their domain registrations.
 * In 2022, Argosy quietly acquired Generation XYZ and Afilias, the people behind the .xyz and .io TLDs (top-level domain names, like .com and .org), both of which were highly popular with crypto projects. Followed by sudden unannounced TOS changes and domain cancellations of anything even vaguely related to crypto. A lot of the displaced websites flocked to the free .tk domain - which is run by Freenom, which Argosy is also trying to buy. This has been dubbed the “.iolocaust” by critics. Argosy is also trying to buy Cloudflare, which is a major web-hosting and DDOS-mitigation platform.
 * Discord (part of the massive Argosy New Media network of sites which also owns Reddit and YTMND) scrapped a planned crypto wallet connection feature after people mass-pinged Ellen Peck. Reddit also cancelled a “CryptoSnoo” NFT collection under similar circumstances — then tried passing it off as “Collectible Avatars”, only for people to start pinging Ellen’s account on there as well.
 * Ellen Peck actually personally bought the rights to the Blockbuster brand name (you know, the video rental store from the 90s), just to prevent “crypto-bros” from getting to it. Ellen can be said to be a Trolling Creator, except trolling people other than Argosy fans.
 * This is where it gets bad. “Planet Neo” was a combination of a play-to-earn game, several NFT collections, a virtual reality metaverse, and a worldbuilding universe created by “Planet Neo Labs”. Ellen saw an ad for one of their projects, “Momo and Yeti”, on Twitter one day in August 2022, and proceeded to perform a dubiously-legal hostile takeover of the company by (depending on who you believe, Molly White’s “web3 is going just great” or the r/MTM_meltdown subreddit) either lying to the founder Charbel Zeatier that she had changed her tune on crypto to get him to agree to an acquisition, or using a fake identity “Erenko Yamamoto” associated with her El Kadsreian citizenship; either way, she went into turnaround immediately once the deal was done, scrapped the majority of their projects, merged Planet Neo itself into their existing VRchat/Second Life clone ArgopolisVR, reassigned everyone who was working on Planet Neo’s various projects to the Yahoo/AOL/HuffPost/Cheezburger/Cracked/Gawker/Gizmodo/Onion group of blog sites, and held on to the IP (several suspicious trademark transfers to holding companies with names like “ArgosyMTM Libraries Inc.”, “MTM Films Income Fund II”, “MTM/7A Communications Inc.”, and most egregiously, the long-dormant Manhattan Pictures (which was shafted by what was then the US unit of Corus in 2001 because its logo prominently featured the Twin Towers, and well…) were noted in publicly-available USPTO records). And the worst part is that Ellen got away with it, due to the FTC not caring about relatively-minor Web3 startups.