The Cease and Desist controversy was an event of SML's history. It made the full transition to the Human puppet era, due to legal reasons from Nintendo.
Events
On February 11, 2021, the channel was renamed to "SML" due to Logan receiving a cease and desist letter from Nintendo, thus forcing Logan to rename all of his channels to remove any mention of the company's popular characters. The letter also forbade Logan to also use the plush versions, which also meant that Logan has to switch to the human puppets from now on, though the channel URL still contains the name "SuperMarioLogan." Due to the URL still containing the channel’s old name and trademark name from Nintendo, the original SML channel, and along with all of the other SML-affiliated channels, including the old second channel, got deleted by Logan at Nintendo’s request. However, SuperBowserLogan is not deleted and Logan renamed the channel "SML" just like the fourth channel. All new videos and some remakes are now on the fourth channel. Even though the videos are deleted, there are tons of reupload channels that reuploaded Logan's videos.
The channels were originally going to be deleted on June 1st and then on June 30th, but as of then, the channels were still up and there had been no word since then. This has caused most people to believe that Logan lied about the channels being deleted, and some believe that he even faked the cease and desist letter to push away from using the plushies and promote the human puppets further. A user by the name of KoopalingKitty Productions talked about the situation in a video, and she claimed that the cease and desist letter looks fake. Eventually, Logan finally did close the original SML channel on July 8th, most likely proving that the letter was real. Prior to this, there was much speculation as to whether or not the letter was real, or a fake sent by one of Logan's haters. On July 8th, 2021, the SuperMarioLogan channel got deleted. On August 22, 2021, Logan privated all of his videos on his SuperLuigiLogan channel. On November 4, 2022, the videos came back to the channel but became privated again on March 19, 2023.
After the cease-and-desist, multiple characters had to be renamed because they still resembled their Nintendo counterparts too much:
- Mario became "Marvin"
- Rosalina became "Rose"
- Bowser Junior simply became "Junior"
- Black Yoshi became "[Ya Boy] Duggie"
- Toad became "Li'l T" or "Todd"
- Bowser's name has fluctuated for a good while, but is now confirmed to be "Braxton" as of "Meeting Charleyyy!".
- Bully Bill became "Bully" or "Billy 'Bully'"
In addition, the Blue M&Ms Officer became a human puppet, possibly as a preemptive measure in case Mars sends a C&D, as well. The fate of other IP-based characters such as Shrek and Woody is currently unknown. As of this writing, the other IP-based characters are currently being kept as they were.
Trivia
- This is the main reason why Logan has to use the human puppets.
- Logan has made a few texts about that he was not going to use the plushies anymore, and that he was making new thumbnails for the third channel.