Mini Men
Emerging from a slightly battered cryptocurrency market comes a Mini NFT collection bound to make Maximum impact. Mini Men (@minimenclub — Twitter) is an upcoming free mint NFT (Non Fungible Token) collection of 3,333 pixelated characters, including 69 ‘Legendaries’. Providing nostalgic reverie, the art encapsulates the essence of popular culture, fashion and familiar characters in a playful and personal way. Mini Men has been created uniquely as part of an ambitious yet thoughtful effort to include the community and educate members on the process of producing an NFT collection from beginning to mint. Emerging from a humble group of NFT enthusiasts, the Mini Men team was built on mutual trust, understanding and appreciation for art and the community. This article aims to explore the fast growing movement that is Mini Men as we understand the art, culture and values behind the project and the obstacles yet to overcome.
Pop Culture & NFT’s
In recent years the exponential growth of NFT’s has seen an overwhelming variety in collectible items/trading cards, artwork, event tickets, music and media, gaming, big sports moments, virtual fashion, real-world assets, memes and domain names. With such extensive opportunities for digital asset development in all of these areas, it speaks volumes to the current market conditions and buyers sentiment that NFT artwork and memes are still yielding high volumes despite macroeconomic uncertainty. According to Fleurardon in the article ‘Nostalgic Feelings in Pop Culture’(2022), this trend could be explained by the way popular culture acts as a conduit for the sense of comfort and reassurance that nostalgia brings. She explains that seeing the comforting side of nostalgia is easily digestible and marketable. Perhaps the gentle emotion of nostalgia derived from such familiar stimuli evokes a longing for a time that has passed and is yet to return to a world devastated by a global pandemic, humanitarian crisis and geopolitical turmoil. Moving on, however, from ‘the political and economic state of the world right now’ — Jaden Smith, let’s talk about NFT’s.
Mini Men is not the first NFT collection to take inspiration from popular culture and nostalgia to create a transformative and unique experience for holders. Created by artist, Jeff Cole, and brought to the public by Metarelics, this 1.2K supply collection features a 36 piece tribute to important cultural technology of the past. The ‘Relic Punks’ collection has generated 105 eth volumes in sales to date and reinvigorated the ‘emotional relationship and connections we had growing up with consumer devices’. Overall this collection was a success and with a minor 48 Relic Punks out of 1200 currently listed for sale, it further proves that the value of these NFT’s extends beyond the potential profit from this free mint and resides in the emotive response and feelings of nostalgia evoked.
Another collection that successfully created a popular culture inspired collection with a distinct style and flair unique to their own brand is ‘The Royal Habibiz’ by The Habibiz. This unique collection introduced a burning initiative, whereby holders were given the opportunity to burn regular Habibiz NFT’s to generate an animated Royal Habibiz that appeared to pay tribute to various popular cultural references.
Just the T-iP
Understandably, Mini Men has faced some concerns regarding the potential for a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) case against some of the Legendaries. To further understand the specificities of launching an NFT project that pays tribute to media that potentially imposes on intellectual property, a lawyer who is experienced with NFT’s was consulted. Together the team and legal advisor assessed the 69 Legendaries in the collection and critically evaluated the colour, shape, line and form of the Mini Men in relation to the popular culture inspiration media. It was concluded that although a connection can be made between the two, this particular instance may be appropriately referred to as a trifling similarity. Almost on purpose, these Mini Men fall under de minimis non curat lex, whereby, ‘the law does not concern itself with trifles’. A more appropriate title being ‘De Minimis Men’.
The Mini Men team have made a proactive effort to explore every potential flaw or conflict that should arise from these nostalgic characters. The most obvious and extreme scenario being a formal lawsuit regarding potential infringement of intellectual property with the only remedy being to seek licensing from the relevant parties. Given there is no intent to impose on intellectual property from the team, seeking licensing for a 30x30, Mini, pixelated figurine that’s comically small in size and the subject of parody seems redundant.
Despite the confidence in the overlapping application of fair use, de minimis and nil intent to impose on intellectual property in this circumstance, the Mini Men team have mitigated the potential risk to holders should legal action arise. In an extension of the nostalgic and childlike vibes created by this collection, Mini Men have developed an interactive and precautionary experience to ensure the longevity of the collection and ongoing value to holders.
Given the advice, the team has chosen to store the 69 Legendaries on a separate OpenSea collection. This avoids any legal action pertaining to a singular NFT resulting in the removal of the entire collection. Upon instant reveal, the 69 Legendaries will display an animation that reveals both a Locked Legendary and a Gold 1 of 1 character, holders will be able to use their token to claim the locked legendary from the ‘Legendaries’ collection. The animation will act as a placeholder token to ensure ongoing value to holders and provide those who mint a Legendary with an additional NFT being a Gold character in the main collection. Those who reveal a Legendary may buy, swap and sell their NFT as normal without concerns of DMCA or intellectual property disputes.
As the Mini Men team values transparency and integrity within the Web3 space, they have no intention of fighting any allegations of breaching the DMCA or encroaching on intellectual property laws but aim to rectify each concern individually. As a promise to holders, those who incur a dispute regarding their Legendary 1 of 1 are offered the opportunity to work collaboratively with the artist to make necessary changes to avoid legal pursuit.
The Mint
Mini Men will mint on July 8, 2022 9 p.m. UTC and has allowed the public to register via Premint raffle at https://www.premint.xyz/minimen/ whilst also providing a small allocation of whitelist spots to genuine and valuable communities within the NFT space. The team continues to show their understanding of market conditions and what the community needs, in doing so have made the entire collection a free mint with every allocation considered and accounted for.
