There are a lot of things that don't add up about the whole cease and desist thing, and I am suspicious that SML faked it to make more money.
Right before it happened, SML introduced in "The Human Potion" the human puppets to replace all the non-original characters. It made a comment on the video, which is now deleted, citing possible copyright issues as the reason. In the description is a link to smlmerch.com, where they immediately began selling these human puppets.
Of course no one liked this, and the uproar forced them to switch back to using the Nintendo characters. But wouldn't you know, only a little bit later they were hit with a cease and desist letter from Nintendo exactly the way SML had anticipated on the human potion video. What a coincidence!
https://sml.fandom.com/wiki/Cease_and_Desist
The letter itself looks very suspicious. Most of it has little to do with copyright and is more the ramblings of a woke corporation stereotype. Exactly how SML would think a big bad business would come after them. But due to how draconian copyright laws are in a country that supposedly has free speech, there is no need for Nintendo to justify the takedown; they have the legal right to shoot down SML for no reason at all. Moreover, the letter mentions his alt channels that Nintendo is very unlikely to have dug deep enough to find, like SuperWarioLogan, SuperWaluigiLogan, and SuperDaisyLogan.
Secondly, Nintendo has had a positive view of SML in the past, and even used to comment on their videos. It's very strange of them to then suddenly C&D SML and only SML, and no other channels using their IP in similar ways such as SMG4.
The letter contained some very strange instructions, such as "remove the Nintendo characters from the thumbnails". That makes little sense, unless, of course, SML faked it and wanted to do that to promote its human puppet merch.
It's very strange too that Nintendo never filed a takedown request with YouTube, like what would happen in every other case of the Disneys. If this were really coming from Nintendo, they would've had YouTube take the channels down immediately, and probably not even bothered dealing with with SML. Instead, it asked SML to delete the channels themselves on June 1st 2021.
Except that didn't happen. It then changed to June 30th. They hesitated until July 8th, when they finally decided to go through with it. Sounds like someone making up stories, but who was hesitant to delete their 10 million subscriber channel; not a party complying under the threat of going to jail for 5 years and having everything taken from them. And still no action at all from YouTube. The reason they had to delete it is very strange: because they had names like "Mario" in the URLs. But Mario, Luigi, and Bowser are all everyday names; Nintendo can't just trademark those.
Not only that, but despite claiming they had to delete all their channels, only the original, long-defunct SuperMarioLogan was ever deleted. The other channels remain visible to this day. No monetary loss there, because it was the one that had been fully demonetized. It would just push viewers to watch the monetized channels more. That's another thing. At this point Logan Thirtyacre suddenly started ranting about people reuploading their lost videos, even though he and SML have always supported it before, even teaming up with the "SML Reuploaded" channel.
There's still weird stuff going on with this. SML also replaced non-Nintendo characters like the M&M police chief. You cannot claim this is a precaution against future C&D orders from other companies, because they still use Shrek.
Since there's so many holes in this story, more than there are in a piece of swiss cheese, I am convinced that it is all a scam so SML can completely change their show to promote their merchandise, and avoid backlash like what happened the first time they tried to do it. SML is rather notorious for pulling crap like this, so it's not overly surprising. SMG4 did something similar recently, though without faking a C&D. But he still used "possible future C&D" as the excuse, whereas the real reason is probably the same as SML's, so he can sell more merch, which he just started promoting crazier than ever before.
there doesn't seem to be anything here