The law on what happened is pretty well established. If you order product A and get B, B is your property upon receipt. You may choose to seek an exchange for A or keep B (because it’s better, because A isn’t available, because you don’t consider it worth the effort, whatever), but if the seller seeks to initiate that exchange or other return your legal right is to refuse and keep your property, any injury the seller incurs is self inflicted and without legal remedy.
If Product B is sold in a retail location but that location or their distributor placed and sold it without authorization, that’s on them and B is your property upon completion of the transaction.
Further, embargos are contracts. By receiving B without first entering a meeting of the minds on that contract, the YouTuber is not bound by an NDA and is free to share his property as the law allows.
This is why they used Pinkertons.
If they used police, the police might arrest the guy but actually getting the property back would be subject to a judge, who would see receipts for the purchase and rule the cards were not stolen and order their return.
If they used a DMCA takedown they risked a counterclaim and would then need to take the claim to a judge and again, they knew the guy had receipts. They admit as much in their statement!
If they used a more reputable security company they would have been given a copy of that company’s jurisdiction, pursuit, and use of force policies and been politely told they need to file a lawsuit because using rent-a-cops this way is illegal.
Thankfully for a company more interested in being feared than being right there are a number of disreputable security companies. And thankfully for Hasbro their recently hired head of risk management is a former executive with Pinkertons and can bypass what few limits they actually recognize.
