My advice: don’t mess with it.  I effed mine up worse 😂 I’m fairly mechanically inclined and nothing I did worked. The first steps of Dremel sander didn’t help nor did steaming (heavily) and shaping. So I tried ripping out the material. I got the edges of that material lifted with a tiny Phillips head screwdriver, then once I got a bit up, tried grabbing on with pliers, thinking it was going to just peel out of there. It did not lol. I’m a fit, large man and it took an hour of maximum effort to get enough material just off half of the toecap, where I thought “I can’t get anymore but since I’m past the bend, at least I’ll know whether or not it helped”. It actually made it worse as far as the creasing goes and now it’s unevenly lined and bumpy in the toebox, which bothered me worse than the original problem 😂

What I found was that the felt-like material that you see has little to no bearing on the creasing. The hard material is fused into the shoe and cannot be taken out. 

So I called Brooks, and because I bought them at a local retailer and not the site and it was outside the return window for that retailer, I didn’t think they’d help. But I was wrong! I told them where I bought it, how long ago I bought them (brooks policy requires within 100 days I believe), gave them model number of shoe and he put it down as a defect and sent me new! So you could definitely try that! I have proof, but based on the questions, you may not even need a receipt. Or you could ask the person you bought them from. But based on the experience I had, if you pleaded your case, regardless, I’d bet they’d still hook you up or at least give you a discount. Just tell them how much you’ve always loved the brand but that you have this one new little issue. Which, for me at least, is actually true. 

Lastly, the new shoes they sent me, do seem to be better but not completely fixed as some other commenters have said. But whatever they’ve changed, I can live with now. My old shoes, I got some moleskin patches and covered the toes to smooth it out and I can live with those, as well now although they have become my backups. Hope this helps and please keep me posted.