It was no small feat for the Mattel lawyers to track me down, probably because I had so cleverly in the interim changed my common-law name to "Moe," but after numerous false starts they finally convinced me and seven or eight lawyers to show up in a conference room someplace downtown for a few hours of grilling about a story about which I couldn't have ethically provided any information even if I remembered it, which I of course did not. As we left, my lawyer, the in-house counsel of Dow Jones, marveled at the billable hours that had been assembled for our presence alone. It was enough to fund a reality show-worthy bar mitzvah. And they'd been at this case for years!

Today the case is supposed to go to trial and I am apparently, according to an email from the Gawker office manager, to be there, although I am not, because I don't leave my house to buy toilet paper if there is perfectly decent newspaper lying around, and the thing is going down in California. But it's fascinating to read about the internal memos describing the increasingly heated battles between these two dolls: "The House Is On Fire!" one is titled; fixing the problem will require "grenades."

"Complacency will kill us," the company concluded.

But when you live in a country in which a few sketches depicting dolls with stoned eyes and platform shoes and oversized heads vaguely conjuring anorexia is multibillion dollar "intellectual property" whose protection demands numerous eight figure retainers funding whole divisions of preposterously well-educated legal minds and even holds a few multimillion dollar holiday bonuses in the balance, it's hard to feel anything other than "complacency."

Brawl Over Doll Is Heading To Trial

Mattel is doing everything in its power to fight Barbie's increasing obsolescence. The Wall Street Journal reports that, in order to combat its "rare quarterly loss" — unlike last year, sales of Barbie flattened both inside and outside of the United States — Mattel is ramping up web-related offerings and is going to start charging a small subscription fee for its Barbie Girl website, which offers games, videos, chats and "digital extras". It's also experimenting with more interactive products — which aren't guaranteed successes. According to the Journal, "The recent Magic of the Rainbow, a fantasy doll marketed under the Barbie brand, doubled as a remote control, came with a CD-ROM game and featured wings that fluttered at the push of a button. 'Girls asked — is this a doll?' said [Chuck] Scothon [senior vice president of Mattel's girls division]. 'We put too much in.'"

[Image via Wilde Designs Etsy Shop]

Earlier: New Game Encourages Young Girls To Embrace Their Inner "Bimbo"

Is a "party plane" for blonde, plastic dolls necessarily a bad thing? Didn't your Barbies do much filthier things than have an afternoon cocktail? And why should Mattel think a play set with martini glasses is wrong, if sales are good? Check out the commercial and judge for yourself:

Barbie Shows Bratz Dollz How to Drink In Style! [Packaging Girlhood]
Tax Gains Offset Recalls at Mattel [NY Times]
Check Out Line: U.S. Girls Shun Barbie Again [Reuters]
2008 Barbie 2-in-1 Party Plane & Ship Commercial UK [YouTube]

'The goal is to broaden the appeal by demonstrating to parents and children alike that there is more to these characters than what they think,' said Steve Beeks, president of Lionsgate. Mr Arad, who until recently served as chief executive of Marvel Studios, added: 'The one thing we didn't want is for this movie to be sassy.'

Not "sassy"? What's the point of that? Isn't "sassy" was one of the reasons kids liked Bratz in the first place? And is it any wonder sales are down? (By the by, rival toy company Mattel reports second-quarter net income is up 15%. Maybe the comparatively classy Barbie could teach the sassy Bratz a thing or two?)

Fishnets and All, Bratz Image Gets a Hollywood Polish [NYT]
Related: Mattel's Net Income Climbs 15% On International Sales [WSJ]

• POINT Jesus Christ: Is nothing sacred anymore? Call me old-fashioned (or just the spawn of a '70s-era women's libber), but the years between 1st and 4rd grades are a time when little girls should be running around, skinning their knees and learning swear words; after all, they've got an entire lifetime in which to learn to be sex objects! But seriously, for those who believe that dolls are just child's play with negligible effects on ideals of beauty and self-worth, think again. This shit is so depressing it makes me never want to have kids.
• COUNTERPOINT As a reporter who used to have to cover Mattel's unending struggle with what is known in the toy industry as "age compression" — in layman's terms, the reason girls' dolls look like anorexic, coke-addicted whores — I just see this as a pathetic attempt to make the Barbie brand relevant in the eyes of the Bratz demographic, which by six years old is already probably giving blow jobs anyway. But as a former kid, my thoughts are: Makeup is really, really cool. I mean, It makes you look sooooooo much prettier!