A toy with a price
Concluding an ongoing legal battle over a toy company’s potentially illegal use of a hit song created by the musical group Beastie Boys, the two parties have officially settled the lawsuit. According to a spokesperson for GoldieBlox, the settlement includes “the issuance of an apology posted to GoldieBlox’s website, [and] payment by GoldieBlox, based on a percentage of its revenues, to one or more charities selected by [the] Beastie Boys that support science, technology, engineering and mathematics education for girls (Blistein, Rolling Stone, 2014). The Beastie Boys song “Girls,” was first released in 1987 and included lyrics such as “Girls to do to this dishes…Girls to do the laundry” (Blistein, Rolling Stone, 2014). GoldieBlox altered the catchy song’s original lyrics to help promote the company’s incentive of empowering young girls to become more involved in the sciences and engineering industries. GoldieBlox’s video for the Princess Machine was eventually removed from the internet but not before the video went viral and garnered over seven million views.