When all is said and done Goldieblox, a California toy company that makes blocks sets that teach the principals of engineering to young girls, has done a heck of a marketing campaign. They created an amazing video with three cute little girls who used their pink toys to make a Rube Goldberg machine as big as their house.
You can read all about the girls, and the video here and here. When you rack up the wins though, the little company from California, that was starting to bubble in startup circles, has seen press from CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone.
You see they had set the original video to the tune of the Beastie Boys hit record, Girls, from the band’s License to Ill album. They had done it without permission and thought that their parody would qualify for special provisions under fair use. There’s a good chance that Goldieblox would have prevailed but then MCA, put his two cents in, from the grave.
You may remember MCA, the man with the license to ill, he told the women behind Goldieblox “Now I’ve got the gun, you’ve got the boo,you got two choices of what you can do, it’s not a def decision as you can see, I can blow you away or you can ride with me”. Oh wait that’s not what he said I was just feeling some Beastie Boys nostalgia…
What Adam “MCA” Yauch did say in his will is that he did not want any of his works used for commercial purposes, echoing a policy the Beastie Boys have had since the 1980’s.
Well that seemed to have sank in with Goldie Blox founder Debbie Sterling, her, a child of the Beastie Boys era, addressed the remaining two Beastie Boys in the letter below:
Dear Adam and Mike,
We don’t want to fight with you. We love you and we are actually huge fans.
When we made our parody version of your song, ‘Girls’, we did it with the best of intentions. We wanted to take a song we weren’t too proud of, and transform it into a powerful anthem for girls. Over the past week, parents have sent us pictures and videos of their kids singing the new lyrics with pride, building their own Rube Goldberg machines in their living rooms and declaring an interest in engineering. It’s been incredible to watch.
Our hearts sank last week when your lawyers called us with threats that we took very seriously. As a small company, we had no choice but to stand up for ourselves. We did so sincerely hoping we could come to a peaceful settlement with you.
We want you to know that when we posted the video, we were completely unaware that the late, great Adam Yauch had requested in his will that the Beastie Boys songs never be used in advertising. Although we believe our parody video falls under fair use, we would like to respect his wishes and yours.
Since actions speak louder than words, we have already removed the song from our video. In addition, we are ready to stop the lawsuit as long as this means we will no longer be under threat from your legal team.
We don’t want to spend our time fighting legal battles. We want to inspire the next generation. We want to be good role models. And we want to be your friends.
Sincerely,
Debbie + Team GoldieBlox
Yes if you too are a child of the Beastie generation (as I am and obviously Debbie is) one of the authentic things about the boys is that they have never had their music used in a commercial. So this pretty much has a happy ending. The only thing that could make it happier is if Michael Diamond (Mike D and Screeche’s brother) and Adam Horovitz decided to go ahead and let Debbie and Goldie Blox use the song as Thanksgivingakah present.
