Twelve years after suing Aqua over the song “Barbie Girl,” Mattel is adapting it for Barbie advertising.

From the NYT:

…Twelve years after the hit pop tune “Barbie Girl” raised the hackles of the toymaker that sells Barbie, Mattel, the song is being adapted for Barbie advertising.

Mattel has uploaded to YouTube a video clip of a dance called the Barbie, which is danced to a rerecorded version of “Barbie Girl.” The video is also scheduled to be shown on “Today” on NBC on Thursday morning.

Television commercials featuring the new version of the song are scheduled to start running in mid-October. The hoopla is all intended to promote a new variety of Barbie called Barbie Fashionistas.

The new version of “Barbie Girl” is not the hit version by Aqua, a Danish dance-pop band. The lyrics are more inspirational, including lines like “You can be a star, no matter who you are.”

But some lyrics are the same as they were in the Aqua version, including Barbie’s lines like “I’m a Barbie girl, in the Barbie world” and “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.”

The new version also features Barbie’s companion Ken singing lines from the 1997 version like “C’mon, Barbie, let’s go party.” …

Most readers of this blog are probably familiar with Mattel Inc. v. MCA Records Inc., reflecting a dispute over this song:

The opinion correctly prioritizes the First Amendment over trademark rights. But it also gave Judge Alex Kozinski the opportunity to gratuitously observe that “Barbie was born in Germany in the 1950s as an adult collector’s item. Over the years, Mattel transformed her from a doll that resembled a “German street walker,” as she originally appeared, into a glamorous, long-legged blonde.” . Have to keep those broads in their place by reminding everybody how “a symbol of American girlhood” got her start.