No Bratz for Christmas this Year

I don't exactly know why, but for some reason Bratz dolls have never appealed to me. Maybe it's the big heads, or the pouty lips. Chibi only looks good in Japanese animes/mangas.

Additionally, I find the "Bratz big babies" nothing short of disgusting. I'm just not impressed with this line of dolls. I never watched the cartoon, (I didn't want to) and I heard plenty of bad things about the movie. (which I don't plan to see.)

Well, the Bratz reign of "Bratitude" is over. As reported on Yahoo news:

A federal judge in California on Wednesday ordered MGA Entertainment Inc to stop selling its popular Bratz dolls and banned it from using the Bratz name, finding that "hundreds" of Bratz products infringe on copyrights owned by rival toymaker Mattel Inc (MAT.N).

U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson also ordered MGA to recall all Bratz dolls from retailers and to destroy "specialized plates, molds and matrices" used to make the dolls, according to a permanent injunction issued late on Wednesday, but stayed until at least early next year.

I never thought this would happen. The judge ordered them to destroy the plates and recall the dolls. Though there is an exception to the recall:

The ruling appears to allow MGA and retailers to sell the Bratz dolls through the Christmas holiday season.

Larson rejected the idea of allowing MGA to continue to make the pouty lipped, urban chic dolls that made its name and fortunes while paying Mattel a royalty. Larson set a February 11 hearing on post-trial motions.

"Mattel has established its exclusive rights to the Bratz drawings and the court has found that hundreds of the MGA parties' products -- including all the currently available core female fashion dolls Mattel was able to locate in the marketplace -- infringe those rights," Larson wrote in the ruling.

Mattel won the rights to the $1 billion-plus Bratz franchise earlier this year in a lawsuit against MGA and former Mattel Barbie designer Carter Bryant, who invented the Bratz concept while under contract to Mattel.

A jury later ruled Bryant had secretly sold the concept to MGA.

...In his ruling, Larson said his own side-by-side review of the drawings and dolls left him with no doubts that MGA was infringing on Mattel's copyright.

MGA attorney Thomas Nolan said the company plans to appeal the injunction along with other issues from the trial.

"We will ask the court to continue to the stay until we take the appeal to the 9th Circuit (Court of Appeals)," Nolan said.

So I guess the title of this is wrong, becuase apparently you can get the dolls during Christmas. I wonder what will happen after the court of appeals.

Okay, so my review of the movie came from World magazine. Still, this review is pretty close to what I read. A review of the Bratz movie -->> Click Here