Under what Paul Carr has diagnosed as the rules of the Cult of Disruption, GoldieBlox neither sought nor received permission to create these videos: it never licensed the music it used from the artists who wrote it. That wouldn’t be the Silicon Valley way. First you make your own rules — and then, if anybody tries to slap you down, you don’t apologize, you fight. For your right. To parody.
Timely post, the viral video for Goldie Blox was sent to me yesterday by my sister. She donated money on behalf of my daughter and apparently we will be getting one in the mail. I watched the video and found myself caught up in the message. It's well done. However, you fuck with the memory and last wishes of MCA and well... fuck off. Not sure if you followed the links being added at the end of the article, but her blog on her trip to India is pretty horrid.
I was all set to buy shit for my daughter. Then I looked at their website and it was like "so… this is kind of like an extremely limited set of Tinker Toys with a questionable narrative attached." They don't have products, they have a product, and my daughter already has Bristle Blocks. …and, for that matter, JPL's stash of Lego Mindstorms left over from the collapse of the robotics championship. But those are probably a little advanced for her at the moment.
It looks like a carefully calculated play for publicity with an apology trotted out at just the right moment to dispel the legal heat after the press became involved and publicised the story. Mission accomplished, apparently.
This seems to be standard operating procedure now: get something to go vial no matter how "true" or legal it is, reap the benefits of the massive exposure, apologize and start over. As long as you don't care about the long tail you can do a lot.