International Megastar Goes Gaga Over Goo Goo

LONDON, October 14, 2011 -

Lady Gaga takes court action to ban debut Moshi Monsters music single

- With Photo

Global kids website Moshi Monsters today reveals that its plans to release a music single from one of its most popular characters, Lady Goo Goo, have been scuppered as Lady Gaga takes out a court injunction to prevent the release.

The character making waves is Lady Goo Goo, one of the 52 Moshling characters that appears in the hugely popular Moshi Monsters game. She became an internet hit with the release of her music video ‘The Moshi Dance’ on YouTube back in June - drawing in around 1m views per month.

With over 50 million registered users worldwide, Moshi Monsters has a huge global community of kids aged 6-12 who had fallen in love with the character’s song. Following its huge internet success, Mind Candy - the company behind Moshi Monsters - had planned to release the ‘The Moshi Dance’ track on itunes via its newly formed music division Moshi Music.  The track was also scheduled to appear on an upcoming album of Moshi music for release later this year.

However, during a hearing at the New Rolls Building in London on Monday 10^th October, an injunction was granted preventing Mind Candy from: ‘promoting, advertising, selling, distributing or otherwise making available to the public The Moshi Dance OR any musical work or video which purports to be performed by a character by the name of Lady Goo Goo, or which otherwise uses the name Lady Goo Goo or any variant thereon’.

Gaga’s lawyers banned the song, claiming that kids might not be able to tell the two pop starlets apart, despite the obvious differences between them.

Michael Acton Smith, Founder and CEO of Mind Candy and creator of Moshi Monsters commented: “This court ruling is a huge disappointment. It’s pretty obvious that kids will be able to tell the difference between the two characters. The shame is that millions of kids fell in love with Lady Goo Goo’s debut single on YouTube and now won’t be able to enjoy her musical exploits. It was all done in the name of fun and we would have thought that Lady Gaga could have seen the humour behind this parody.”

MoshiMonsters.com is an online world of adoptable pet monsters for kids aged 6-12. Since its launch in 2008 the site has signed up over 50m users worldwide - with one new sign up every second. It also has a hugely successful product range including toys, books, trading cards and the Moshi Monsters magazine - the largest selling kids title in the UK.

Note to Editors

A picture accompanying this release is available through the PA Photowire. It can be downloaded from www.pa-mediapoint.press.net or viewed at www.mediapoint.press.net or www.prnewswire.co.uk.

For further information please contact: Nicola Duarte, Head of PR, Mind Candy, T: +44(0)7810-354103, E: nicola at mindcandy.com, T: at nics_duarte Or 77 PR (UK), moshi at 77pr.co.uk; Sandbox PR (US), mindcandy at sandboxstrat.com