British artist Stuart Semple has released a new ultra-fluorescent pink paint, dubbed “Pinkie – The Barbiest Pink”, in response to Mattel’s trademark on “Barbie Pink”. Semple’s protest takes place just as Greta Gerwig’s hotly anticipated Barbie movie hits the big screen on 21 July. “Nature has already made all the colours, and corporations claiming them is just completely and utterly ridiculous,” said Semple.

Mattel launched the iconic Barbie doll in 1959. Since then, the toy company has been synonymous with the colour pink, particularly with Pantone 219 C – a shade that combines magenta and pink. Through years of consistent and distinctive use, Mattel garnered trademark rights to the colour. But the company does not own rights to the term “Barbie Pink”, despite their efforts to register the word mark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office since 2001. Mattel have tried to police the use of the colour but with varying degrees of success, such as Nicki Minaj’s collaboration with Rap Snacks in 2022 and the song “Barbie Girl” by Aqua in 1997.

“The amount of money Mattel makes out of licensing every year is extraordinary,” remarked Semple. “No colour should be owned by a corporation, especially a corporation that is making billions of dollars at a time when artists and creators are really, really struggling.”

By contrast, Semple’s colour can be used by anyone unless you are an employee of Mattel or in any way associated with the company. The shade blends high-quality acrylic resins, optical brighteners, and new fluorescent pigments. According to the website, the 150ml bottle is “the flattest, mattest highly pigmented fluorescent pink acrylic paint” and can be purchased for £29.99.

Anticipation for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, reached fever pitch ahead of its release last week. The film’s life-size construction of the Barbieland set reportedly required so much fluorescent pink paint that it contributed to a global shortage of the colour produced by entertainment prop manufacturer Rosco. “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much,” explained Gerwig.

This is not the first time Semple has taken a stand against colour exclusivity, or what he calls “colour hoarding”. Since 2016, he has controversially released similar colours in response to the groundbreaking “blackest black” Vantablack coating, which the artist Anish Kapoor alone has the exclusive rights to use creatively, as well as the highly restricted signature blue of the luxury jewellery brand Tiffany & Co.

“It’s less about the colour and more about what it symbolizes; it’s a beacon of colour control,” concluded Semple. “Controlling the use of a colour can limit the potential of people to express themselves freely.”