Whoever would have thought it? For all her shiny plastic exterior, it seems Barbie has a core of steel. This forty-something plaything has just administered a thoroughly unladylike slap to her younger and distinctly trashier rivals, Bratz. A judge in California has ruled that all Bratz dolls – and their related merchandising — be withdrawn from circulation.

The trouble began three months ago, when Mattel, manufacturer of Barbie, won a legal challenge against MGA, the Bratz parent company. It successfully argued that the original drawings for the Bratz dolls had been developed by Carter Bryant, the designer, while he was still in its employ. He had then taken the idea to MGA, which introduced Bratz in 2001.

The jury awarded Mattel substantial damages, causing the share price to rise by 5 per cent on the New York Stock Exchange. This represented an immediate financial victory for Mattel; but the real vindication will come from the long-term effects of the shelf ban, since in recent years the Bratz dolls, with their preternaturally pouty lips and demented gaze, have been steadily encroaching on Barbie’s market share.

Few parents will shed a tear at this turn of events. Despite her reputation as an antifeminist fantasy, Barbie’s plastic smile and unfeasible chest-to-waist ratio are as nothing faced with the unalloyed trashiness of the Bratz dolls. Compared with the likes of Jade (“spunky, fun-loving”), Cloe (“knows she’s going to be a superstar some-day”), Yasmin (“likes to show, not tell”) and Sasha (“doesn’t like taking no for an answer”), Barbara Millicent Roberts (to give Barbie her full name) is a positive paragon of understated elegance. She may have ridiculous breasts; but at least she is not parcelled up to look like jailbait.

The four core Bratz characters, with their ostentatiously “street” styling and abrasive attitude, are the Pussycat Dolls of the toy world.

Overtly sexualised, fashion and fame-obsessed, the principal Bratz pursuits are dressing up, going out, parading about in front of a microphone and doing their make-up. They come pre-daubed in garish eyeshadow and mascara, with glossy,collagen-enhanced lips and distinctly minxy, come-hither expressions. They make Barbie look like a Sunday school teacher.

Infuriatingly, little girls love them – in much the same way as little girls used to love Barbie. I remember my own mother banning Barbie on grounds of good taste and feminism; I have done the same to my own daughter with Bratz. Every time she is given one it goes straight to the top of the wardrobe. Of the two evils, Barbie is definitely the lesser.

It is not so much that after all these years women have come to realise that a single doll is not going to derail the course of sexual equality (it is perhaps the ultimate irony that Barbie is banned in Saudi Arabia, where women’s rights are vanishingly few); it is because the glitzy, pseudo-sexy universe of the cleverly contemporary Bratz doll is so much more appealing – and therefore more powerfully suggestive – than the old-fashioned charm of Barbie. Pony clubs and fairy princesses are, sadly, the girlish dreams of a bygone age. Vacuous as they may have seemed, they were surely preferable to the modern equivalent: aspiring to a life of cheap glamour and empty celebrity.

The catfight is not over yet. MGA will appeal against the judge’s ruling on Wednesday, and no doubt the prospect of a blanket Bratz ban will trigger panic buying in the aisles and possibly even a contraband market. Ultimately, the Bratz concept could end up being reclaimed by Mattel, which would make Barbie and the girls stablemates (I’d pay money to eavesdrop on that dressing room). Imagine if those five suddenly became NBFs (new best friends); we just might have to start burning bras all over again.

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