This just in.

Ken and Barbie have, at last, been re-united. After an intensive campaign that wed social media with an old-fashioned public protest, Mattel, the maker of the Barbie doll, has agreed to change the packaging in which the unnaturally proportioned, tip-toed adult doll is sold.

It started last June, when Greenpeace activists dressed as Ken dolls scaled Mattel’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California. They hung a banner on the building that read: “Barbie: It’s over. I don’t date girls that are into deforestation.”

Bad grammar notwithstanding, the campaign was a bust.  Greenpeace used Ken as its mouthpiece to declare its ultimatum: paper giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) was using unethically harvested wood from Indonesia’s rainforests to make boxes for Mattel products, including Barbie (and, well, Ken). It was time to make a change in their relationship.

The Barbie break-up campaign generated more than 500,000 emails to Mattel protesting the company’s purchase of APP paper sourced from Indonesian Rainforests.

Now that Greenpeace and Mattel have kissed and made up, Mattel has agreed not to buy wood fibre from tree plantations established in areas where natural forests recently once stood. They have also promised to boost recycled paper content in their business as well as to boost the use of wood products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

“The rainforests of Indonesia should be for species like the endangered Sumatran tiger, not for throw-away toy packaging.  This is more evidence for APP that rainforest destruction is bad for business,” said Greenpeace’s Indonesian rainforest campaign director, Bustar Maitar.

The victory for Greenpeace is a strong step towards ending rainforest destruction and slowing global warming. But what about Barbie’s own liberation from her permanent tip-toed status, a posture that leaves her unable to stand on her own two feet after 52 long years?

Perhaps it’s just more proof that when it comes to women, even fake ones, its the packaging that really counts.