McDonald's removes mouth-shaped urinals

12 July 2006

AMSTERDAM — A McDonald's fast-food outlet in the south east of the Netherlands has agreed to remove urinals that are shaped liked wide-open red lips.

Degrading to women or toilet cartoon fun?
The decision was taken after a shocked American customer complained to the McDonald's head office in the US.

Owner Giel Pijper said on Wednesday that the bright red, mouth-shaped urinals, named 'Kisses', are works of art. But a different view is taken of them in America. The urinals are being removed and will be sold off. "I'm not going to harp on about a pair of urinals," he said.

Virgin Airways was forced to scrap plans in 2004 to install two of the 'Kisses' at New York's John F. Kennedy airport after complaints they looked like women's mouth.

They are the work of Dutch woman Meike van Schijndel. She is the designer at the Utrecht-based firm Bathroom Mania!

Speaking to Expatica in 2004, she said the urinals were designed as a fun cartoon mouth and not as a woman's mouth.

She stressed that the idea her urinals represented a man peeing into a woman's mouth never occurred to her, nor to many men and women she had spoken to. Her company was inundated with orders after the Virgin Airlines controversy, Van Schijndel said.

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2006]