Americans blamed as Manneken Pis is censored on Brussels Monopoly box
Brussels most famous son Manneken Pis is to be featured wearing a pair of swimming trunks on the box of the Brussels version of board game Monopoly. The American company that produces Monopoly will not tolerate nudity of any kind on the boxes of its games even if the nude in question is a half a metre high bronze statue of a boy that can’t stop urinating.
The American company Hasbro that makes what is probably the world’s most famous board game told the designers of the box for Brussels version of Monopoly that Manneken Pis would have to cover up.
Pieter De Wulf of Groep 24 that makes the Belgian city versions of Monopoly told VRT Radio 2 Flemish Brabant "We had put a drawing of Manneken Pis on the box. However, America didn’t want the bare wiener of a child to be featured on the box of a family-orientated game. Even when we explained that Manneken Pis is a world-famous piece of cultural heritage”.
So from next week Manneken Pis will be featured peeing through his swimming trunks on the box of Brussels Monopoly board. Appropriately his trunks will be in the colours of the City of Brussels and will feature the city’s logo.