Wow, they don’t have to put up signs discouraging people from
squeezing the Charmin anymore, as Mr. Whipple did in the famous advertising
campaign from the 1970s, seeing as how nowadays it’s essentially a bargain
basement brand barely passing as toilet paper. (After all, what other brand can
you think of off-hand that has visible open spaces between the weave so that
you can actually soil your hand easily when using it?) And I think I know why
it has become so. Yes, I think store managers got so tired of everyone
squeezing the Charmin all day every day and never buying anything that they
begged Charmin to stop making such soft toilet paper, and when Charmin refused,
the store owners and managers pooled their resources and bought the brand so that
they could make it into such a low quality product that nobody would even want
to touch it at all, much less squeeze it. Of course, I could be wrong…
Yes, to see Charmin toilet paper today (Sorry, it doesn’t rate the
euphemism “bathroom tissue” any longer.), you’d never suspect that Charmin was
once the very softest of all toilet paper brands. (And it was,
too!) Yes, in fact, Charmin was so soft, it would fall apart
whenever you needed to use it as toilet paper (which is another reason why they
may have changed it, come to think of it…). And it was also so delicate, if you
blew on it, it would have particles flying off of it, and it would begin to
come apart (no exaggeration!). It probably produced more dust than any toilet
paper in history! In fact, maybe that’s one of the things that caused the ozone
layer to dissolve, along with CFCs from antiperspirant and hairspray.
(<I'm obviously kidding about the ozone layer.)
Here’s a YouTube video of 1970s TV commercials beginning with an old
Charmin ad:
While most products have improved significantly since the ‘70s,
Charmin is an example of one that hasn’t. I guess that’s why only bears seem to
want to use it; and not even real
bears, either: only cartoon bears. I heard real bears tried to maul company
reps after trying the new version of Charmin toilet paper, and that’s why the use
cartoon bears in the ads.
