OMG, Andrex killed the puppey! Not quilty, exclaim bog roll boys The British bog roll brand Andrex has been forced to deny rumours that it is planning to kill off the iconic Labrador puppy mascot. Toilet paper lovers on its mailing list reacted furiously after receiving an email which appeared to suggest the puppy was going to be flushed from promotional material. They took to Andrex's …
That's it.
You're about to wipe fæces on it and flush it down the crapper, anyway. Who cares if it has quilted images of angels or is twenty different colours, or lights up and plays a song.
You're dead on with the tracing paper thing, though. I remember at primary school, probably the worst bog roll in the world - felt exactly like that - greaseproof paper, tracing paper - hard and crinkly, 0% absorbency, massively arse pain inducing. Terrible to use and terrible at its job. Probably usable as some kind of mental and physical torture on an enemy.
Edit: think I've found it. Izal, perhaps.
When I first came to the UK in the 1970s was confronted with Izal in B&Bs and on trains and I instantly understood so much about English culture right then and there. The country that would devise and promulgate this stuff (often with little messages on each non-absorbent square to not please what your hands -- you betcha) is the natural home for stoic discomfort-lovers who could take on an empire, because they didn't mind dying like flies to do so, but also home for a 'any sub-standard dreck is good enough for you lot' mentality, which we see all around us today (BT, Southern Trains, TalkTalk, I'm talking about you).
>You're dead on with the tracing paper thing, though.
The secret is to crumple it up a bit before use. Not too much, or then your finger *will* go through!
We had some stuff at school called "Bronco". I think this was the value version of Izal. I later found out that bronco is Spanish for rough...
but bottled water *IS* tap-water.
Only in the USA. In most, if not all, European countries bottled water is almost always spring water. There are a few companies selling the Dasani/Deja Blue type of purified tap water in bottles, but it is very much the exception.
Coke didn't realise that when they introduced Dasani in the UK a few years back. Not only were they ridiculed in the press for selling tap water at 3000x the price Thames Water charged for the same stuff, but a batch was found to contain higher-than-permitted levels of a carcinogen, leading one tabloid to run the headline "Coke withdraws cancer water"
A FaecesBook puppy-fancier commented "I've not used it before but the thought of wiping up with paper covered in butter is a bit off-putting, yet intriguing."
The recollection of stories and rumours from my youth about "butter dogs" (I don't recommend Googling it) popped up on reading that...
Well someone claims that a swan's neck makes the best bog paper..
How do you do it, el Reg? I read it, and enjoyed shaking my head at various points.
And yet...... this 'story' ..... if it merits the term, is concocted around a thing that a few strange people thought was going to happen, but it wasn't. To most of us, it wasn't even a very important thing, and one of the head shakes came as a result of learning the thoughts of some to whom it was apparently very important. Or would have been, if it had been going to happen.
The headline promised dead puppies. Or at least one, threatened, or bumped off by a heartless corporation. To demand my pound of puppy flesh would be very, very wrong. Yet, surely there has to be some correspondence between the headline and the facts of the case?
And another thing. Am I alone in suspecting the whole thing is a marketing ploy? Designed to get the playgrounds of England abuzz , like it was when we all had to work so hard to save Tony the Tiger. Or was it the tiger in our tanks? I can't bloody remember.
So some arsehole runs software which harvests all the mentions of puppies and toilet paper on the interweb post 'story', converts that into an advertising value, generates a report which goes to an executive, who smiles.
Our only weapon is to make sure we wipe our arses on something else, and I resent having to take time to think about that.
"Not only was it not a story, it had nothing whatever to do with IT except that most IT people take dumps. If that's the criterion for a story now, the Reg has lost its way a bit."
Lost its way? Certainly. Back in the day you'd have had the Moderatrix explaining the meaning of the word "Bootnotes" with a verbal clue-by-four and the rest of us laughing and ducking for cover.
"The headline promised dead puppies. Or at least one, threatened, or bumped off by a heartless corporation."
What we need is for someone to do the decent thing...
...and make a spoof Andrex advert, in which said Puppy is bounding around, and follows an unraveled loo-roll back to its source. That source, of course, is the roll on the wall next to the loo.
The puppy jumps up onto the seat to get at the roll but, being a cute ickle puppy-wuppy who can't actually see over the rim, doesn't realise there's a big hole there designed for human arses to hang above, and it falls into the loo, where it then drowns.
If the flush can be pulled while the puppy drowns, without it being utterly implausible, bonus points are available.
Note: No cute ickle puppy-wuppies must be harmed in the making of this spoof advert.
No can do here in my building. It's all in those big plastic anti-pilfer dispensing systems. Also, it is cheap and non-absorbent. I do try to ablute in work, as I am being paid for it, but security would get suspicious if I tried going home with a massive roll of tracing paper.
I did live in a shared house with a bloke who made a point of never buying bog-roll. Not sure what was so embarrassing to him about it but I ended up having to keep my own stash so he wouldn't nick it. He was a short-arms, Long pockets type who was first out the taxi, last to the bar...
Surely it makes sense to upset Andrex users, how about a limited edition 'ruby red' Run Over Puppy version of Andrex, with the disclaimer that no dogs were harmed in the making of this packaging. I told my daughter they were getting rid of the Andrex dog and she burst into tears at the thought, and what did I give her? Andrex.
Can you run over a dog in Grand Theft Auto?, as there is the perfect marketing opportunity for Andrex, dog crossed road, with reel of bog roll in tow.
"Is your Shea butter Toilet paper safe to use and passed the necessary health and safety checks?" another asked. "I've not used it before but the thought of wiping up with paper covered in butter is a bit off-putting, yet intriguing."
I'm betting they haven't seen 'Last Tango in Paris"...
It's the old 'panta rhei' paradox again -- you can never cross the same river twice, as it has flown away in the meantime. Basically, these consumers must get to understand puppies don't remain puppies. Either Andrex has been doing something very unnatural to the display puppy for years and now time has caught up with it and it looks like an unholy cross between a nazgul, alien and vampire.
Or Andrex has always been using the one puppy after another, and turning their predecessors into puppy-soft rolls. So they can only display excess puppies, and with growing demand in China there's just not enough lab puppies around for display purposes; any they can get their hands on go immediately to production.
I hear it's where Cruella DeVille works nowadays.
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I recall that when I was in the army, each sheet had "WD Property" printed next to the perforations. That was fairly nclose to the Izal standard, as well.
There was also a requirement that one had to have two sheets in one's fully packed 'small pack' at all times.
"a lighting rod for people who are overly preoccupied with their posterior"
This brings to mind someone possessing buttocks so gargantuan that in order to observe the relevant area, they do not just require your normal everyday bathroom lights or torch - no: they require a lighting rod, presumably in conjunction with one of those mirrors on a stick you can check the underside of a chassis for suspicious, potentially explosive items (and also can be used to look for bombs under cars).
There was one Andrex ad where they had lots of puppies running around. My Mum was a Labrador fanatic and bought one of the puppies that was in that ad, cost a bomb. Had some stupid name like Lucinda-Tresesse Malsmith some such nonsense, my Mum renamed her Chloe! My Mum died around 2005 but Chloe lived to about 14, she developed severe arthritis and died last year.
I've used it - it is like that cheap paper kids used to have for drawing on (fibres visible to the eye) with a dimpled surface. I believe it was a by-product of experimental rapid runway-laying techniques. It requires much fortitude to build up the courage to use it, and few can wipe without whining a little and shedding a tear or two.
FWIW, my mom used to work for the US Army Corp of Engineers as ships quatermaster and later as a buyer onshore.
She once brought home a 200 page specification from the US Government for toilet paper that got into great detail on the number and size of wood splinters, bug parts and rat hairs that could be "allowed" in Federally Approved Toilet Paper. This is the absolute truth. It also got into detail on the amount of "grit" that the paper could contain. Now that is truly disturbing!
Needless to say, when she worked on board ship, she was directed by the crew to buy commercial toilet paper not the US Government Issue Tissue.
BTW Earl Grey, that's "Klingon's" although I assume that "Izla" paper is suitable for them. (Sure that's noy "Rizla" )
There is a reason* for those ridiculous specification documents. Its a bureaucracy's attempt to stop the contractor, having agreed to supply the best available, shipping whatever rubbish he has lying around or can source the cheapest. As with most bureaucratic solutions, it doesn't work well because it attempts to address the result rather than the cause of the problem (that the suppliers are fundamentally crooked). In a bureaucracy decisions and thus blame are collectivised to protect the otherwise unemployable. They cannot simply inspect what is offered and refuse it as not up to standard because someone would have to take responsibility.
The fact that they still get a rubbish product at an inflated price shows how well it works.
In this particular case, the specification document, assuming it is on letter sized paper, if torn into squares, and hung on a name could provide around 2 and a half man years worth of what it describes.
* Please note that I didn't say it was good reason.
And one of the things I hate about visiting countries where it is the usual way of cleaning the backside.
My Indian wife can work wonders with a small jug, even in a Western toilet, as long as there is a tap, but I am completely dependent on those wonderful sprays. Cleaner, fresher, and no having to buy loo roll, puppy or not, pound cheaper or not.
Chuck the roll! The spray's the way!
Imagine a miniature showerhead on a flexible tube. It's hung on the wall by the toilet.
You can come at the mess from front or back, as you please.
Of course, you do get left a bit wet, which is a lot less noticeable in this climate, but still... Toilet paper? Yuck!
you really don't want to know what's in jars of baby food
My father used to work for a company that sold baby food. They tried to expand their export market, but couldn't understand why baby food just didn't sell in african countries, where other preserved products sold well.
Their researchers eventually realised that the mothers in those countries were usually illiterate, and bought based on the pictures on the labels. Tins with pictures of pineapples contained pineapple, so jars with pictures of babies ... weren't going to sell well.
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