Not to be too harsh, but earlier this week I was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom and was stunned when I grabbed a new roll of toilet paper, if you know what I mean. Toilet paper squares—blocky, functional, familiar—are no longer squares. The edge of each piercing is not a straight line, but a series of smooth curves, similar to sound waves. It gives the toilet paper an elegant, jagged look, and it’s like hiring an interior designer to improve the efficiency of wiping my butt.
What’s happened? This roll comes in a new 24-count pack of Charmin Ultra Soft, the same brand I always buy because if there’s any part of your body that’s worth spending a little extra money on, it’s your body. Once finished, I went to the warehouse to see if the packaging mentioned this innovation in TP design. Big Blue – Fans know that, like the Beatles’ greatest hits, Charmin comes in blue and red, and you can judge by whether you prefer the blue (super soft) or red (super soft) – but that’s not the case. In fact, no differences can be identified at all. Indeed, the piece of toilet paper that the bear on the package gently presses to his face is extremely soft, a real square with straight edges and completely unable to reflect the undulating joy within.
Maybe some capricious craftsman stole a hammer drill from the Shamin factory? Am I the subject of a slow-motion psychology experiment to see if people would become gentler, kinder, and less animalistic if our toilet paper became 7% more sophisticated? A Google search reveals that others have encountered this TP redesign. Last fall, Scary Mommy’s Katie Arnold-Ratliff found that a small number of consumers were voicing their opinions on social media and review sites, with both approval (“I like the jagged edges” – Momof2PlustheDog) and those against ( “pieces get stuck there”). my dog” – laurenm669). While Charmin responded to some of the messages—”Laurenm669, we’re so sorry you experienced this”—the company didn’t actually explain the design change or respond to Arnold, Ratliff asked. She wondered if this was just a rare example of a brand adding a little beauty to its products just for fun.
However, when I emailed Charmin’s media relations department, they responded immediately—because I reached out to them the week the company finally officially released Smooth Tear, a new and improved version of toilet paper with scalloped edges. They’re looking forward to the press. . That’s how I came to discuss the development of toilet paper over Zoom with Gregg Weaver, a senior scientist at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. He told me that the jagged edges are more than just aesthetic, although he acknowledged that some people think they look good. Weaver said the wavy edges were designed to solve the No. 1 problem faced by toilet paper consumers: incomplete tears.
You know, instead of two full squares, you get 1 ⅔, and there’s a long strip hanging from the roll. “Most people can’t leave it like that,” Weaver said. “They were upset. They told us about it.” Weaver said the rip was not the biggest complaint the call center received. Although I sometimes get annoyed by incomplete tears, I admit that I have never thought to complain to the toilet paper manufacturer. I guess I just think it’s the price you pay as a human being. I’m too cheap to afford fancy Japanese toilet seats, so torn toilet paper is to blame; Fortunately, other Americans refuse to discuss this issue. So the company sent a research and development team to solve the problem, and five years and 30 patents later, Charmin believes its new contoured-edge toilet paper could solve the problem of incomplete tears.
The process begins by identifying the cause of the problem. Weaver said the fibers of toilet paper generally run vertically across the roll, meaning that when you rip the paper, you’re tearing against the grain of the paper. There is also a big difference in how people tear paper, depending on where the paper is in the bathroom, whether they are left-handed or right-handed, and whether they prefer it above or below the roll. But most people rip diagonally down rather than straight, leaving the last stray strands in the roll.
“We came to the table with a lot of different options,” Weaver said. In the research lab, Weaver and other scientists manually punched holes in blank rolls of paper, trying to get them into the right shape. They tried a diagonal line corresponding to the angle of the average pullout force, but found, “Well, it works well on one side, but not so well on the other. The team found that a wavy line worked best for most consumers.” withstand a combination of downward and lateral forces during the user’s tearing action. “As soon as we tried it, the feedback we got was, ‘It’s like a hot knife cutting through butter.’
Much of those five years were spent retooling equipment at the company’s six toilet paper factories to adapt to the new era of perforation, Weaver said. With some exaggeration, he said: “Toilet paper as we know it existed before the invention of soft-tear technology, which was invented during the Industrial Revolution. About 100 years ago it was designed to run efficiently on a perforated production line.” A nice, simple 90 degree angle to toilet paper running through a machine at 60 mph is perfect for production. So once Weaver’s team was convinced that wavy edges were better, they had to oversee the company’s piercing machines being swapped and replaced to quickly create wavy lines.
It’s no surprise that they release these volumes with as much media hype as possible. They’ve put real money into this innovation, which, at least for now, is only available on Charmin Ultra Soft. (“Our ultra-soft consumers are very experience-oriented. The look, the feel, the bath experience is important to them,” I was told. Face it, red people, they are no better than animals in my opinion.) Charmin really likes to draw attention to its research and development; A fascinating 2019 article in Popular Science took readers to the Cincinnati lab to see its robotic tear tester, a “balloon” and a patented synthetic fecal formula.
How to become a toilet paper researcher? Weaver said his father also worked for Procter & Gamble and told him that you could, in fact, get a college education while working for the company. “I studied most of my graduate work on my own, more so than at university,” he said. Weaver Phils has been with Procter for 25 years. For a man who thinks about toilet paper all day, Weaver is less reticent when it comes to the squalor of bathrooms. “It’s what everyone does,” he said, “why not enjoy the experience?”
Did I enjoy my experience using Smooth Tear Ultra Soft Charmin? While I respect science, I can’t say there is a huge difference in the integrity of my tears. I like the thin curved edges, they still look nicer than my bold font should have. What I’m most excited about is that this is a consumer product mystery and that I was finally able to get to the bottom of it.
Post time: May-31-2024