Have you Joined Charmin’s “the Go” Nation?

Listen, everyone poops.  We know this.  And even if we didn’t know it before, there is a book  by Taro Gomi reminding us that Everyone Poops! The book is ranked #1 in the Science, Nature & How it Works, Children’s Book category on Amazon.com the day of this post, so there must be a lot of us that have the book to use as a reference just in case we forget everyone poops. Poop is part of our lives.  A normal bodily function.  Dare I say it is part of our vernacular?  I mean , there are poop references in everyday converstations.  “They think their poop doesn’t stink” or “Holy Crap” or “You are in deep doo doo” or ” I nearly dropped a load in my drawers” or “He must have a turd crossways” meaing he is in a bad mood. Who among us is unaware that poop is a part of life?  That being said, I just can’t bring myself to accept the latest  advertisement from Procter & Gamble’s  Charmin. Remember the good old days when Mr. Whipple would try to keep shoppers from squeezing the Charmin toilet paper?  We got the message, Charmin is super soft and has a light pleasant fragrance.  But just in case you don’t remember Mr. Whipple, here is a short video of an older Charmin commercial.

Mr. Whipple has since  retired and he was replaced  with animated bears.  Hey, I like bears, I really do.   So why am I bothered by the Charmin cartoon bears?  Here is why.  I am not going to get into the anthropomorphic issue of bears using toilet tissue.  I had one person refuse to review my book The Tiniest Tiger because the cats communicated with each other.  The cats did not talk to any humans but had cat to cat chat. Whatever, I for one think that animals do in fact communicate with each other, but I digress.  Back to the bears,  I am not going to rant about the bears being a bad influence by encouraging people to litter by leaving their soiled toilet paper in the woods.  But what I am going to say is I for one don’t enjoy watching a cartoon bear get bits of toilet tissue wiped off of their behind.  Not because I am squeamish, but because, honestly, is this a problem?  Are their masses of people walking around with bits of soiled paper stuck to their behinds? Do people watch this commercial and say, “Hey I have a poop paper problem too and by golly Charmin is the answer?”  Does this advertisement work?  You might be thinking, well it must work otherwise they wouldn’t run the ad, too many dollars spent to run a lame advertisement campaign, right?   Well considering the Center for Responsive Politics declared that 3.7 billion was spent on the midterm elections, what do you think?  Do you think that was a good spend or was that just money down the toilet?

Now we have gone from Mr. Whipple and the tag line “Charmin is squeezably soft” to Charmin, “Enjoy the Go” There is even a contest now and a chance to win $50,000. This is  direct from the Charmin, enjoy the go! website;

Charmin is looking for the Go Nation representative who best embodies our “Enjoy the Go” spirit.

Does this translate into who  loves taking a crap the most?  Really? You’ve got to be shitting me! This is what Proctor & Gamble has come up with for the Charmin campaign?  Is it just me?  Oh I don’t think so.  As of this post the Charmin Facebook page had 3206 “Likers”.  Not so impressive for the consumer packaged goods behemoth. And the auditions to find the #1 pooper end in just 3 days from this post. Yet just another reason why I did a 180 out of the freezer into the field.  I will just keep studying zoology where I know for sure that a bear leaves scat in the woods.  This type of crap I can handle.