The Spanish can purchase all-black toilet paper made by Renova Negro, a company well-known for its ads featuring couples driven to sex by the right kind of toilet paper [1].
The Japanese can buy extra-thick, aloe-moistened rolls infused with pineapple enzymes to counteract odor.
Even Germans can come out of a store with Gucci look-and-feel toilet paper which, when added to the shopping carts, starts working its magic with its urbane black-and-charcoal-gray packaging.
So the question is this: why are the Spanish, Japanese, and even the Germans wiping their asses with luxury, sexy toilet paper while the best we Americans can do is cuddly-bear Charmin? Dale Hrabi explores this question [2] in the current issue of Radar Online.
Serious PoopReporters will find his article an enlightening and entertaining read. Mr. Hrabi's best guess is that it's not that Americans are too cheap to throw money at purely fashion concepts -- note the success here of bottled water and Starbucks coffee. No, it’s because, as Kenn Fischburg, president of Toilet Paper World, puts it, "Americans aren't ready to say, 'I want to tell you about my wonderful experience in the toilet.'"
Hmmm. Is PoopReport taking the wrong approach in the pursuit of its mission? What sells best on this site are brick-and-mortar stories of shit gone wild, of love interrupted -- or lost -- to the need to shit. Indeed, PR regulars express discomfort about the pairing of shitting with sexuality, while The Big Wiper consistently earns jeers from the peanut gallery with his homespun stories highlighting the character-building function of community shitting.
So here's a proposal: a call for stories about "wonderful experiences on the toilet" -- ones that would want to make us rush out and buy all-black toilet paper and display it proudly on the top of our shopping carts.
