HICKS: Truth in ads a bit too much

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By Marybeth Hicks

I never thought I'd miss Mr. Whipple. You remember him - the character played by Dick Wilson whose famous admonition, "Please don't squeeze the Charmin," was meant to embarrass hundreds of sufferers of a secret toilet paper obsession who staked out the aisles of grocery stores to grope rolls of irresistibly soft paper products.

Back in his heyday, I thought Mr. Whipple was hokey and the people who created the character cornier, still. Who sits around thinking of an imaginary grocer who catches housewives midsqueeze with a package of TP?

It turns out the people who thought of the Mr. Whipple ads for Charmin are a whole lot more genteel than the folks who now produce the company's advertising. At least the old team knew when to use euphemisms to describe the benefits of their product.

Quite simply, the current ads, featuring two annoying and overly graphic cartoon bears demonstrating the coarser points of personal hygiene, offer us consumers too much information. To wit: Last night, while drifting off to sleep in front of the television, I awoke to a voice assuring me that Charmin leaves less paper behind on the ... er ... well ... behind.

Let's all respond together: Yuck.

I don't think the Charmin ads contribute much to the decision-making process when choosing toilet tissue, but I do think they are chipping away at civilization as we know it.

Hyperbole? Perhaps.

Or perhaps there are some subjects that do not benefit from full and open discourse in the marketplace but rather whose mere mention only undermines our standards of decency and erodes any semblance of social decorum.

Whether a toilet tissue leaves remnants of itself on the user of said product strikes me as one such topic.

Sadly, the Charmin ads are among so many that exploit our privacy in search of the almighty consumer dollar.