Mr. Hill has been counting the sheets included in his rolls of toilet paper since his wife noticed something odd. The rolls in the 4-pack lasted longer than the ones in the 12-pack.

"She complained that a roll in the 12-pack would last just three days and the same size in the four-roll pack lasted four," Hill explained. "I wanted to find out."

Hill figured he had the time, since there wasn't much else to do but read or stare at the shower curtain. So he counted every sheet of toilet paper as he used it.

It wasn't for any other reason, he said, than to know if the number of sheets noted on the package matched what was on the roll.

Jotting his totals on a flattened inner tube from an expended roll, Hill said he kept meticulous track. Each day he'd count the number of sheets he needed — he limited the experiment to his Lakewood home's basement bathroom because his wife won't go there — then added it to his previous day's tally.
By his count, the first roll was short by 15 sheets.

"You couldn't prove anything from one roll," Hill admits, "so I counted them all."

At the end of the month, Hill said his nine-roll average was 156.75 sheets for the rolls of Angel Soft that promised 198 on the package.

Hill didn't want to make a stink about it, but thought someone should know.

"I called them up," Hill said about Georgia-Pacific Corp., the tissue's makers.

Intrigued, The Denver Post tried to replicate Mr. Hill's findings, but none of the rolls they counted had fewer sheets than advertised. This news pleased Mr. Hill:

"Maybe they started getting the counters right," he said with a chuckle. "I'm sure glad you got a good roll."

It's good to know Leo's out there, keeping them honest.

In the paper chase, he's coming up short [Denver Post] (Thanks, Stephanie!)
(Photo:Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Trendwatching says it's part of the consumer trend of "premiumization," whereby every product is available in "upgraded" form. Think premium vodkas, where you pay $10 more just to have a fancy backstory in a pretty bottle, and apply that mentality to every consumer good.

Renova... now you can talk out of your ass and wipe it at the same time!

Mary Bach, of Murrysville, said Kmart offered to settle the case out of court before a Thursday hearing at which a Monroeville district judge sided with her. But the settlement required her to sign a confidentiality agreement, which would have defeated the purpose of her suit, Bach said.

"I want consumers as they shop during the important holiday to be aware of what is and what isn't taxable," Bach said after the verdict. "I would lose my ability to spread that message if I were gagged."

"We don't want to fight with our customers," Kmart spokeswoman Kim Freely said. "We apologize for the inconvenience and the problem is being corrected."

Bach said shoppers "need to look at every line" on sales receipts when they shop.

Pa. woman wins complaint against Kmart over tax on toilet paper [Philly]
(Photo:epicharmus)

PREVIOUSLY: K-Mart Illegally Taxes Toilet Paper

A self-styled consumer advocate who heads AARP's Pennsylvania consumer issues task force, she has been crusading against price scanner errors for nearly 25 years. Her efforts helped spur laws requiring scanner inspections by the state's Bureau of Weights and Measures.

"Somebody has to draw attention the problems in the marketplace with these kinds of issues," she said.

Most notably, she has taken on Wal-Mart, CVS and the now-defunct Hechinger over price scanning errors.

In the case of Wal-Mart, the giant retailer paid her $100 plus court costs in 2002 for charging sales tax on a pair of ballerina-style bedroom slippers. In court, Wal-Mart's attorney argued that sales tax was appropriate because the slippers were classified as dancing shoes, she says. "It makes for a funny story."

Besides her latest suit, she has hauled Kmart to court three other times for charging her a higher price on an item than promised in an advertisement or display. In all three cases, both sides showed up at the magistrate's office but reached a settlement before arguments were heard, Mrs. Bach says.

Shopper sues Kmart in toilet tissue tax dispute [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
(Photo: d00d)

The fabulous news here, obviously, is that America's collective butt is getting smaller, and the folks at Proctor & Gamble are merely keeping pace. They've narrowed the width of Charmin, the veritable Rolls Royce of Toilet Paper, purely in response to our nation's decreasing posteriors.

The previous paragraph, of course, is an outright lie. Well, except for the part about Charmin being the Rolls Royce (pun intended) of TP; I think that's really the case. What's really happening here is the more cunning sort of inflation: I can't say for sure, but I bet the price of Charmin hasn't dropped in accordance with the size of the rolls.

Q. I noticed a difference in the size of my Charmin rolls. What is different about them and why?
A. We've reduced the width of the Charmin roll. However, each roll still has the same number of sheets.

Charmin Shrinks With Exposure to Air, Bush Economy [Money Musings] (Thanks to Jim!)

Toilet paper is cheap, plus and plentiful. hen my grandfather was in World War 2, toilet paper was a luxury. Each soldier was given 5 squares per day, and it wasn't the vellum-like angel skin toilet paper we have today... it was discarded scraps of the sandpaper used to scrape rust off of the tanks. My grandfather's greatest war story? It's not the time he helped liberate a concentration camp, nor the time we watched General MacArthur beat the crap out of one of his senior aides. It's the time he survived an attack of dysentery with a single square of toilet paper.

So he'd sneer at us gorram pansies for having the gall to complain that Scott Toilet Paper rolls have recently lost 300 inches from every roll: each square of paper has been downsized by 0.3 inches. But perhaps we can put it into context for gramps when we say that toilet paper used to be 4.5 inches per roll, before companies like Scott started downsizing the acreage we get for cleaning our asses. We've lost 800 inches from every roll over the last couple decades. And isn't preserving the American dream of plentiful toilet paper what we fought the Nazis about in the end, anyway?

Scott Toilet Paper: Still 1000 Sheets [Mouseprint]

But we would be remiss if we did not pass on their link to Milk Gone Wild, a PETA-backed parody of the titty-popping Girls Gone Wild series (for those who inexpicably are less embarrassed to own and display such a video in lieu of honest, red-blooded pornography). Milk Gone Wild's girls quite literally flash their udders, spewing fresh milk from one of their four-to-five nipples directly into the mouth of Murray Hill residents on vacation in a vacation spot populated by the families of their future housekeepers. Which sounds, you know, awesome, so we don't quite know what the point is, as we quickly stopped the video as it segued into its "milk sucks and is full of pus" message to rewind back to the part that dislodged our latent furry tendencies.

Any other day this image of a anti-nail-biting campaign would be our picture, but if we've learned one thing about journalism, it's that if it bleeds—especially if that blood is pus-filled milk—it leads.