Spotted on BoingBoing is this special toilet paper just for kids. It’s printed with a puppy paw path that spans five sheets (and then begins again). It’s portion control for toilet paper, presumably there is a need to have kids learn how much to use? I’m a bit confused as to the actual need, and how this solves it. Wouldn’t the amount needed depend on what is being wiped? And who is being wiped?

I’d guess you’d want to teach kids to wipe until they are done – to pay attention to the bodily and other cues (visual?) to ensure that the hygiene need has been handled. Making it such an inflexible system doesn’t teach anyone anything!

And if you use a different amount than five sheets, ever, then the system breaks until you sync up back to sheet zero with the happy puppy. A training system that is intolerant of (highly likely) user error is not a good training system.

You must always use five and only five sheets. Regardless of what’s going on with your po-po! Cottonelle has forgotten that they work for us, not the other way around.

And their site includes this lovely FAQ (which is such as misnomer, since these are not likely to be frequently-asked-questions, but rather info they wish to convey) that suggests some product problems besides the obvious usability failures.

Why is my toilet paper printed on the inside? How do I fix this?
The good news is that this is an easy fix. The toilet paper isn’t actually printed on the inside. What’s happened is that the two plies have become separated, and the inside ply is wrapped around the outside of your roll (you’ll probably also notice that the perforations on the two plies don’t line up). To fix, first make sure your toilet paper is positioned so that it unrolls from the spindle with the sheets coming over the top. Next, steady the roll so it does not move in the spindle. Take the top ply (make sure you are only handling one ply) and unwrap it behind the roll. The print should now appear on the outside, as intended, and the bottom ply should now be longer that the top ply. Tear off the excess bottom plies (approximately 3) and you are ready to go.

and When I tear the toilet paper, the perforations on the two plies do not line up? How do I fix this? which offers the identical answer.

Now we’re taking on toilet paper maintenance tasks? Who the hell wants to fix their toilet paper? This is way too much work and this company hasn’t a clue about addressing real people’s needs.

The America’s Best Restroom contest has selected five finalists.

Organizers do research about the businesses but don’t actually try out the chosen throne rooms before selecting five for the online poll. “We have nominations from all over the place. It would be too hard,” said Bensten.

And the nominees are:

• All Seasons Bistro, East Lansing, MI.
  
• Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, Atlantic City, NJ
  
• Hemenways, Providence, RI
  
• Quad City International Airport, Moline, IL
  
• Wendell’s Restaurant, Westerville, OH
  

I hadn’t seen anything like this before, known as a dual-flush toilet. Nice interface; the oval flush button is divided in two; one button is twice the size of the other. You choose which flushing button to press based on what you’ve just done. Visually there’s a number one and a number two button. They could have had some awkward fun with color-coding, I suppose. If it’s yellow…etc.

Note: other pics from our trip to Banff are here

Step into a world of luxury with the Herbeau Creations Dagobert Throne Toilet

. Take your bathroom back a few years with this pull chain antique style toilet that perfectly accents a clawfoot bathtub in your vintage bathroom. The toilet comes with an ashtray, candle holder, and hand painted toilet bowl and plaque.

PRODUCT FEATURES
– Solid ash throne with 3 layers of polyurethane coating
– Pull chain flush with bell, ashtray in arm, and candle included
– “Le Bon Roi Dagobert” plays when lid is raised – a song about a king who arrived at the minister’s council with his trousers on backwards
– Hand-painted toilet bowl and plaque

Base Price – $9,799.00

I think my fave is the ashtray. Just that extra touch of class.

The World Toilet Organization is offering a series of posters for their public education campaign. This was my fave.

Sinkems fun shapes are made from a patented, dissolving, non-toxic and biodegradable septic-tank safe material. Simply place one fun shape in the toilet or potty and encourage your toddler to sink’em! It’s a great way for both boys and girls to start TOILET TRAINING! When finished, just flush down the toilet

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FreshMeat #11 from Steve Portigal

               (__)                     
               (oo) Fresh                  
                \\/  Meat

If you aren’t addicted to FreshMeat, well, why not?
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Dive deep into the mundane; find fascination and humor
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Not too much to say about the following news article,
most every toilet joke imaginable was crammed into it,
so there’s no real need for me to add more (yes, this
takes enormous restraint on my part). I think the point
is that for just about anything that we consume (and
as consumers, take for granted) there is some subset
of a brand manager, a designer, a committee, a
conference, a product manager, and who knows what –
someone who is concerned with some combination of
business success, usage, and meaning.

——

By John O’Callaghan SINGAPORE (Reuters) – It’s something
people use every day but organizers of the World Toilet
Summit in Singapore hope to bring the taboo topic out of
the water closet. Some 200 delegates from Asia, Europe and
North America are swapping ideas on design, public
education and sanitation under the theme “Our toilets the
past, the present and the future.”

The new World Toilet Association wants to spread the word
with its Web site — www.worldtoilet.org

— as a nerve
center for researchers, designers, makers and vendors of a
device that is mundane to many but an unknown luxury in
much of the world.

“The proliferation of this movement worldwide will
inevitably lead to improvements in toilet environment
everywhere,” Jack Sim, president of the Restroom
Association of Singapore and organizer of the two-day
summit, said in an opening address on Monday.

Wash your hands and always flush was the message from a
mime troupe that kicked off the event with a graphic but
silent demonstration of the good, the bad and the ugly in
the bathroom.

Delegates, including Chinese officials preparing for the
Olympic onslaught in 2008, will also be treated to a tour
of some of Singapore’s most technically advanced commodes.
The latest and greatest loos will be on show at the four-
day Restroom Asia trade fair at Singapore Expo starting on
Tuesday.

The World Health Organization estimates 40 percent of the
world’s population does not have access to adequate
sanitation, leading to the spread of disease, higher
healthcare costs and the death of two million people each
year — most of them children.

“Up to now, it’s an area that has been very much
neglected,” Lim Swee Say, Singapore’s acting minister for
the environment, told reporters on the sidelines of the
summit. “You can’t avoid talking about the kind of
challenges we face.”

Singapore already is at the forefront of enforcing toilet
etiquette with fines for not flushing and automatic devices
that sense when to send the water surging. But the city
state is not taking the future sitting down by spending S$7
billion ($3.8 billion) on a deep-tunnel sewage system and
millions more on upgrading public toilets in hawker
centers, housing estate coffee shops, parks and schools.

“We are adopting an end-to-end approach in looking at our
sanitation requirements,” Lim said in a speech.