Branding Bumwad

Here are some historical facts about toilette paper, but for the poop about bumwad you have to read the blogs.

One of our favorite blogs, Strange New Products, tells us that Kimberly Clark is now offering a new type of toilet paper designed to train kids how much toilet paper to use.

Cottonelle For Kids has doggie tracks printed on the toilet paper, and at roughly every five sheets is a cartoon drawing of a dog. Parents are instructed to teach their children to follow the tracks and then tear off at the dog. Otherwise, the toilet paper is the same paper used in other Cottonelle products.

Speaking of Cottonelle, Peter Rukavina explains the name change in Canada.

…I can’t imagine there’s a television-watching Canadian who doesn’t know that “Cottonelle is changing its name to Cashmere.” For those of you from outside of Canada, Cottonelle is the brand name used by Scott Paper Limited here in Canada for “Canada’s #1 selling bathroom tissue.”

You, like I, may have wondered why Scott Paper, after years of drumming us over the head with the “you can feel the cottony softness… Cottonelle” television commercials, would change horses in mid-stream. It turns out that the change is the result of a complicated set of corporate maneuverings:

* Scott Paper Company, a U.S. company, was founded in 1879 in Philadelphia (reference).
* Westminster Paper Mills, a Canadian company, was founded in 1922 in British Columbia (reference).
* In 1954, Scott Paper Company acquired a 50.1% controlling interest in Westminster Paper Mills (reference). The relationship allowed Westminster Paper Mills to use its new parent company’s brand names in Canada.
* Westminster Paper Mills changed its name to Scott Paper Limited in 1964 (reference).
* The brand-name Cottonelle was introduced by Scott Paper Company in the U.S. in 1972, and sometime thereafter was used by Scott Paper Limited to market toilet paper in Canada.
* In 1997, multinational giant Kimberly-Clark acquired Scott Paper Company (reference) and, with the acquisition, controlling interest in the Canadian Scott Paper Limited.
* Partly due to concerns from Canada’s Competition Bureau, in 1997 Kimberly-Clark sold its interest in Scott Paper Limited to the Canada-based Kruger Company.
* As part of the sale, Scott Paper Limited was given a 10-year license to use certain Kimberly-Clark brands, like Cottonelle, in Canada.
* With the brand licensing agreement soon to expire, in 2004, Scott Paper Limited began the brand transition from Cottonelle to Cashmere (reference).

So, if you hear that Canadians wipe their asses with soft wool from goats, you’ll know that’s simply not true.