Tissue Issue: The Charmin Bears Have Got to Go

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IT'S SATURDAY AFTERNOON. I'm sacked out on the couch flipping between "I Love the New Millennium" on VH1 and a DVRed episode of "My Life on the D-List" on Bravo. My brain is sauteeing in mindless pop-culturey goodness.

Then, it happens. Onto my screen flicker two cute cartoon bears with perky little voices. One's a mom and one's a kid and the mom's chasing the kid and my mind finally locks on the central point of the ad: the child bear has little bits of toilet paper stuck to his behind.

I don't think of myself as a person who's shocked easily. I work at a newspaper. I know very blunt people who talk about very blunt things. I follow links to videos on YouTube with a devil-may-care recklessness.

So you can imagine my surprise when a cartoon bear with bits of TP stuck to its hindquarters made me gasp like a prissy old lady — like I was stately Grizelda Von Higgenbottom confronted with the dirtiest part of a "Girls Gone Wild" video.

I looked online, but couldn't find the ad I saw. Here's one that's similar.

They're bears! They're playing football! They're cartoons! It's almost cute. And then you realize what they're talking about and a shiver goes up your spine. These innocent cartoon beings have been corrupted, forced to discuss things that have no place in polite conversation. Even on VH1.

I can see why Charmin would want us to know that their toilet paper is strong. And the little snippet of the ad above with the 3-pound weights tearing a puny paper to shreds while Charmin stays strong like a bull is absolutely enough to show the efficacy of their product. (Why 3 pounds, by the way? Has it been scientifically proven that three pounds of pressure is applied when one is, um, using toilet paper?) But do we really need to see the gory result of using a lesser brand?

Kleenex cleans noses, but do we need a cartoon puffer fish with a visible booger to explain that to us? It's like those Massengill commercials (click if you dare) in the '80s, except more sinister: We're lulled into a false sense of complacency, then gouged with grossness.

In fact, the entire Charmin Bear series features a similar set of sneak attacks. Take this commercial about kids using too much "bath tissue" (I won't even describe what kind of image that name conjures up):

Again, disarmingly precious. Until you realize what the little tyke's doing, how off-the-wall stingy Mom must be and the thorough invasion of privacy that's transpiring.

Charmin's toilet paper might be strong. It might be absorbent. It might slice and dice and puree and cure cancer. But now, all I can think about when I think of Charmin is how much its ads creep me out.