Does a 'Standard' Toilet Roll Exist?                       2021-01-01
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Until this year most people probably didn't think a great deal about
buying rolls of toilet paper... That all changed with the great toilet
paper shortage of March. Those times have passed, but it's still
surprisingly difficult to get a particular brand or size of pack
here. We don't ever seem to get what we ask for in our grocery pickup
orders.

Anyway, all of the different brands and packs of toilet roll we have
received this year claim that they are SUPER, MEGA, or ULTRA. If you
believe them, one 6-pack is equivalent to 24 standard toilet
tolls. Yes! they have crammed 4x the amount of paper onto a single
roll.

What on earth is a standard roll of toilet paper though? I'm not sure
I've ever seen a roll with 1/4 of the number of sheets. It seems to be
some mythical item that exists only so manufacturers can claim theirs
are 4 TIMES BIGGER!

I've been thinking about this far too much, so I had a search around
on the net. A bulk pack of Scott Professional bathroom tissue actually
claims it contains '80 Standard Rolls Individually Wrapped'. These
'Standard Rolls' are 550 sheets per roll 2-ply. 550 sheets sounds like
a lot to me. Certainly can't imagine those 4x Mega rolls are 2,200
sheets!

Jumping over to the Charmin website and, oh my, they have a 'Super
Mega Roll' that's equivalent to 6, yes 6, standard rolls. Hmmmm... but
that's 6 *Charmin* standard rolls. A-ha.... so they have some special
definition of a standard roll to make their Super Mega roll more
impressive then? Wait a minute... when you go to look at their product
list there's Mega, Super, and Forever size. There is no Charmin
standard roll. How do they get away with this? The plot thickens
further too. The Super Mega roll is 426 sheets per roll, or 124 fewer
than that Scott's standard roll above.

I have lost all faith in purveyors of toilet paper.