Has anyone caught the In Memoriam Charmin ad for Dick Wilson, a.k.a. “Mr. Whipple”? I saw it the other day and here’s a link for those who’ve missed it.

Even though I grew up at the tail-end of the Mr. Whipple “era,” I’ve gotta say… I had no idea he was SO pervy. One should not be that into their toilet paper! Note how he’s eyeballing the women with this vaguely Chester the Molester glee and their scandalized cry of “Mr. Whipple!” when he jumps out at them makes it sound like he’s doing something far worse than shilling TP. I mean, what exactly is “squeezably soft” here, People?

Most troubling of all? I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but “regular” Charmin is no longer squeezable! Sometime in the last year, they changed the paper quality and it’s pretty much just like everyone else’s. The soft, cushion-y, grope-able rolls no longer exist. I think you have to go “Charmin Ultra” or something in order to find that. Poor Mr. Whipple. Maybe they were just waiting till he passed on?

Luckily, there are some classic holiday-themed commercials running to counteract the questionable feelings evoked by the Charmin commercial (“show me on the doll where the strange people squeezed you…”). They’ve whipped out (hee!) the Campbell’s Soup Snow Boy, etc.

I have YET to see my favorite ad: Peter! Oh, you’re home!. I’m a Maxwell House girl, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see Peter wake up his family with the aroma of Folger’s.

I also did a quick search for a generic Oreos commercial with a dad teaching his kid how to separate and dunk but couldn’t find it. The little boy is named Gary and I think he played CJ on One Life to Live for a bit. Yes, I remember things like that. Like how wee, pouty-lipped baby Lucas on General Hospital went on to play a baby on the short-lived Baby Talk with Mary Page Keller and baby Frederick Crane on Cheers. (A cursory search says these twins were Christopher and Kevin Graves. They’re 18 now. I’m so OLD.)

And, wow, I seriously wandered from my original topic, didn’t I? That, my friends, is the Curse of YouTube…only slightly less dangerous than the Curse of Wikipedia.