Remember Colored Toilet Paper?

If you’re a Baby Boomer like me, you’ll remember toilet paper coming in many different colors in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s – like blue, pink, yellow, green, and peach. It was awesome. Not only colored, but highly scented and super thick as well. Which was also awesome. Urinary tract infections and the environment be damned!

This ZEE Bathroom Tissue ad from 1972 brought back a lot of memories. Seeing the thick blue roll of toilet paper is almost startling now, after decades of sterile white, white, and more white. And toilet paper has gotten flimsier and the rolls smaller, much to my consternation.

It’s doubtful that any Millennials have ever seen or used colored toilet paper. A ban was placed on the dyes used in the coloration of toilet paper in 1987 by the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services due to an increased risk of cancer in laboratory animals.  Which makes sense, of course. But bathroom breaks were a lot more fun and colorful back in the day!

~Marilyn