Izal Toilet Paper

paulads

Anyone else tried DIY Izal?

I had the need to pay a visit while busking in Florence train station back in the late 80s and, once I’d finished, I realised that there was, of course, no toilet roll. As luck would have it, I had some green rizla papers on me and so, carefully sticking the dozen or so left in the packet together, managed to fashion myself a couple of sheets.

A thoroughly grim experience 

Offset

Izal: redistribution as opposed to removal.

I endured it at both primary and secondary school.

Rob1742

I have read that in the 1920’s the company who owned it gave it away free to local authorities in return for buying their other cleaning products.

Whether this continued all the way through the 70’s and 80’s I am not sure, but 100% there was something strange going with regards to why it was stocked.

There is no way this would have been chosen as a product to use unless it was part of a larger deal, or something underhand happened.

Local authorities knew this was a bad product, but continued to push it on the kids despite its lack of functionality. 

I still think i may have some shit in the middle of my back from the days I used to have to chase my turd remnants around my body. 

merlin

Rob1742 said:

I have read that in the 1920’s the company who owned it gave it away free to local authorities in return for buying their other cleaning products.

Whether this continued all the way through the 70’s and 80’s I am not sure, but 100% there was something strange going with regards to why it was stocked.

It could be the simple reason that it costs fuck all. 

The single most popular sanitary company that provides toilet paper, hand drying paper, hand drying machines, air fresheners etc is a global company called Tork. Look them up. 

The real reason why they are so successful is clear;



Tork is cheap.

crosstownvamp

Anyone remember the  little 'health information adverts' stuck on the toilet doors?

There was a little red and black devil trying to burst through the paper - but Super-Tough Medicated Izal wouldn't let it through.

Lol. 

Soft bog roll must have been a luxury item 60 years ago.

Blueingreen

My grandma used this stuff. It wasn’t thrift or austerity - she liked her house to be comfortable, more for other people than herself, and was usually willing to spend a bit extra to have nicer stuff. She must have genuinely thought it was better than the alternatives. I can only assume that a lot of her generation believed its claims to being “medicated” and therefore in some way healthier.

boogieman

When I was a kid we had two toilet roll holders in the bathroom. One for the soft stuff and one for the Izal that my dad insisted on buying for some godforsaken reason. 

Anyone else remember those square flat packs of bog paper that slid into a china dispenser? 

BillDL

Offset said:

Izal: redistribution as opposed to removal.

I endured it at both primary and secondary school.

Did you also have cakes of pink carbolic soap, or green odd-smelling stuff, that were sliced from a large rectangular log of soap by the janitor and placed in the toilets to go all gooey where it sat in the skiddled water around the sinks?

I was raised in a country that had to manufacture a lot of it's own things due to economic and political sanctions, and the bog roll used in most public places was recycled paper that sat somewhere between 120 grit emery cloth and newspaper in terms of comfort.  Dock leaves definitely made the best improvised wipes when caught short outdoors playing.  It saved me from having to use my own Y-fronts to wipe and then throw them away, which I did have to do once.

Kittyfrisk

^ I still love the smell of proper carbolic soap, even though like most things you can't easily get hold of the real stuff, just like what happened to proper coal tar soap.

The old joke was that an Izal advert would be " Let's start a smear campaign'.

rze99

Yes it was crap

Hootsmon

I will raise ya some red smelly carbolic soap

boogieman

I still love the smell of Wrights coal tar soap. 

Kurtis

ICBM said:

BluesLover said:

Outdoor toilet, frozen in winter, ripped up newspaper on a rusty nail. Ah the good old days.
Izal was for posh people...

Old newspaper was *better* than Izal.

On the bright side, my school having the horrific stuff instilled a lifelong determination to only have a shit once a day, in the morning, immediately before showering. (Unless actually ill, and even that's pushing it.) Probably too much information.

I've always been very regular and dropped one before leaving the house. 
I remember this stuff at primary school but don't remember ever using it. 

Sometimes, if I had a runny nose, I'd get a sheet of a4 and crumple it up several times until it became nice and soft.

Kittyfrisk

Kurtis said:

ICBM said:

BluesLover said:

Outdoor toilet, frozen in winter, ripped up newspaper on a rusty nail. Ah the good old days.
Izal was for posh people...

Old newspaper was *better* than Izal.

On the bright side, my school having the horrific stuff instilled a lifelong determination to only have a shit once a day, in the morning, immediately before showering. (Unless actually ill, and even that's pushing it.) Probably too much information.

I've always been very regular and dropped one before leaving the house. 
I remember this stuff at primary school but don't remember ever using it. 

Sometimes, if I had a runny nose, I'd get a sheet of a4 and crumple it up several times until it became nice and soft.

We had foolscap, none of yer johnny foreigner A4 stuff 

Kurtis

Kittyfrisk said:

Kurtis said:

ICBM said:

BluesLover said:

Outdoor toilet, frozen in winter, ripped up newspaper on a rusty nail. Ah the good old days.
Izal was for posh people...

Old newspaper was *better* than Izal.

On the bright side, my school having the horrific stuff instilled a lifelong determination to only have a shit once a day, in the morning, immediately before showering. (Unless actually ill, and even that's pushing it.) Probably too much information.

I've always been very regular and dropped one before leaving the house. 
I remember this stuff at primary school but don't remember ever using it. 

Sometimes, if I had a runny nose, I'd get a sheet of a4 and crumple it up several times until it became nice and soft.

We had foolscap, none of yer johnny foreigner A4 stuff 

Oh I had to wear one of those too sometimes! 

randella

I remember staying at a campsite in the UK for a gig or something a few years ago. Bloody Izal in the bogs, they must’ve been hoarding it since Thatcher was in office.

There's a reason the French do camping better, and it ain’t just the weather. 

randella

"And what did you do at the weekend?"

"Had a conversation with some strangers on the Internet about wiping your arse on tracing paper in the 80's"

Timcito

Izal loo paper confounded all normal standards of logic, utility and decency. How could it have happened? Can you imagine the R & D department testing out a few rolls and then proudly recommending the product to the board? Surely what happened in those tests must have been what always happened if anyone ever attempted a clean-up with this brand? Was there seriously no one who took part in those tests that didn't say, "Hey, did the same thing happen to you that just happened to me?"?

Who knows, maybe they intuited that there was something in the experience that would score a direct hit with old ladies.. For the rest of us, Izal was nothing short of an abomination!

Philly_Q

boogieman said:

Anyone else remember those square flat packs of bog paper that slid into a china dispenser? 

I must admit I thought that was what the whole thread was about.  I don't remember Izal as a brand name at all, and I didn't know that kind of paper came in rolls, but I was thinking of the little flat boxes of "tracing paper" we used to have in school and in my gran's outside toilet.

The paper was nasty, but I liked the way the box fit into the dispenser, it was quite neat and pleasing.

scrumhalf

Izal and its clones (Chizal?) had the advantage of being able to be imprinted with "now wash your hands" or "property of BBC".

At least you had something to read whilst doing your business.