Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsless sheets, greater weight, lower price (for now)
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2017
i am no soft toilet paper aficionado, so i cannot speak to the merits of wiping with heavenly silken clouds versus heavy grit emery cloth.
i did however notice that my recently delivered order of (4 packages@12 rolls each) 7th generation tp comprised rolls of 240 sheets as opposed to the 300 sheet rolls i'd historically received.
this matters to me because i use the stuff for more than just polishing my bum – i sneeze into it, blow my nose into it, use it for various cleaning duties that do not require the stoutness of a paper towel, et cetera.
comparing my 14 july order of this stuff with my 21 december order, i find that both claim 4"x4" sheets; both claim to have been 100% recycled, and to have a minimum of 50% post consumer recycled content; both take up the same amount of space in the hall closet.
contrasting them i find that the 14 july order cost $33.80, and the 21 december 2017 price is $28.96. this reflects a 14% lower price for 20% less sheets.
but wait, it gets more weird – the new stuff has more pronounced embossing or texturing, and appears to be more loosely rolled to maintain the diameter of the packaged product.
now for the true nerd nonsense: i actually weighed eight rolls from each of the two selections and came up with an average weight of 98.4375 grams per roll for the old stuff, and 102.525 grams per roll of the new stuff. this means paying 14% less for 4% more weight.
i am not about to strip the rolls and weigh the tubes, but deforming them at the ends of the full rolls, the tubes seem pretty consistent between the two shipments of shpinc wipes.
conclusion?
too much spare time.
the price on this crapwrap fluctuates so frequently that none of this likely means much.
i guess the takeaway is that maybe 7th gen has responded to some of the complaints by fattening the sheets and reducing the count.
(UPDATE) it's august of 2018, and in the eight months since i put up this review a couple of more shipments of this stuff have come in. the inconsistencies continue.
the price still fluctuates wildly, and both the width and thickness have varied, though the heavily embossed thing went away. of course i also do not know how long one or another of these cases have been sitting in some warehouse from a previous generation of the product.
i have not bothered to do the weighing thing again because i am confident that doing so a dozen more times would not reveal a trend in any direction
i guess the only long term trend one could anticipate would be that the price will go up and the quality will go down – just like everything else (except microprocessors).