\n<\/p>\n
Newton Chambers initially gave the toilet paper away to local authorities who placed bulk orders for their liquid disinfectant.<\/p>\n
It meant the medicated toilet paper began appearing in public toilets, hospitals and schools.<\/p>\n
Softer alternatives were viewed with suspicion \u2013 seen as unnecessary, even frivolous, or not strong enough to do the job.<\/p>\n
But in the mid-20th Century new competitors approached the market differently, emphasising comfort rather than hygiene.<\/p>\n
White says brands such as Andrex made the contrast clear, promoting the idea that toilet paper should be “soft not stiff, shiny or scratchy”.<\/p>\n
Sales of the softer varieties began to take over. <\/p>\n
Izal introduced its own soft toilet paper, but the brand’s old image was hard to shake.<\/p>\n
Its hard toilet paper survived for years as a niche product.<\/p>\n
Jayne Howe, a former marketing director at Jeyes which bought the Izal brand in 1986, recalls that people would write to the company asking where they could buy it.<\/p>\n
“Most of the letters were coming from older people, 70-plus, that had grown up with it,” she says.<\/p>\n
Falling demand led to lower production volumes, which pushed up costs and made it harder to keep the product widely available.<\/p>\n
Attempts to reinvent it as a moist toilet tissue were ruled out.<\/p>\n
“It was associated with this awful product that nobody really could understand why anybody had used it,” says Howe.<\/p>\n
“So you just couldn’t see how you could modernise to a wet wipe and put that name on it.”<\/p>\n
In the face of falling financial returns, Jeyes discontinued Izal toilet paper in 2010.<\/p>\n
A product that had once dominated the market and been used on millions of suffering bottoms quietly disappeared.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n