I just recently got back from spending Thanksgiving in Paris. While I was there I noticed that the majority of toilet paper in public areas was pink. Even in a french sitcom, the toiletpaper being stolen by on charachter was pink. Any reasons for this?
-PSM
Indeed, most of the toilet paper is pink. Sometimes white. I’ve no clue why. Probably they found out at some point that customers were more attracted towards a pink product. Possibly this color is associated with smoothness, or something…I absolutely don’t know. I remember that old fashionned TP, nor smooth nor very absorbing was brownish. It seems to me that white TP was more common in the past. Perhaps some colors remind some people of older products which were of lower quality, and some other colors appear as just not the right color for TP. Who knows? In any case, it’s certainly a marketing issue.
It seems that colors people find appealing in a product vary from country to country. For instance, french people don’t want to buy fridges, washing machines, etc…which aren’t white. Attempts to sell these products in various colors, as it is done in some other countries, have failed.
Colored TP was a big thing in the 80’s. I mean, heaven forbid your TP clash with your bathroom. 
IIRC, It was discontinued due to health concerns over the dyes being used and possible pollution dangers.
I must say that I actually see a trend in French toilet paper colouring. Ten years ago it was almost exclusively pink, but nowadays other colours, (mainly white) are becoming more and more popular. In the French supermarket that I most often frequent, less than half of the aisle space is taken by pink paper. (And most of the pink paper is low quality stuff.)
Yet again the French culture is being beaten into submission by the international mass-producing giants.
On French TV most of the toilet paper advertisment shows fluffy friendly white paper, maybe with some light printed motive, but very rarely pink.
By slanting the adverts that way, pink toilet paper is now seen as old-fashioned, uncomfortable and cheap. If you’re a hip fashion-consious frenchman of today, you use triple-ply white (non-chlorine bleached) paper with pictures of pink sheep on.
Pink paper is only used by the old cheap step-mother, or indeed public places, like schools etc.
So, psychomonkey, the fact that the character in the sitcom stole pink paper indicates that he was so cheap that he even stole such a low-quality paper.
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It is worth mentioning that this out-phasing of pink is maybe not quite as drastic as indicated above. There are still (apparently) people who like pink paper, and there is high quality pink paper available. Just not as much.
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Be happy you didn’t stumble on the type which is purple and scented with synthetic lilac.
I remember, from my childhood, A local supermarket sold a job lot of very cheap pink toilet paper and the dye irritated people’s behinds.
I can still cringe with embarassment at the memory of my mother complaining to the manager with half a roll of paper in her hand.
God how nasty. I hate anything except white.
hijack here.
We might have a use for some of that pink T/P here in Phoenix. In an effort to stop the inmates from stealing underwear when they check out, the local sheriff dyed all of the jail issue underwear pink. Coordinating T/P might have a certain appeal…
I believe it’s the color of choice in Latin America as well. I couldn’t swear which countries I’ve seen pink toilet paper in, but I’m pretty sure about Venezuela and Mexico.
Ok…I just came back from the supermarket where I conducted an extensive study about this very serious issue.
Roughly 2/3 of the toilet paper was pink. It was either low quality TP, or standard TP. The rest came in two categories :
-White TP with blue or pink printing which looked more “luxurious”, smoother (or at least the packagings gave this feeling), roughly 20% of the TP sold
-Green and orange scented TP
There was no white TP.
So it seems that, as a previous poster said, pink TP is now the ordinary one and other colors are reserved to high grade TP.
I’m happy to have released to the world these enlightening informations.
I bought pink TP.
In Cuba everything is in perpetual shortage, including toilet paper. Cubans make do by cutting the daily paper into squares about 10" a side, and using that. Btw, this is the paper that calls itself on its masthead “the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party”, <<insert your own joke here>>.
Yeah, toilet paper is a bit of a luxury in Cuba, but it’s a luxury for poor people all over the developing world.
Now that I think about it, I think Venzuelan toilet paper is white. I can’t remember what color Cuban toilet paper is.