Shortly after Dick Wilson, the actor who portrayed the harried store clerk Mr. Whipple in Charmin commercials, passed away, two retired writers came forward to claim that each were the one who had coined the famous line. You know the line … “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin‘. ”
So who’s going to get credit? That’s the big question!
The two copy writers – Norman Schaut and John Chervokas, both in their 70’s, didn’t know one another, but they apparently worked at the New York ad firm Benton & Bowles in the early ’60’s. Both men claim to have clear memories of originating the famous phrase.
“I could comfortably say it was my baby,” Schaut, who now lives in Ocean City, told The Press of Atlantic City.
Schaut recalls asking his firm’s art director to make a store display with a yardstick to measure the thickness of the toilet tissue and adding the line “Please don’t squeeze.”
Chervokas was very upset when he heard of Schaut’s claim. He called him up and announced “You’re talking to the man who created ‘Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.'”
Unfortunately there’s no paper trail proving which Benton & Bowles employee came up with the slogan first.
