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I replaced every single one of mine with a Toto. I don’t care if it’s four times the price of American Standard or whatever: I have literally never had to use the plunger since.

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I’m an Australian and I’ve never owned or used a toilet plunger in my life.

I would not even know where to buy one!

In the US, they're for sale everywhere. And I must acknowledge their ingenuity when it comes to toilet plunger design: American plungers have an additional "lip" at the bottom of the rubber thingy that fits into their toilets quite nicely and seals them up better than the usual plungers in Europe would do, which don't have that extra rubber lip.

Apparently the extraordinary demand for plungers resulted in better plungers, not in someone asking "why the heck are we so reliant on plungers?" and possibly making better toilets ;-)

It’s a plunger manufacturer conspiracy!

No room for jokes here I guess... what a fun crowd

I think the ship has sailed on better toilets in America, unfortunately. A big part of the problem is just that the standard waste pipe is too small AIUI.

As a counter anecdote, I’m an American living in Australia, and I own and have used a toilet plunger in Australia because my Australian toilet was clogged. But that is a single occurrence in 12 years as opposed to multiple occurrences annually in the States.

The only time I’ve had anything close to a clog, it was as a young teenager and because of excessive quantities of toilet paper. And the solution was just to add more water into the bowl, which increased the water pressure in the s-trap and pushed the blockage through.

Really it should be impossible to clog a toilet with poops alone.

And if you find yourself excreting an unusual amount in one sitting, or need to use an unusual quantity of paper, just do an intermediate flush.

I just moved into an apartment with a Toto toilet and it replaced the plunger with toilet brush...

I've needed a plunger once in the last 2 years of apartments (didn't even get around go buying one at my last one before I left)

I need that toilet brush every other day, it's a really gross problem, and I hate the idea of having guests and them having to choose between leaving a dirty bowl and whipping out my toilet brush...

Although the design and expectation is the same in my native Britain as most of the rest of Europe, I've only seen signs like this in France and Germany [1] -- usually in quieter public buildings, like government offices.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChR8ubSW4AEeDcV?format=jpg&name=... from https://twitter.com/hashtag/toilettenb%C3%BCrstenbenutzungsa...

The Romansch/Germany/Italian text would indicate Switzerland rather than Germany or France, though.

I have the Toto Drake II line and they all combine a self-cleaning design with some sort of non-stock coating which they say lasts forever as long as you keep away from harsh cleaner compounds and only use the nylon bristle brushes. But who knows what the previous inhabitants used in your case.

I replaced the first one in 2015 and haven’t had any issues yet.

Pro-tip: the actual first thing I do when any family members or myself move into a new home or apartment is install a kitchen side spray in the bathroom as a hand-held “point and shoot” bidet. Those can be used to quickly clean in a contact-free way.

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