GOOD TO THE LAST PROD? A LITTLE BAD'LL DO YA? LET YOUR FRINGES DO THE WALKING? THINK MALLS? I dunno. Was SMELT IN YOUR MOUTH, NOT IN YOUR HAND too long? Oh, yeah, way too long. That said, the slogan seems to be "PLEASE Don't squeeze the Charmin," so some fudging has been allowed. There must be a million advertising slogans, but it's actually probably very hard to find one where you can anagram a single word and make a wacky phrase out of it, so perhaps the theme is tighter, or at least harder to pull off, than I imagined at first. It all felt somewhat old, somewhat uninspired, and the theme just didn't hang together neatly, or feel very special. There were several patches of short fill that were very, very rough ( ERES EVRY SEI RIEN-three languages in four adjacent answers?! ISS SHH DEI OSHEA TRURO DREI ESAU etc.). With the exception of UNFRIENDED ( 79D: Cut ties with, in a way) and ROOMBA (76D: iRobot vacuum), this puzzle felt quite staid and dated.
And there are only six theme answers? With that few answers, I'd expect a much zippier and more colorful and cleaner grid than this one. Sometimes it's the product name, sometimes it's not, sometimes the anagram's at the end of the phrase, sometimes it's not. There's just not much (if any) logic to the anagramming. The advertising angle ties things together somewhat, but only very, very loosely. I kept trying to find some kind of pattern, some rationale, and kept coming up empty. I was too focused on random anagrams to notice much of anything else. In fact, it wasn't until I was completely finished that I got the whole advertising slogan angle. I didn't not understand this theme for the longest time. Hey, it's my old pal, PB2 (PB1 = Patrick Berry).
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