It's been three years since I wrote this and thought I'd share another story. To recap, I have a special needs son (now 11) who every now and then likes to flush foreign objects down toilets to see what happens. My house came with builders toilets from 20 years ago. First he flushed foam toys down the toilet in the kids bathroom...I replaced it with a Drake and it's been good since. Then he flushed something down the guest bathroom toilet that stuck and we replaced that toilet with the Ultramax II (talked about earlier in this thread). The Ultramax II nearly met its match though when my son decided to try flushing a toothbrush down it a year later, which stuck in the trap. It took a local plumber to take the toilet off the floor, take the unit outside, get out the scope camera to find the sucker and figure out a way to push it out. He was successful so the Ultramax II is back on duty. That left the Kohler toilet in the master bathroom.
Because of the build date of the house, all the toilets were originally first generation 1.6 gpf toilets, and being first generation they sucked royally. Well, the Kohler in the master bath was of better quality and generally flushed better than the others. But now the Kohler was the last legacy toilet standing...until last week. During a spring break respite, my son who was being lightly supervised by me decided to flush something down the Kohler and it stuck hard. This had happened before and I'd managed to use my snake to get ahold of the piece of clothing and retrieve it. No dice this time...in fact it seemed like the snake was only making the problem worse....instead of a slow flush, the toilet was stopped up tight.
My wife and I had planned not to replace the Kohler until we actually remodeled the bathroom. But budget won't allow that this year so it was time to look for something to replace it. Another Ultramax II would have been nice but my wife and I have always preferred the higher height of the ADA Drake to the ADA Ultramax II...there is a difference. So this time we opted for a Drake II 1.28 gpf. It's not as pretty as the Ultramax but it should get the job done. We ordered Sanigloss like the Ultramax (the original Drake in the kids bathroom was ordered without).
Although this site has plenty of self-help install guides, I'm just not brave enough to install my own plumbing like this. Good thing too since the flange was weird and the toilet had clearance problems with the back wall (surprisingly). And it needed to be shimmed a lot like the other toilets in the house (thanks original house builder!). But at the end of the day, I have a new stable Drake II that works. Hopefully my son won't test it anytime soon.
So now we have nothing but Totos in the house. Thanks to Terry for all the information and insight on thus board over the years.