The Untold Truth Of Tootsie Pops

Whether you love it or hate it, there's no denying that the Tootsie Pop, with its hard shell coating and chewy chocolate interior, is a classic American candy. It's slightly ironic that Tootsie Pops were partly born out of the imagination of the Austrian immigrant Leo Hirshfield, who invented Tootsie Roll Industries' signature chocolate nougat in 1896 in Brooklyn, New York (via Snack History). But Tootsie Pops are also so much more than Toostie Rolls' younger siblings.

Invented in 1931, their popularity soared during the Great Depression because they were tasty and inexpensive. By 1970, the candy product was responsible for inspiring one of the most iconic TV commercials ever. Over half a century later, few are likely to forget the infamous question: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? That ad spot has certainly been a driving factor in the lollipops' enduring popularity. As it turns out, there's more to Tootsie Pops than their wise-cracking owl mascot and supposedly redeemable candy wrappers. Here's everything you need to know about the world-famous lollipop candy.

It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that the first flavor of Tootsie Pop to be made was chocolate, since the Tootsie Roll hidden in the center of each lollipop was also chocolate-flavored and already a popular treat among American consumers (via Snack History). Double chocolate turned out to be double tasty. But eventually, the candy maker debuted other flavors, too, most notably cherry, orange, grape, and raspberry, according to the company website. Today, Tootsie Roll Industries continues to come out with new flavors. The candy company has since released seasonal flavors as well, such as candy cane and pumpkin-flavored Tootsie Pops.

In addition to new flavors, different versions of Tootsie Pops have been released over the years like Tootsie Pop Miniatures, smaller versions of the classic lollipop. The miniatures typically come in a bag of assorted flavors. Fans can also enjoy Tootsie Pop Drops — lollipops minus the sticks, so you can pop them into your mouth.

No report on Tootsie Pops would be complete without an attempt answer to the infamous question behind the lollipop brand: "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" The question was first posed in a commercial that debuted in 1970. In it, a young cartoon boy presents that very question to various talking animals. One of these animals includes the brand's mascot, Mr. Owl, who facetiously answers the boy's riddle by licking the Tootsie Pop exactly three times before biting into its center. 

In a recent study, researchers from New York University and Florida State University attempted to answer the question and concluded that it takes about 1,000 licks to the lollipop's center based on a theory about how saliva dissolves materials like the hard shell coating of a Tootsie Pop (via Time). Researchers at Perdue University were so determined to answer the question that they invented a licking machine. Yes, you read that correctly.

Tootsie Roll Industries says it has received more than 20,000 letters from children who claim they have riddled out the answer for themselves (via Slate). According to the company's website, the real answer "depends on a variety of factors such as the size of your mouth, the amount of saliva, etc." Mr. Owl has his own Twitter account where he still teases us about how many licks it takes. #TheWorldMayNeverKnow

Shares of Tootsie Roll Industries skyrocketed last year despite falling candy sales, including Tootsie Pops, Junior Mints, and Sugar Daddies (via Fortune). The reason why isn't necessarily a reflection of America's love for the Tootsie Pops maker. To most people's surprise, including the company's 89-year-old CEO Ellen Gordon, the rise in the candy maker's stock was a result of last year's market volatility as investors on Reddit message board r/WallStreetBets shorted stocks in their highly publicized battle with hedge funds. Just to recap, a so-called short squeeze happens when a short seller — someone who bets that a stock's price will fall — has to buy shares at a higher price than what they borrowed and sold them at, which drives the stock up.

Although Gamestop was the belle of last year's meme stock ball, Tootsie Roll Industries got swept up in the madness, too, along with other companies like AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & Company, and Express. Its stock was trading at around $30 per share before it spiked, peaking at $58.98 — a record high in the sweets maker's history. This in turn made Gordon a multibillionaire since she controls 55% of the company's shares.

Women executives have made significant strides in terms of corporate representation. According to Statista, 2021 has been a record year, with 41 female CEOs employed at America's Fortune 500 companies. However, their male counterparts still dominate the remaining 92% of the industry. It's no small feat that Ellen Gordon, Tootsie's CEO, has been a top-level executive at the company since she became president and chief operating officer in 1978, according to the The Wall Street Journal. At the time, she was the only the second female president of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (via Women's Enterprise Texas).

Gordon's resume was impressive even before her promotion. A graduate of Harvard University, Gordon started working at Tootsie in 1968, making a name for herself in the pension planning and product development departments. Her husband, who she married in 1950, helmed the company as its CEO. The pair ran the company together as equal decision-makers until his death in 2015 when she inherited the role from him. Business is in Gordon's blood, because her family took over Sweets Company of America, as Tootsie Roll Industries was then named, when it hit hard financial times in the 1930s. Her father was a majority shareholder before becoming president.

A few years ago, "The Late Show" host Stephen Colbert parodied the classic 1970 Tootsie Pop commercial to make fun of Donald Trump (via The Wrap). Former President Trump has been called a white supremacist on more than one occasion, a characterization that officials associated with his administration, including then-White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, have repeatedly denied. In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," he insisted, "The President is not a white supremacist. I'm not sure how many times we have to say that."

Leave it to Colbert to take a soundbite from the news cycle and turn it into a humorous piece of social commentary. The following Monday after Mulvaney's Fox News interview, Colbert debuted a short cartoon featuring characters from the famous Tootsie Pop commercials to poke fun at the White House official's implied question. The parody depicts a young boy who asks wise Mr. Owl, "How many times do we have to say President Trump is not a white supremacist?" Mr. Owl starts to count aloud on his wingtips. While the owl in the original commercial counts to three before biting into the boy's lollipop, the owl in Colbert's parody counts until the boy can literally no longer continue to listen — he grows a beard before dying of old age, reduced to a jumble of bones. The parody ends with Mr. Owl gasping for breath as his count reaches over 4 billion.

You might not think Tootsie Pops and outer space have anything in common — a reasonable assumption — but you'd be wrong. In 2015, astronomer Emily Levesque and three of her colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder found what appeared to be an ordinary red giant star on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy. Upon closer inspection, this space oddity turned out to be anything but ordinary. "It's bizarre," Levesque told Time in an interview. It's "unlike any star that we've ever seen."

Like the chewy, chocolatey center of a Tootsie Pop candy, buried inside this seemingly everyday star was another star — a neutron star, the celestial remains of a massive star after a supernova explosion. So, how did this galactic Tootsie Pop happen? Theoretically, if two giant stars are in a close orbit with one another, and one of those stars explodes, it could cause the neutron star to be swallowed by the other star, leading to a Tootsie Pop star, or more scientifically, a Thorne-Żytkow object,  also known as a TŻO. This particular hybrid star has been named HV2112. No one knows exactly what's in store for HV2112, but it could explode later. That, or the neutron star could eventually turn into a black hole. Like the catchphrase from the classic Tootsie Pop commercial, "the world may never know."