TOOTSIE ROLL – HEY, TOOTSIE

HEY, TOOTSIE
SWEETS FOR THE SWEETS
PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
THE TOOTSIE ROLL EMPIRE
LOLLIPOP KING
VINTAGE TV
THE DAUNTING QUESTION
252 LICKS
WAIT A MINUTE…144 LICKS

HEY, TOOTSIE
Tootsie Rolls are classic. Unchanged since the beginning, the little cylinder of chocolately chewy candy has stood the test of time since its debut over 100 years ago. A real piece of Americana.

SWEETS FOR THE SWEETS
Austrian immigrant Leo Hirshfield brought his recipe for a chocolately chewy candy to America in 1896 and began selling the candy in a New York City store. He named the little rolls after his five year old daughter, whose nickname was “Tootsie”. Within a decade the small operation grew into a four story factory. Soon after the company opts for the name change to Sweets Company of America and starts to distribute and advertise on a national level.

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

The most astonishing thing about Tootsie Rolls longevity is that a tootsie roll still sells today for the original price of one cent each. As far as we have been able to determine, this is the only item in American history to completely avoid the influences of time and inflation. Marvelous, tootsie rolls for morning, noon and night!

THE TOOTSIE ROLL EMPIRE
Tootsie Roll Industries is one of the country’s largest candy companies. They are headquartered in Chicago with endeavors in Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Mexico. Combined Tootsie Roll pumps out 60 million pieces of tootsie roll candy in a single day. Their net sales are somewhere in the range of $400 million a year. Not too shabby, for one penny at a time.

LOLLIPOP KING
The Tootsie Pop lollipop was invented in New York City in 1931. Today, Tootsie Roll is also the world’s largest supplier of lollipops with a daily supply of 20 million pops to adoring fans. The invention leads to one of the most compelling questions of American “pop” culture.

VINTAGE TV

In the early days of popular TV entertainment, Tootsie Roll sponsored some the most popular children’s shows of the era including, Howdy Doody, Rin Tin Tin and Rocky and Bullwinkle. You can your own piece of memorabilia at

THE DAUNTING QUESTION
How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

This has been on the minds of many since the original 1970 television commercial posed the question. Like in the commercial featuring the owl, not many people can wait long enough to get to the center without chomping down on it. However, more scientific studies have been conducted to determine this pondering enigma.

252 LICKS
A group of engineering students at Purdue University applied their weird science to the Tootsie Pop riddle and devised a licking machine to determine the truth. Modeled after a human tongue, it took an average of 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop. They then sampled the results from 20 real life volunteers and found that the average licks from both studied resulted in 252 licks.

WAIT A MINUTE…144 LICKS
A group of students at Swathmore Junior High School decided to take matters into their own hands and conducted their own scientific experiment and found that it took an average 144 licks to get to the center. Perhaps the vast difference between the two students might lie with either the natural digestive abilities of saliva or human persistence at a given task. Most likely a combination of both is why humans are better than machines when it comes to dishing out licks.