Does the ‘Indian Wrapper’ Really Earn You a Free Tootsie Pop?
The greatest mystery when it comes to Tootsie Pops wasn’t how many licks to get to the center of it – it was whether or not the elusive “Indian wrapper” would actually earn you a free pop.
The legend went something like this: if you opened up your Tootsie Pop wrapper and found the Native American shooting the bow at the star, it could be traded in for a free Tootsie Pop.
But was it true?
One variation of the story said you had to mail it in to the Tootsie company and they’d send you a coupon for one free pop; another version was that you could bring it to your local corner store and they had to provide you with the free sucker.
There was also a question as to just how much of the image had to be showing on your wrapper. Some claimed any portion of the Native American and the star was sufficient, but most seemed to agree that it had to be the entire figure and star.
Fun 107's Gazelle told me the way he always heard it, you had to collect 10 "Indian wrappers" to get a free lollipop. That seems excessive.
Personally, I never knew of anyone who mailed in their wrapper and got the coupon back, but I do know that there were stores that were willing to give you a free Tootsie Pop if you produced the “Indian wrapper.”
One such place was the convenience store in my grandparents’ neighborhood in Randolph, Massachusetts: Minihan’s Handy Store. Old John Minihan always traded us a nice new Tootsie Pop in exchange for the “Indian wrapper,” which in the 1980s saved us a dime we could then put toward other candy such as caramel cremes, root beer barrels or candy cigarettes.
However, decades later I found out that the “Indian wrapper” exchange was really nothing more than a hoax, an urban legend shared among kids in the schoolyard that was apparently popular enough that many across the country believed it to be true.
In actuality, the Tootsie company never actually offered any kind of exchange for the “Indian wrapper,” and its website actually dispels the myth (referred to as “the legend of the shooting star”).
That means kindly old shopkeepers like Mr. Minihan were giving away the free Tootsie Pops out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because they were actually stacking up “Indian wrappers” in the back of the store for some big massive redemption from the Tootsie Roll Industries.
No one is actually sure how this myth began, but it is believed to trace all the way back to the creation of the Tootsie Pop in 1931.
“Unfortunately, we do not know how this rumor started and Tootsie Roll Industries has never actually honored this promotion,” the website states. “In fact, the shooting star appears on 1 in every 4 to 6 Tootsie Pop wrappers, just as frequent as the other images appear. However, we do believe the star is a sign of good luck to come.”
So good luck, as opposed to a free lollipop? That’s probably worth more than a dime unto itself.
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