Did Any Central Minnesota Stores Give Out Free Candy For Finding These?

What unfounded rumor from your childhood do you still believe might be true? For me, it is the rumor that if you found the 'shooting star' on a Tootsie Pop, you could return to the store you bought it for a free sucker.

Despite all of us readily believing this (and pushing the rumor forth through time), I don't recall myself or any of my friends actually going to the store and cashing in on this. As I grew up, I kind of forgot about it until I saw this Facebook post:

Surprisingly, the comments were pretty divided amongst people who believe that you really COULD get a free sucker (even to this day) and people who say that it is just an old folk tale.

Even my wife claims that you could get a free sucker at Janski's Market in Rice when she was a kid if she found a sucker with the shooting star. Sure, she was related to the people who owned it, but she swears that has nothing to do with it.

Even Tootsie themselves say that there is NO TRUTH to the rumor... at least from their end.

Since the creation of the Tootsie Pop in 1931, the meaning and origin of the shooting star on the wrapper has become a topic of discussion and has been in circulation for generations. It has been rumored that local convenience stores used to give a free Tootsie Pop to anyone who brought in a wrapper containing the image of the shooting star.

 

Unfortunately, we do not know how this rumor started and Tootsie Roll Industries has never actually honored this promotion. 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.

 

Mr. Owl informed us that one night he was sitting on his branch and he came across a shooting star in the sky. He suggested that we add the shooting star on the Tootsie Pop wrapper to give our fans the necessary luck that may be needed to find out just how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.

There you have it, straight from the owl's mouth. To me it sounds like while Tootsie may not have had an official promotion for this, some small town stores may have participated out of the kindness of their hearts.