As a kid, I didn't know much, but I knew this one thing for certain: Finding a star on your Tootsie Pop wrapper meant you got a free lollipop.
In fact, it seems like EVERY kid grew up believing this fact! Only a precious few wrappers had the lucky little star on it, and finding one was your golden ticket to free candy.
The only problem is...you never actually SAW kids getting free Tootsie Pops this way, did you? You only heard about it. And when you found a wrapper with a star on it, did you ever try to claim your prize? How would you even go about getting that free Tootsie Pop?
It wasn't until today, as a 27-year-old adult, that it occurred to me how implausible this all was. So I decided to do a little digging. Was it all just a gigantic hoax?
The answer, my friends, is YES. That star-on-the-wrapper business is a bunch of BS. Unfortunately, there is no significance to finding a star on your Tootsie Pop, and we've all been living a lie.
According to Tootsie's own website, they don't even know where this urban legend began:
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.
Also, sorry to burst your bubble even further, but finding a star on your wrapper isn't actually rare or special or fun at all:
In fact, the shooting star appears on 1 in every 4 to 6 Tootsie Pop wrappers, just as frequent as the other images appear.
So spread the word far and wide to ruin some chilldhoods: YOUR TOOTSIE POP WRAPPERS WITH STARS ARE WORTHLESS PIECES OF TRASH.
So now the real question is: Who made up this lie? Was it our parents? Our peers? The Illuminati? The deep state??? I need to go lie down now. Bye.
