page_title: Tootsie Pop
section_title: Commercials
hierarchical_section_title: Tootsie Pop / Commercials
caption_attribution_description: English: Tootise Pops at the 2019 State Fair of Virginia.
context_page_description: A Tootsie Pop is a hard candy lollipop filled with the chocolate-flavored chewy Tootsie Roll candy. They were invented in 1931 by an employee of The Sweets Company of America. The company changed its name to Tootsie Roll Industries in 1969.
  The candy debuted in 1931 and various flavors have been introduced ever since.
  In 2002, 60 million Tootsie Rolls and 20 million Tootsie Pops were produced every day.
context_section_description: Tootsie Pops are known for the catch phrase "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?". The phrase was first introduced in an animated commercial which debuted on U.S. television in 1970. In the original television ad, a questioning boy poses the question to a cow (Frank Nelson), a fox (Paul Frees), a turtle (Ralph James) and an owl (Paul Winchell). Each one of the first three animals tells the boy to ask someone else, explaining that they would bite a Tootsie Pop every time they lick one. Eventually, he asks the owl, who starts licking it, but bites into the lollipop after only three licks, much to the chagrin of the boy, who gets the empty stick back. The commercial ends the same way, with various flavored Tootsie Pops unwrapped and being "licked away" until being crunched in the center.
  While the original commercial is 60 seconds long, an edited 30-second version and 15-second version of this commercial are the ones that have aired innumerable times over the years.
  In the shorter 30-second ad, Mr. Owl returns the spent candy stick, and the boy's final line is replaced with a reaction shot and a beat of silence.
  The 15-second commercial (which still airs today) only shows the boy with Mr. Owl and a different narrator (Frank Leslie) speaks the same above line, but without the scene showing the Tootsie Roll pops slowly disappearing with an APM Music track "Crepe Suzette" (composed by Cyril Watters) playing in the background. The question still stands unanswered.
  In the 1990s, a new commercial was made featuring a boy asking a robot and a dragon how many licks it takes to get to the center, with the Tootsie Pops known for the catch phrase "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop?", rather than "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?".
caption: Various wrapped Tootsie Roll Pops
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