Some of you may remember Kojak, the police detective television series that aired in the 1970s. The character of Kojak was played by actor Telly Savalas, and he often had a Tootsie Pop lollipop in his mouth. Kojak would smoothly deliver his signature phrase, “Who loves ya, baby?” with the Tootsie Pop stick dangling from his mouth. I always wondered what he did with the stick when it started to disintegrate, because that’s what the sticks would do on me - the paper would start to sort of ball up and fall off, sometimes in my mouth.
I’m not self-centered enough to believe that Tootsie developed Tootsie Pop Drops (“Tootsie Pops WITHOUT the Stick!”) just for me, but it’s a great idea, isn’t it? The drops are a nice little nugget, a bit smaller than a Tootsie Pop, but the perfect size to pop into your mouth. The Tootsie Pop Drops come in five flavors: chocolate, cherry, blue raspberry, orange, and grape. You would think they would taste identical to the Tootsie Pops, but I felt some of the flavors were slightly different. Maybe it has something to do with the round shape of the Tootsie Pops versus the more disc-like shape of the Drops? Hmmmm.
I’m fairly certain that I have a condition known as Tootsie Pop Amnesia, where I can go for years forgetting how much I love the chocolaty chew of a Tootsie Pop before someone hands me one at random and all of my happy Tootsie memories come flooding on back.
In college, I ate about 9,009,209 Tootsie Pops. I kept the wrappers tacked to my wall. Whatever it is I thought I’d see, became a Tootsie Roll to me. But alas, after college I moved on to other treats, and left the Tootsie Pop behind. As always, I forgot all about the sweet, sticky, “what flavor is this in the center, I mean, it says chocolaty chew, but really?” delight of eating a Tootsie Pop. So when we hit the Tootsie booth at this year’s All Candy Expo, and I saw an unfamiliar color in the Tootsie Pop dish, I almost had to sit down, as my Tootsie Pop amnesia once again gave way to Tootsie Pop fever, and I was overcome with excitement trying to find out what flavor lay below the new, peach-colored Tootsie Pop wrapper.
On my way to the dish to fish out a pop, I imagined various flavor scenarios: dark chocolate? Cranberry? Tropical? Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the new Tootsie Pop flavor was the oh-so-trendy star of the All Candy Expo: Pomegranate.
I don’t know how many times I’ve imitated Mr. Owl when I eat a Tootsie Pop. Something about his eager “One. Two-hoo! A-three.” piqued my interest from a very young age, which meant that the original animated commercial was extremely effective.
Cartoon Brew, an animation blog, recently discovered that this classic commercial received a 3D makeover. Instead of plain ink drawings on a stark background, everything in the new commercial is extremely detailed, from the ground underneath Mr. Turtle’s feet to the leaves on the trees behind Mr. Owl. Unfortunately, the little boy now looks like a mutated Hobbit.
Melding the chocolate chewiness of a Tootsie Roll with the classic crunch of a peppermint candy cane seems obvious, since chocolate and mint have intermingled happily with each other forever, but Candy Cane Tootsie Pops are a new (to me) addition to store shelves. Tootsie Roll doesn’t seem to have a separate webpage for this flavor either, so I’m guessing it’s not going to stick around after December.
Each pop is the same size and shape as a Blo-Pop, and I wonder if they used the same molds to form them. They’re wrapped in clear plastic like a candy cane, which shows off the eye-catching design of the lollipop. Red and white swirls. Very festive and a really nice touch.
I love crunching down on hard candy, and candy canes are no exception. As tempted as I was to get to the Tootsie Roll center, I took one for the team and just licked and spun the pop in my mouth instead. The outer shell is a familiar peppermint flavor. A little sweet, a little minty, and neither side overwhelmed the other. As I got closer to the center, a subtle fudge flavor started to mingle in with the mint. I really liked this gradual introduction of chocolate, which later intensified as more of the center was revealed.
And then? And then I couldn’t help myself. I munched through the rest of the shell and chewed the Tootsie Roll off the stick, which is my usual way of finishing a Tootsie Pop.
I’m a Tootsie Pop fan, and these Candy Cane Pops are a great seasonal addition to the regular lineup. The chewy, chocolatey center mixes much better with peppermint that it does with the regular fruity flavors. So if the idea of eating grape with chocolate isn’t your thing, maybe you can give these Tootsie Pops a try.
“Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?” Everyone remembers that commercial, right? (To relive it, click on the image above to watch it on YouTube.)
That question has played on the minds of thousands of Tootsie Pop fans for years, even driving engineering students to create licking machines and compare the results of their experiments with human volunteer results. Now, Tootsie Pops has given us three new reasons to the answer for ourselves.
The top-selling lollipop brand, consistently available in chocolate, cherry, orange, raspberry, and grape, is now adding one flavor each of strawberry, watermelon, and blue raspberry to Tootsie Pop bags.
If you want a more adventurous lollipop experience, Tootsie Pops Tropical Stormz are available in Berry Berry Punch, Orange/Pineapple, Lemon/Lime, Strawberry/Banana and Citrus Punch. The basic Tootsie Pop premise is the same as the original—a hard candy shell surrounds a Tootsie Roll—but the shell is a combination of two flavors swirled together.
If you’re a truly dedicated Tootsie Pop fanatic, the Online Tootsie Store has a lot of cool stuff to collect. My favorite is the Lick O Meter Keychain. It’s a plastic contraption that holds a Tootsie Pop and counts your licks on an LCD readout. It’s $5 and comes with batteries and a pop. I’d like to get one and compare its count to my own, although I bet I’d do what I always do with Tootsie Pops—lose my patience and ruin the experiment by taking a big bite before I’m halfway to the center.
Steve over at The Sneeze has an interesting post about Tootsie Pop Wrappers. I totally forgot about those characters on the wrapper and I never heard about getting the Indian on your wrapper and exchanging it for free candy. Maybe that was before my time? Anyone ever hear of that before?
