Most posters here probably know of the Tootsie Roll Pop Indian Wrapper urban legend (the legend being, if you found a child dressed up as a Native American shooting an arrow at a star on a wrapper, you could redeem it for a free pop/bag of pops).
What I’m interested in, and could use folks’ help on, is finding the earliest documented mention of this legend.
Snopes and other sources claim that the legend has been around since the 1930s (“The rumor that Tootsie Pop wrappers featuring an Indian can be redeemed for free candy has dogged the Tootsie Roll company since Indian on Tootsie Roll wrapper shortly after the introduction of the chewy-centered lollipops in 1931”), but the earliest actual mention I can find is from a newspaper article in 1985 (Wilmington Morning Star / Wednesday, October 16, 1985, p. 3D)).
The aforementioned Snopes entry lists “Morgan, Hall and Kerry Tucker. Rumor! New York: Penguin Books, 1984. ISBN 0-14-007036-2 (pp. 63-64).” as a reference. I haven’t been able to procure a copy of the book (for those seeking a copy, note that one of the co-author’s names is ‘Hal Morgan’, not ‘Hall Morgan’ as Snopes mistakenly lists), so if anyone could quote the relevant passage, that would be great.
So my question is where did the claim that the rumor has been around since the 1930s originate? And can anyone provide a documented reference earlier than 1984?
I haven’t seen a Tootsie Pop wrapper in some time, but in my mind’s eye it was actually a Native American, not a child dressed as such. Sure was around 30 years ago, so I’m sure it is much older.
ETA: My childhood was spent in South Dakota, so any pop-culture things like that usually had to have been around for quite a while to penetrate that area, FWIW.
From the 70’s and into the 80’s our local laundromat (Bett., Iowa) had a candy shop in it and the owners did give you a free lolly if you had a wrapper with the Indian and the star (had to be both). I’m sure they paid the cost of the freebie because more than likely you would continue buying the suckers (and oh, so many other candies ranging in price from a penny to $.75) in the hopes of another freebie. I know it worked on me!
When I was growing up, the legend was that if you stuck the Tootsie Roll Pop stick through the Indian, your wish would come true. This was (also) South Dakota, so I hope it wasn’t an anti-American Indian in origin.
I don’t think any of those wishes really came true though.
I’ve been collecting anecdotal accounts of the legend for a spell, and this is the first time I’ve heard of this particular regional variation, thank you for that!
As far as I can tell, the legend emerged through a combination of three factors:
Various local merchants would give kids who brought in the special wrapper a free tootsie roll pop as a treat. (This was just an informal tradition, and not any sort of official promotional campaign).
Parents would tell their kids who had sent off a letter to Tootsie with the wrapper that they had received a free lollipop, and then add it in themselves, in a basic ‘letter to Santa’ kind of move.
Other candy companies actually did have similar ‘send in a wrapper that has a star’-style campaigns.
But this is all gathered through anecdotal accounts. I really would like to find the earliest mention of this, especially given that various sources claim that it has been around for a long-long time.
Here is an explanation of how the Tootsie Pop mistakenly got conflated with two other companies that, in the same year, offered free product for stars on wrappers.
What may have further fueled the legend is the fact that Tootsie Rolls did offer giveaways for sending in wrappers (and cash).
For instance, here’s an ad from the June 1948 issue of Boys’ Life (p. 45) for a beanie hat for “25 cents and any size wrapper from Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Fudge, or Tootsie Pops”: https://i.imgur.com/2nvU2jf.jpg.
Or here’s another ad, from the February 1948 issue of Boys’ Life (p. 41), this time for a 'coon tail “for only 15 c and a Tootsie Roll wrapper”: https://i.imgur.com/mgbO88U.jpg.
Note how on the same page, there’s another (unrelated) advert for the ‘Headquarters for Indiancrafts’.
It’s not too hard to see the two ads (and/or other, similar ads) become muddled together in a young boy’s mind, adding fuel to the legend.
In the meantime, just noticed that Tootsie Roll Industries appears to have taken down the “Legend of the Indian Wrapper” letter they used to send out, and instead has replaced it with an entirely new mythology, this time–in a move reeking of PC revisionism–no longer mentioning the ‘Indian’ at all:
I recall my best friend Kevin, explaining the tale in the late 60s or early 70s in rural Iowa, so it must have been widespread. I vaguely recall maybe somebody tried it, without success.
I can’t date the earliest incidence of this legend, but I can say that all the neighborhood kids believed it in the late 50s, so it was common in my Chicago suburb about 60 years ago.
What’s fascinating about the wrapper legend is that while there’s no shortage of individual testimonies, there seems to be precious little actual written (or otherwise recorded) record.
The legend seems to have spread to kids across the country entirely by word of mouth for 50 years from the 30s to the mid 80s.
If anyone remembers a stray letter to the editor, personal correspondence, a comment on a radio show, anything…
I love these old kid-based rumours about ‘legally-magic’ ways kids can beat the system and big corporations HAVE to give you bonus lollies.
It’s come up in Australia recently, because a popular frozen ice-block has ceased production (SunnyBoys). They used to offer Frees - the words were written on the inside of the wrapper. There were a million different theories (from a million different school playgrounds) about how you could tell a FREE just by looking at the outside (‘There’s a tiny dot above the letter U in SunnyBoy. My brother’s mate told me.’).
You would always see kids hunting through the freezer section in the lolly shop looking for their particular magic sign/symbol.
