When Did The Tootsie Pop Commercial Come Out - T-Tees - Your Answers Await, Life's Questions Unraveled

Answer: I think it’s the Tootsie Pop commercial featuring (the edited version) the boy, the turtle and the owl. This is one of my favorite trivia questions and I always liked to ask it in the advertising principle classes I would teach. You know – break the ice of what will bound to be a boring lecture class for the students. I was cleaning out old files and came across a paper I wrote about the Tootsie Pop commercial over ten years ago for my pop culture in advertising class in grad school. It was a timely find because I just saw this very commercial about two months ago – so I know it’s still being aired. I won’t go into all the academic minutia of the paper with you but I thought I’d share a few highlights from it.

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I analyzed what could be argued as one of the oldest television commercials still in use today. I chose it because of its age and its personal appeal. This commercial also goes beyond strict marketing use. It asks an unanswerable question which challenges us to find the answer even though one might not be found. A question similar to asking something like “if a tree falls in the forest what type of sound does it make,” is not dissimilar to “how many licks does it take…?”

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There are several aspects of this commercial, including semiotic, symbolic, mythological, psychological, emotional and humorous pull. There are some fundamental business aspects of this particular advertisement that are used for selling a product that are mentioned in my academic version of the paper. It asks if the Tootsie Pop commercial has endured for so long because it has become immersed in our culture. I won’t get into all of that here but if you are interested to see what I wrote in entirety feel free to contact me via LinkedIn.

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Tootsie Pops were created in 1931 by Tootsie Roll Industries and were deemed a big success by the company. Tootsie is (along with Charms lollipops) accounted as the largest lollipop producer in the world. It is currently run by President and CEO Ellen Gordon.

The famous commercial was made around 1969 or so. Before the edited version of the commercial we see most nowadays, it originally featured the boy, asking the same question to many animals – a cow, fox, turtle and finally the infamous owl. There was no public record found at the time I wrote this paper of who created the commercial – whether it was an ad agency or an in-house marketing organization. Direct contact to Tootsie Roll Industries did not gain any ground, either. Tootsie does not readily part with information about itself and the Tootsie Pop commercials. In fact, candy and confectioner companies as a rule are very closed-mouth about their operations due to heavy competition. That stuff about clandestine tactics and double agents spying in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory? True…sort of.

One of the ironies about this commercial is that Tootsie probably originally aired it to simply sell Tootsie Pops. It is unknown but likely that they would have had no idea how successful and timeless this commercial would become. Did the Tootsie executives and advertising people plan to make this commercial evoke such strong, emotional attachment? Did Tootsie plan for this commercial to become something of folklore, asking a universal question that would become so popular? Or did they stumble upon these results by accident? The commercial has transcended from a basic business element into something more.

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Of course there must be mention of the scientific method that has been applied over and over to find an answer to the Tootsie Pop question. According to Tootsie several studies have been done over the years to find out just how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop – but the results always differed. Diversity in size of tongues and the force of a lick could not be replicated for every individual as required by scientific method. Tootsie says “based on the wide range of results from these scientific studies, it is clear that the world may never know how many licks it really takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.”

I mentioned earlier that Tootsie Roll Industries is very hush-hush about anything to do with their products, especially as it pertains to Tootsie Pops. After over 30 years this closed-mouth approach adds to the Tootsie Pop mystique. It also builds up the fable status. This venerable commercial, by way of its simple graphics, text and symbols asks a simple question that cannot be answered. This question has thrust the commercial into a cause that people gather around and identify with. Hopefully this commercial will last another 30 years – that is, if its usefulness remains. Which leads to one more unanswerable Tootsie question: did Tootsie sell more of their lollipops because of this commercial? The world may never know.

Citations and Sources

Many thanks to these sources in helping me research this honored question:

In an e-mail to Tootsie Roll Industries, I asked someone at Tootsie.com “I’m curious to know who originally made the Tootsie Pop commercial that features the boy, Mr. Turtle and Mr. Owl? Was it an in-house agency for Tootsie, or was it a separate ad agency? What was the name of the person or ad agency that made the commercial?” Tootsie’s response was “Kari, we appreciate the interest, but that information is not available. On Sat, 10 Sep, 2005.”
Richard Bolstad and Margot Hamblett, The Unanswerable Question (New Zealand: 1999). Accessed from http://www.tranformations.net.nz/transcript/unanswerable.html; available 9/25/05: Internet.
Barbara Murray, Tootsie Roll Industry, Inc. (Texas: Hoover’s, Inc., 2005). Accessed from http://www.hoovers.com/tootsie-roll/-ID_11490-/free-co-factsheet.xhtml available 9/22/05; Internet.
Tootsie Roll Industries, (Chicago: 2005). Email to [email protected] 9/10/05.
Joel Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate (Random House: 1999). Accessed from Business Week Online, http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/brenner.htm; available 9/25/05; Internet.
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: An Introduction, 2d ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), xv.
Jone Johnson Lewis, Age Quotes (excerpted from Wisdom Quotes: 2004). Accessed from http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_age.html; available 9/25/05; Internet.
Mary Hopson, Kids’Questions aboutTurtles (Alaska: 2000). Accessed fromhttp://www.turtlepuddle.org/kidspage/questions.html; available 9/26/05; Internet.
Cooperative Reproductive Science Research Center, Logo History – Turtle Lore (Georgia, 2002). Accessed from http://www.msm.edu/crsrc/logo.htm; available 9/25/05; Internet.
Paradigm Learning, (Florida: 2004). Accessed from http://www.paradigmlearning.com/AboutUs/AboutOwl.asp; available 9/25/05; Internet.
Boria Sax, The Mythical Zoo: An Encyclopedia of Animals in World Myth, Legend, and Literature (ABC Clio: California, 2001), p. 256-258.
Arthur Asa Berger, Blind Men and Elephants (Transaction Publishers: New Jersey, 1995), 154
Bob Garfield, And Now a Few Words from Me (McGraw-Hill: New York, 2003), 32.
Sergio Zyman and Armin Brott, The End of advertising as we know it (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2002), p. 21.
Dr. Laura Gibbs, Syllabus for Folklore and Myth – Aesop’s Fables (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 2004). Accessed from http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading/aesop/background.htm; available 9/25/05; Internet.