Even as an adult I learned that the company who made these never meant for kids to get a free sucker if you turn this in.
Yet when I was a kid our local convince store did honor this. If you got the Native American with the star I could turn it in for a free one.
Actually it’s not just one wrapper, but if you have 10 you actually can get a free sucker from OP’s mom
When I was growing up in the late 90s, we’d walk to 7/11 and buy tootsie pops for a quarter and bazooka gum for a dime. They would honor tootsie pop wrapper for a free one
We’d wear one glove on our hand and put our trousers on backwards, which was the style at the time.
Kris Kross’ll make you JUMP, JUMP!
I missed the bus. And that is something that I’ll never ever do again. 🎶
Yep I never had a store that didn’t honor that as a kid. Wonder if any store would still honor that today?
I never heard about the Native American bit, but as a kid in the early '90s, we always looked for the star. Rumor around school was that you could win a prize if you found a wrapper with a star, but no one knew how to redeem it.
Well for us it was the star and the native, but the star was always next to the native so some would say to find “look for the indain with the bow”
Yess! Our local convenience store honored it, too! It had to be the complete image, if it was partially cut off, it didn’t count! I didn’t know it was never the intent… I remember going through the bin trying to see which ones had a star visible without unwrapping them… Haha.
And now this is reminding me of also trying to peer up through the 20oz soda bottles without opening them in hopes of being able to read the inside of the caps so I could get a free one. Heh.
Man miss the cap one. Opening yellow lid on the Dr Pepper and getting that Free Soda. Man the joy!
I love when I hear that our memory of this is just the “Mandala Effect.” No, motherfucker, I traded these at my bomb-ass 7-11’s for more goddamn suckers! I WILL HAVE DIABETES BECAUSE OF THESE, PRICK!!
I heard this as a kid too. I remember saving up ~10 of them to mail in.
I did get back a letter explaining that it wasn’t a thing and a few coupons for buying more. So, still a win?
I never mailed mine in, my local grocery store would trade them for a free tootsie pop
I’ve never heard of this.
Neither have I. I wonder if it was a regional thing.
That’s so cool of them. Now I need to know the origin of the rumor then. Is this child-created folk lore? That adults just decided to make real?
I’ve seen the story many times that the company never intended for the star to mean you won a free sucker, but I have yet to see an explanation for why the star is there on some, but not on others.
The printed pattern is larger than individual wrappers. You could say the same about any of the graphics only appearing sometimes.
I didn’t learn that it was something the store were doing until saw it on Reddit in my late 30’s. It true even then no one had an explanation for that.
They still print these with the Native American costume in 2026? That’s…something.
Apparently so, until your comment never had anyone question it and this same packaging I ever seen and guess if it works why change it?
Tootsie pops rely so heavily on the nostalgia that they’d probably stop making them entirely before they changed the wrapper.
