Tootsie is a brand of chewy candy that has been manufactured in the United States since 1896. The
manufacturer, Tootsie Roll Industries, is based in Chicago, Illinois.
Ingredients[]
The current U.S. ingredients of a chocolate Tootsie Roll are: sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil (a trans fat), condensed skim milk, cocoa, whey, soya lecithin, and natural and artificial flavors.
Artifical Flavors[]
In addition to the traditional cocoa-flavored Tootsie Roll, several additional flavors have been introduced. Known as Tootsie Fruit Rolls, flavors include cherry, orange, vanilla, lemon, and lime. These varieties are wrapped in red, orange, blue, yellow and green wrappers, respectively. Tootsie Frooties come in numerous different fruit flavors including red strawberry, blue raspberry, grape, green apple, banana-berry, smooth cherry, fruit punch, orange cream, pink lemonade, root beer, lime cola, strawberry lemonade, cherry limeade, cran blueberry, lemon-lime, mango, passion fruit and watermelon.
Korean War[]
During the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950, mortar sections under the United States Marine Corps started to run out of mortar rounds. The radio men of these sections started requesting more rounds. There were too many nearby enemy anti-air emplacements however, and the risk that they might lose any airlifted supplies was too great, so they had to wait. After two days of waiting, all the mortar sections ran out of rounds. At this point the risk was taken and supplies were dropped anyway. When the troops found the crates of mortar rounds, they found the crates were instead filled with Tootsie Roll. The cause of this error was that a supply specialist did not know that the codename for mortar rounds was "Tootsie Rolls", and instead ordered hundreds of crates of Tootsie Roll candies instead of mortar rounds.
Tootsie Pops[]
Tootsie Pops are hard candy lollipops filled with chocolate-flavored chewy Tootsie Roll. They were invented in 1930
by Lukas R. "Luke" Weisgram, an employee of The Sweets Company of America. The company changed its name to Tootsie Roll Industries in 1969.
The candy debuted to the public in 1932. In addition to chocolate (the original flavor), Tootsie Pops come in cherry, orange, caramel, grape, raspberry, strawberry, watermelon, blue raspberry, candy cane (seasonal), and now, pomegranate, banana, blueberry, and green apple flavors. Another release of Tootsie Roll Pops, named Tropical Stormz, features six swirl-textured flavors: orange pineapple, lemon lime, strawberry banana, apple blueberry, citrus punch, and berry berry punch.