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

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.

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.

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've never heard of this.

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.

Actually it's not just one wrapper, but if you have 10 you actually can get a free sucker from OP's mom

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?

They still print these with the Native American costume in 2026? That's...something.