Chief Shooting Star Firemaker

An urban myth that really should have been true.

When I was a kid is was common knowledge that if you had a Tootsie Pop wrapper with the picture of an Indian shooting a star you had something a value. Our belief was that "Chief Shooting Star" appearing on a wrapper meant that you could get a free candy on your next visit to the store...which in my case was Cook's Drive-In Market.
Now, I don't know if my mom was slipping Old Man Cook a nickel on the sly, or maybe the store ate the nickel, but I do know that it was an undisputed fact that Chief Shooting Star meant free candy.
Sadly, the truth of the matter is that the Tootsie Roll company never had a promotion like that. Nope, despite the beliefs of million of American kids the free candy promotion was a myth.
Just think how big it could have been if Tootsie Roll had ran with it. Bigger than "Win a Bike by Selling Greeting Cards!!!" TR could have published a catalog with all kinds of cool kid stuff...sea monkeys, superballs, submarines and x-ray glasses. Us kids would have saved our Chief Shooting Star wrappers and redeemed them by the millions.
We're all grown up now. Chief Shooting Star is just a politically-incorrect memory of a simpler time. A heartless little boy in a Native American costume, firing a deadly arrow into our innocence.
Hey, check out Chief Shooting Star! I've put him on a cool Lucky Indian Lighter!