40 Fun Facts About Lollipops

Which famous artist designed the logo of Spanish lollipop brand Chupa Chups in 1969?

Salvador Dalí set the name inside a bright daisy shape for founder Enric Bernat, whose lollipop business had started out as an apple jam factory.

According to the popular story, candy maker George Smith named his 1908 lollipops after what?

A racehorse called Lolly Pop is the usual tale, and Smith's company then spent more than two decades fighting to trademark the name, winning it in 1931.

Which bald New York TV detective of the 1970s sucked lollipops to cut down on his smoking?

Kojak, played by Telly Savalas, first swapped a cigarette for a lollipop while questioning a witness in a 1973 episode, and the sweet became his trademark.

In the classic animated Tootsie Pop commercial, which animal bites the candy after three licks?

An owl takes the boy's question only after a cow, a fox and a turtle have each passed it along, in a cartoon ad that has aired on US television since 1970.

Which candy did Topps engineer Frank Richards invent to help his daughter stop sucking her thumb?

Ring Pop works much like a pacifier: the hard candy jewel sits on a plastic band worn on the finger, giving a child something sweeter than a thumb.

Sam Born, inventor of a lollipop stick machine, founded the company behind which marshmallow treat?

Peeps come from Just Born, the firm Sam Born started in 1923, seven years after San Francisco handed him the key to the city for his lollipop machine.

In the film Bright Eyes, the 'Good Ship Lollipop' of the famous song is really which vehicle?

An airplane is the ship of the title: the number is sung in the cabin of a taxiing American Airlines Douglas DC-2, with not a wave in sight.

On the Dum Dums production line, what actually creates the brand's Mystery Flavor lollipops?

Two batches blending together is the whole secret: rather than stop the line to clean the machines between runs, Spangler wraps the in-between pops as a mystery.

In Britain, which job is done by the person known as a 'lollipop lady'?

School crossing guard is the job behind the nickname, which comes from the circular stop sign on a stick; using one to halt traffic is even called lollipopping.

In which 1939 musical film does a newly arrived heroine receive a gift from the Lollipop Guild?

The Wizard of Oz gave the Guild only a brief welcome song, yet its green-clad member, Jerry Maren, went on to be the last surviving adult Munchkin actor.

Which child actress made 'On the Good Ship Lollipop' her signature song in the film Bright Eyes?

Shirley Temple turned the tune into a sensation: 400,000 copies of the sheet music were sold, and it ranks 69th on the American Film Institute's list of top movie songs.

Which rapper topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in 2008 with the single 'Lollipop'?

Lil Wayne scored the biggest hit of his career with it, though featured singer Static Major died about two weeks before the single was released.

Which smartphone operating system gave the name Lollipop to its version 5.0, released in 2014?

Android named its releases after sweets from 2009's Cupcake onward, and Lollipop was the one that brought in the redesigned Material Design look.

Chupa Chups lollipops were sent into orbit in the 1990s for the crew of which space station?

Mir took delivery in 1995 and its cosmonauts were filmed enjoying them, a long way from the wooden-stick sweets the firm first sold in the 1950s.

Which female vocal quartet took the song 'Lollipop' to number two on the US pop chart in 1958?

The Chordettes were covering a record by the duo Ronald & Ruby, and one of the four made the famous popping noise by flicking a finger out of her mouth.

The word lollipop may come from 'lolly', a northern English dialect word for which part of the body?

Tongue is one leading guess, though dictionaries call the word's origin obscure; it first named a soft treacle sweet and only meant candy on a stick from the 1920s.

In 2024, which US state made the lollipop its official state candy in honor of a local candy maker?

Connecticut claims the treat because New Haven's Bradley Smith Company began selling hard candy on a stick under the name Lolly Pop in the early 1900s.

Which caramel pop on a stick was first sold in 1925 under the name Papa Sucker?

Sugar Daddy replaced the Papa Sucker name in 1932, and the pop later inspired a bite-sized caramel sibling sold as Sugar Babies.

Which powerful opioid is delivered on a stick in Actiq, a medicated lollipop for severe cancer pain?

Fentanyl lollipops have also gone to war: US Air Force pararescue medics in Afghanistan gave them to blast casualties, taping the stick to a finger.

Which Barcelona manager sucked Chupa Chups lollipops on the touchline after he had to quit smoking?

Johan Cruyff was kept supplied by the company itself during the 1990s, and when he died in 2016 fans left lollipops at his memorial.

Which pop group fronted a 1997 range of Chupa Chups lollipops sold with collectible stickers?

Spice Girls lollipops came in packs that each carried a sticker of one member, part of a range that stretched to toy microphones and temporary tattoos.

In the game Lollipop Chainsaw, cheerleader Juliet Starling battles hordes of what at her school?

Zombies overrun her California school in a game that paired Japanese designer Suda51 with filmmaker James Gunn and went on to sell more than a million copies.

Because lollipop sugar hardens without forming crystals, the candy counts as which type of solid?

A glass is what the cooled syrup becomes: boiling drives its water content below 2%, and the sugar then sets in a jumble instead of an orderly lattice.

Besides sugar, which main ingredient of a standard lollipop keeps the candy from crystallizing?

Corn syrup gets in the way of sugar crystals as the boiled mixture cools; cream of tartar, honey and butter can do the same job.

The cone-shaped Astro Pop lollipop, first made in 1963, was modeled on which space hardware?

A three-stage rocket was a natural model for its inventors, two rocket scientists who quit their jobs on the space program in California to make candy.

Julius Dixson was late to write the 1958 song 'Lollipop' because his daughter got one stuck where?

In her hair, he explained to co-writer Beverly Ross, who was so taken with the word lollipop that she sat down and worked out the song on the spot.

Which singer's 1964 international hit 'My Boy Lollipop' helped introduce ska music to the world?

Millie Small was a Jamaican teenager when she recorded it in London with arranger Ernest Ranglin, giving Island Records its first major hit.

Which California candy maker set a 2012 Guinness record with a 7,003-pound chocolate lollipop?

See's Candies made a giant equal to 145,000 ordinary lollipops; it stood nearly six feet high and beat the previous record of 6,514 pounds.

In Formula One, the crew member called the 'lollipop man' signalled to the driver during what?

A pit stop once ended only when he raised his round sign on a pole, which also reminded the driver to hold the brakes while the tyres were changed.

Why did sales manager I. C. Bahr pick the name Dum Dums in 1924?

Any child could say it, Bahr reasoned, and the easy name outlived his employer: the brand's first maker sold it to the Spangler Candy Company in 1953.

Rumor says a Tootsie Pop wrapper showing a child aiming an arrow at what wins a free lollipop?

A shooting star wrapper never earned a prize from the company, though some shops played along; since 1982 the firm has answered mailed-in wrappers with a short story.

Some Nordic and Dutch lollipops are flavored with salmiak, best known from which candy?

Salty licorice gets its sharp, astringent bite from ammonium chloride, a salt once used as a cough medicine, and it is a favorite from Finland to the Netherlands.

The 2009 K-pop single 'Lollipop' by Big Bang and 2NE1 was created to promote what kind of product?

A mobile phone from LG's Cyon range was the product, and the tie-in doubled as an unofficial debut for 2NE1 before their first proper single, Fire.

How is a Baby Bottle Pop, the lollipop Topps introduced in 1998, meant to be eaten?

Dipped in sugary powder: the candy top is shaped like the tip of a baby's bottle, and the powder waits in the plastic bottle underneath.

Which sugar substitute, typically derived from beet sugar, is widely used in sugar-free lollipops?

Isomalt suits the job because it resists crystallizing even better than ordinary boiled sugar, so the candy stays clear and hard.

Which British sweet maker sells Drumstick lollies alongside Love Hearts and Parma Violets?

Swizzels began as a London market stall in the 1920s and moved north to Derbyshire during the Blitz; its Drumstick lolly arrived in 1957.

Spangler once tried plastic sticks for Dum Dums lollipops but went back to sticks made of what?

Paper won out after complaints that rigid plastic could break during manufacturing and leave fragments in the candy.

The Spangler Candy Company makes its Dum Dums lollipops at a factory in which US state?

Ohio is home to the Spangler factory in Bryan, a town that bills itself as the Dum-Dums Capital of the World; the lollipops moved there in 1953.

Which Danish-Norwegian dance-pop group released 'Lollipop (Candyman)' from their 1997 debut album?

Aqua took the song into the US top 40 after the breakthrough of Barbie Girl, and it was the group's last American chart entry for 26 years.

Students at which Indiana university built a 'licking machine' to test how long a Tootsie Pop lasts?

Purdue students found their machine needed about a hundred more licks than human volunteers did to reach the chewy center, and rival studies disagree further still.