Mr. Owl was wrong.
In the 1969 commercial for Tootsie Pops, a little boy asks, "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?"
He seeks the answer from a turtle, a fox, and a cow, before Mr. Owl tells him three. The ad's tagline, "the world may never know."
However, a new study published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics has arrived at the magic number.
Developing a formula for how flowing water causes dissolving and shrinking, researchers from New York University and Florida State University, concluded that it takes about 1,000 licks to get to the center of an average lollipop.
Tootsie Roll got in on the fun, too, by sending boxes of lollipops for "research."
