Tootsie Keeps Rolling After 100 Years

At 76 years old, Melvin Gordon is like a kid in a candy store, snatching pieces of gooey Tootsie Roll from the assembly line and savoring the taste.

“There’s nothing like a hot Tootsie Roll,” the chairman of Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. says as he licks the oozing candy from his fingers.

It’s been 100 years since candy maker Leo Hirshfield came up with the treat and named it for his 5-year-old daughter, Clara, his little Tootsie. A century ago, electric lights had just begun to flicker across America.

Now, Tootsie Roll makes enough candy each year to stretch from the earth to the moon and back.

Tootsie Roll’s main product - a concoction of sugar, milk, corn syrup and cocoa - has endured during a general slump in the candy bar industry, as have its other treats, including Mason Dots, Charleston Chews, Sugar Daddys and Charms Blow-Pops.

Total company sales exceeded $300 million last year - making it the No. 6 candy maker in the United States, says company President Ellen Gordon - Melvin’s wife.