Remember the old, watercolor-style animated Tootsie Roll commercial they played for like 10 years? I just saw that commercial on TV, and I felt rather compelled to write this.

It featured three characters and a lone branch. Character one was a spry, optimistic young boy, eager to learn the truths and justices of an otherwise strange and unjust world. The young lad sported large puffy hair, styled to taste for the mid to late 70s. Character two was a big, old turtle with tiny grandpa-glasses and no teeth (which makes his claim to have "never made it without biting" highly suspicious). The other character, a wise old owl, was found resting, perched in the tree. The owl wore a mortarboard hat and large round glasses, because reaffirming icons of the intelligence is never a bad idea.

(boy walks up to Mr. turtle, who awakes from his sleep)
Boy: Mr. Turtle, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of the Tootsie Pop?
Mr. Turtle: I don't know, I ain't never (note the bad grammar) made it without biting. Ask Mr. Owl.
(switch to Boy walking up to Mr. Owl)
Boy: Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of the Tootsie Pop?
Mr. Owl: Let's find out.
(Mr. Owl grabs the Tootsie Pop from the boy's hand.)
Mr. Owl: One ... *lick* Two ... *lick* Three ... *lick* *bite*
(Pan to disappointed boy as Mr. Owl hands back the now vacated stick.)
Mr. Owl: (declaratively) Three.
Voice: How many licks DOES it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.
(end commercial)

Fine, the boy is tricked and is handed back the stick, to learn a lesson from this cold, cruel world. Sure, I can live with the shameful fact that this world is filled with awful talking birds of prey, willing to use their intelligence to do evil instead of good. But when the boy is handed back the stick, he's handed the end the owl bit into. Meaning, the end that was touching the owl's mouth.

Am I the only person who thinks this is one of the more disgusting (let's ignore every violent cartoon ever made in the past 20 years for this, remember, this cartoon was made in the 70's) acts ever subjugated to children over a 10 year span? Sure, it's just a cartoon you say. But that doesn't justify the deplorable hygiene this boy must suffer, from an owl of all things.

Not that I have anything against owls per se. But even glasses-sporting, mortarboard-hat-wearing, smarty-smart owls, capable of talking and tricking the youth of America to surrender their sweets in the name of scientific experimentation, are pretty nasty creatures. Owls can not live on Tootsie Pops alone, no sir. These things eat rats, golphers, voles ... you name it. If it's furry and probably has a disease, owls are all about it.

I don't know about you, but I don't want something that just ate Stuart Little to hand me the wrong end of a Tootsie Pop.

And even if this wasn't just some dirty, dirty owl doing this deplorable act, let's say it was a dirty, dirty human instead, what right does he have to hand the used end of a Tootsie Pop stick to another human being, one that he went out of his way to trick and cheat out of hard earned sugar? What on earth were we trying to teach the youth of the 70s and 80s?

In protest to this commercial, and every commercial in which poor post-candy hygiene is encouraged by birds, I will never again eat a Tootsie Pop.

Especially those brown ones. They're just nasty.