Tootsie Roll Quarterly Profit Falls 35% Despite Company’s Proud 130-Year Tradition Of Changing Absolutely Nothing

CHICAGO—Tootsie Roll Industries reported Wednesday that third-quarter net earnings fell 35 percent to $23.2 million on a 1 percent dip in sales, a setback for a company whose core strategy for more than a century has been making the same small brown candy and placing it in the same wax paper.

The company pointed to factors including the timing of Halloween sales, higher trade promotion and advertising, and elevated costs for cocoa, packaging, labor and freight—forces that loyal customers insisted were no match for a product that has outlasted the telegraph.

“Do not innovate,” said Walter Brisbane, 74, a fictional lifelong customer in Oak Lawn, Ill., in an open letter he read aloud to a vending machine. “Do not add protein. Do not partner with a streamer. Do not let anyone near it with a ‘limited-edition’ anything. Stay brown. Stay chewy. Endure.”

Holding the line

Branding consultants were divided on the path forward. “Every candy company has been asked to reinvent itself for Gen Z,” said Alexis Fairbanks, a fictional brand strategist. “This one appears to have read the request, nodded politely, and gone back to making Tootsie Rolls. I find it terrifying and beautiful.”

At press time, analysts had upgraded the company’s outlook on the strength of an expected seasonal shipment to every dentist’s office bowl and grandparent’s coat pocket in America.