Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Ours always happen in the spring. And after all, Girl Scout cookies, unlike similar cookies you can buy year round at the grocery store, have no calories and are acceptable for binge-eating. It's pathetic to buy a box of cookies at the grocery store and down them all in one sitting, but Girl Scout cookies are meant to be snarfed.

Aren't they? You mean, it isn't like birthday cake has no calories?

Damn!

If we're unable to keep buying Girl Scout cookies, the terrorists have won.

But Girl Scout cookies help to stimulate the economy! Just when you think you've spent all you can possibly stand the grocery store, you walk out to a table of adorable scouts baiting you to buy their Thin Mints.

Well, it kind of makes sense. Boy Scouts seem to be doing better. And the popcorn cans they sell are a minuscule part of what they do. It's not what people think of when they think of Boy Scouts. But cookies are what a lot of people think of when they think of Girl Scouts.

If I was a little girl, I wouldn't exactly be very excited to join an organization so I can sell cookies.

Hillary/ChewOnThat, You must be my evil twin. :-)

My thighs do not thank them. They are wasting away wondering when the next set of rations will come in. (harumph. as if)

Thins Mints and Samoa are sooo the best cookies ever. tears...

Um, no. It's unAmerican to not have Girl Scout cookies. And really, unless you're a parent and/or alumni, how much do you know about either the Boy or Girl Scouts? Emphasize whatever to the parents or alumni, but GIVE ME MY COOKIES.

Girl scouting really isn't relevant, not even in an educational retro way. Boys get to learn about camping and building cool stuff, we get to learn that being cute helps you sell things. I know MY girl scout troop never taught me anything productive, and I'm still a little bitter. I like a Samoa now and then, but the Girl Scouts really lost me when they discontinued their turtle cookies ("Juliets") in the mid-90s.

i loves me some girl scout cookies!

You know, I used to be a Girl Scout, and my mom was a cookie mom (if you want to know more, feel free to ask about the thousands of boxes piled in our house). But I have NEVER been offered to buy the cookies. In fact, I forgot they existed till now. Where do GSs sell cookies in NYC?

When one hears "Girl Scouts", the next immediate thought is "Cookies!!", so I can see why they may want to broaden their image a bit. That being said, there is no reason to simply stop cookies sales. The girls learn quite a bit from selling cookies - salesmanship, responsibility, etc. - and the rest of get to enjoy a variety of yummy cookies!!

The bakers take 30% off the top. In reading about this on CNN's website (from March of 2007) I was amused by what the organization claimed that Scouts learned from this "voluntary" activity. The CNN piece states that of the 70 retained, 12 to 17 percent is kept by the local troop. Yikes! That's all?

And um, er where do you live where you get Girl Scouts door-to-door? We haven't seen that in at least 18 years around here. In our city, you buy cookies when a) a scout's mother puts out an email b) a scout's mother leaves an order form on her desk in the office or c) you go shopping and encounter a card table outside the grocery store/discount store etc. staffed by 4 Girl Scouts and a mommy or two (okay once I saw aan adult male. Once.). (I wish they did still come to the door. We don't have a car, so delivery would be so helpful.

Of course i buy them. I was a Girl Scout and there's nothing, like guilt to encourage purchasing something. And I can't imagine life without Thin Mints. Even some of the newer "tea cookies" were okay. Ooooh, cookies....(sorry, did I slobber?)

But sorry Mrs. B, I never learned "salesmanship" from selling GS cookies. And I never learned "responsibility which I believe I already understood. i do think that the latter is a good goal for girls. I do not think "salesmanship" is something I'd want my daughter (if I had one) to acquire as a Scout. I didn't learn "nuttin" from selling cookies (though that was decades past) and think the grandiose explanation offered is plain silly. the spokeswoman claimed that the skills helped girls become leaders later in life thanks to "cookie activities" which apparently included planning, team-building, "speaking up" making decisions, problems solving....and on and on. Wow. Pardon my lifted eyebrow. I think training girls and young women to become saleswomen should be the job of Junior Achievement.

Oh yeah, and my mother was a "cookie captain" at least once. Back when we did go door to door taking orders and delivering boxes when they arrived a few weeks later, we were the staging area for the troop. Cookies here, cookies there. Oy, did we have cookies!

Girl Scouts also earn money that can be used towards GS camp in the summer. This is a huge positive for poor young Girl Scouts as GS camp presents a tremendous opportunity to get out in the country and to gain many skills, independence and self esteem.

What I find troubling is the so called advisor probably has no clue about the benefits of the cookie sales. What's more, again, they sell them, they don't eat them. I was a Girl Scout for seven years, and rarely if ever ate them.

This is what's wrong w/ America: management consulting teams! Stupidity, and they have to pay to be told the stupidity! My thought is, duh, get web connectivity @ the GS camps! Create new, 21st century badges - e.g., blogging, website creation, etc. etc. My prediction is that if we lose the cookies we lose the GS soon after.

My mother was the "cookie mother" in our troop, too. I remember selling GS cookies back when I didn't have to go door-to-door b/c father, et al. could just lay the order forms on their desks & they would magically get filled out over a couple of weeks with hundreds of orders. These days, they have changed the recipes (to be lower cost, i think) & the names (to be more pc - did a Samoan actually take offense at the fabulous cookies bearing the name of their homeland) so much, that the cookies are barely recognizable, so no wonder the Cookie Mafia has to extort in front of grocery stores in order to unload their ever-shrinking boxes of cookies.

Imho, GS should've started updating their image 25 yrs ago. It was totally unhip when I was a "brownie". I went to a day camp for a week once & it was lame (not even any swimming in the Texas summer!!) really lame. All we did was have meetings & make dumb little crafts (made better ones at home) & sing songs that were babyish even to a 2nd grader. I was in it b/c (a) there was nothing better to do in our one-horse town & (b) let's face it, my mother made me do it. I am afraid that it is too late for GS to update their image, but they could start by getting rid of the "scout" part.

I've been a Girl Scout all my life and a volunteer at the council level working on the Cookie Sale for the past 5 so a lot of these comments are like a knife in my heart.

Yes, it is true that the individual troops get less than 20% of the retail price back as immediate, direct profit but that doesn't mean they don't benefit from the money they don't keep. Cookie profits go back to the local council to pay the salaries of the staff members, pay for upkeep and improvements at camps and other properties, program materials, and all the other things necessary to make Girl Scouts great. Additional profits go to Girl Scouts of the USA to help them develop new programs and manage national policy. And yes, we do have to pay the baker too.

I'm sorry that some people don't believe how hard we work to make sure the Cookie Sale is not just a fundraiser but is also a learning experience for the girls. Every year, that is our foremost priority. It may sound like marketing hype to hear successful, adult women talk about the lessons they learned selling cookies but I have seen countless cases of girls who really blossomed because of opportunities they had during the cookie sale. The girl who had been pathologically shy in meetings suddenly find the confidence to talk to strangers while selling cookies in front of Wal*Mart, the girl struggling to find her place in the social structure of the group who comes up with the amazing idea to make the whole troops' sale successful, the stories go on and on. The feeling of setting a goal and achieving it is something we'd like every girl to experience.

In addition, the Cookie Sale, like all Girl Scout programs, has a service component. Troops can choose a charitable organization to sell cookies for. In 2001, my Brownie troop sold 10 cases of cookies and personally delivered them to the fire station. For the past few years, our council has sold cookies for the USO and girls have distributed them to soldiers as they board planes to deploy overseas. The stories the troop leaders tell from that experience are unbelievably touching.

Yes, girls still go door to door in some places but mostly that depends on having an adult volunteer willing to accompany them. I know of plenty of girls who do but a lot more girls who do not have the opportunity. For anyone who wants Girl Scout cookies but does not have a way to get them, call your local council. During cookie season, I guaranteed they will find a way to get cookies to you. http://girlscouts.org/councilfinder/

Finally, Samoas are still called Samoas for parts of the country. There are 2 bakeries providing cookies and the name varies depending on which one supplies your area. Caramel deLites are the equivalent (but not quite as good as the Samoa IMHO).