You might run into a booth down on Main Street. You might have a badge-toting younger sister. Maybe your neighbor comes door-to-door bearing a colorful order spreadsheet and a smile. Either way, you’re in luck—you’ve got access to America’s favorite confection: Girl Scout cookies.
Girl Scout cookies have been around since the 1920s when they began as simple sugar cookies baked in the home ovens of the very first Girl Scouts. Over the years they have been transformed, and today, they are still in high demand.
“For my money, Thin Mints are definitely the best, but Tagalongs are also pretty delicious,” Haley Randich ’14, who has been a Girl Scout since 1st grade and still sells cookies, said. Thin Mints and Tagalongs are only two of 12 different cookie varieties available. Though Thin Mints, Tagalongs, Samoas, Trefoils and Do-Si-Dos have been around since the 1950s, there has been a lot of turnover since then.
“I am a huge fan of the Lemon Coolers,” Randich says. “Those were retired years ago, and I remember being furious, but they have been brought back recently, and now they’re called Savannah Smiles.”
Despite so much change, the cookies have still managed to stay widely coveted.
Elizabeth Coogan ’14, who has been a Girl Scout for 13 years, attributes this to the fact that they are only sold once a year.
“Christmas wouldn’t be fun if it was all year round, and neither would Girl Scout cookies!” she says.
Those who are still troop members cherish the memories of selling cookies in the dead of winter.
“One man came up to us and lectured us about how unhealthy the cookies were, and we were only nine at the time!” Randich says. Coogan also recalls stories, including one year when two Staples English teachers walked by her booth outside Starbucks and bought cookies. Selling cookies also has incentives. “One year, the biggest prize was a shower radio, and everyone thought it was the coolest prize ever,” Coogan says.
Because there are very few Girl Scouts in Staples, salesgirls are often hard to come by.
“People figure out I’m a Girl Scout, and first they are surprised, and right before they go to make fun of it, it dawns on them that they can get cookies from me, and they start asking immediately,” Randich says. “It ends up looking somewhat like a drug deal wherein which I pass them a box of Samoas in a sketchy paper bag under the table, and then they hand over the cash.”
Unfortunately, many older Girl Scouts stop selling cookies, so when March rolls around, Staples students are forced to find other cookie sources—and there is no question that students will go to great lengths to get them.
“I used to like Thin Mints,” Maddy Rozynek, who gets cookies from her voice teacher’s daughter, says. “But I grew out of that stage, so now I like Samoas and Tagalongs. They’re baller.”
Cara McNiff ‘14 also gets cookies from younger scouts. “The daughter of one of my mom’s co-workers happened to be selling them this year so that’s how I got them,” she says. “I like Samoas and Thin Mints the best. I tend to switch off. My mom likes Trefoils, but I’m not about that life.”
