It’s Girl Scout Cookie Time! The Girl Scout cookies are here! They’re here!!!!!! Dear mother of mercy, the flippin’ Girl Scout Cookies Are Here!!!!!!!
I don’t care much for Girl Scout cookies. I know I’m the only person in America who will say those words and publicly admit to it, but you should all think about this.
Do you really like them? Really? Everyone says they love Girl Scout cookies, but it seems to me, it’s just the thing to say. Are they really that good? Carmel Delites, Thanks-A-Lot, Thin Mints – I’ll bet you $3.50 that I can find the same cookies made by elves in the snack aisle at Kroger right now. And I’ll bet you another $3.50 that you don’t like them either, rarely buy them and only eat them when you’re facing a diabetic coma and need the sustenance. Or there’s nothing else in the house.
They are store-bought cookies in a box. They’re not really good. Say it with me, now. They’re not that good.
So it’s got to be the marketing. Those little girls in green have convinced us that it’s worth $3.50 a box to overspend on so-so cookies, because:
a) you can only get them during February. You got a craving for a Do-Si-Do or a Tag-Along in July? You’re screwed. You know it and they know it. You might say you’re going to put a few boxes in the freezer for later, but by mid March, they’re gone, baby, gone.
b) buying them gives girls in your town a shot of self esteem, business skills, money management, goal setting, team building, rockin’ girl power and a hairline fracture in the glass ceiling. If any Girl Scout in your region becomes famous for anything, you can say you helped make it happen.
Instead of the cookies, the Girl Scouts should be packaging this killer marketing strategy and selling that door-to-door. Never in the history of sales, schemes and cons has there been anything close to the ability of these minor females to get people to buy a mediocre product and believe in their hearts that they’re buying something wonderful.
Mary Kay, Amway and the Jehovah’s Witness could all learn a few things from the Girl Scouts. Because they’re so little and cute, they can walk right past the “No Soliciting” sign, knock on your door, stare down your guard dog with her own sad puppy eyes and get all your personal information and a check up front for cookies that might or might not show up at your door a month later. Reminds me a little bit of the little handicapped kids that beg money in India. Nobody’s gonna give spare change to a grown man, so send the kid in there and you rake in the dough.
We pay the money and sign that form on the chance that we might get a taste of – what? – a cookie.
When I was in Girl Scouts, I did it. I went to my neighbors and asked them to buy my cookies. There was no t-shirt in it for me, and I think the cookies were only 50 cents a box back then. My mom was cookie chairman, too, one year, and so we had a dining room full of those buggers for about a week.
When my daughter was a Brownie, we did it. We sold them to our friends and neighbors and also stood in the freezing cold (why February? Why? Why?) with three to four of our fellow troopers at a table in front of Super G. We said we were raising money for a camping trip, but I never saw any of that cash. Our troop leader had the bright idea to require that each little girl be responsible for selling a set number of boxes of cookies. We ended up with 7 boxes of Lemon Chalet Creams (blech!) and 4 Sugar Free Chocolate Chip (oh for crying out loud – why bother? Why not just eat a pretzel?) that we couldn’t pay our enemies to eat. I think I passed them out to trick-or-treaters the following year and found them, boxes intact, in the sewer grate.
I’m waiting for the Boy Scouts to figure out that if they buy up a huge stash of Girl Scout cookies in February, set them aside and scalp them at a 100 percent profit in August, they can pretty much put an end to their own lame popcorn sales.
Camping trips for the girls, camping trips for the boys, you get your cookies year round, everybody’s a winner. That is, until the Camp Fire Girls want their piece of the action . . .