The Girl Scouts of America finally have decided to squash a secondary market that has profited — in sweet, unrivaled obscurity! — since basically the dawn of the Internet.
In a news release Monday morning, the Girl Scouts announced a new program called Digital Cookie, which will basically let scouts sell their wares online for the first time. In doing so, the Girl Scouts say, they’ll be teaching young women important tech and entrepreneurial skills. They’ll also be putting a number of savvy cookie-sellers out of business – which is good news for consumers, frankly, since the prices demanded by sellers on sites like Amazon and eBay approach highway robbery.
At least half a dozen resellers operate Amazon stores under legit-sounding names like “Girl Scouts” and “Little Brownie Baker,” one of the Girl Scouts’ suppliers, peddling their ill-gotten Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos for as much as $40 per box. Some seem to sell pretty well, despite the steep markup: Second-hand Thin Mints are, as of this writing, Amazon’s sixth most-popular chocolate cookie, beating out Chips Ahoy! and several varieties of Oreo.
On Craigslist, sellers everywhere from Denver to New Jersey have posted boxes for pick-up — though they mostly seem to be rule-bending moms, selling for their daughters on the down-low, or newly legalized pot dealers. (“Girl Scout Cookies” is a strain of marijuana. Who knew!)
Meanwhile, on eBay, a seller going by the name Sell-Il — based in Israel, of all places — is currently selling boxes of Savannah Smiles for $16.34 apiece, and Trefoils for $27.41. (That works out to 76 cents a cookie, and Trefoils aren’t all that good.) Another eBay seller, this one based in Brooklyn, has listed her Samoas and Tagalogs for a more reasonable $4 a box, plus $6 shipping.
“Cookies expired September 2014,” she wrote, “but we all know they would survive a nuclear war.”
This secondary market has not, needless to say, been popular with Girl Scout loyalists; per long-standing Girl Scout policy, selling online — even if you are a Girl Scout, posting on behalf of your troop — is against the rules.
“As a mother and (troupe) leader I am disgusted every time I log onto the Internet and find people breaking the rules,” one woman wrote in an eBay guide that’s been viewed over 13,000 times. “This violates everything Girl Scouting stands for.”
She has a point: The cookies are a fundraiser, and proceeds from their sale goes to whatever Girl Scout council organized it. But also … this is 2014. Amazon was founded 20 years ago! eBay has existed longer than even the most senior Girl Scouts! Online shopping is a mind-meltingly gigantic industry, a fact that should be particularly glaring today — it’s Cyber Monday, and consumers are expected to spend $2.5 billion today alone. If anything, the Girl Scouts should have done this half a decade ago — for the sake of their own sales, if not out of bigger social concerns.
“If you buy Girl Scout Cookies online this year, you could be helping to prepare the next female leader of a global tech giant who changes our world forever,” cheered Girl Scouts’ CEO Anna Maria Chavez.
Of course, if the Girl Scouts were reallyyy interested in business savvy, they might have encouraged girls to sell online sooner, even without an official system in place … and they might have noticed that, economically speaking, they could charge a heck of a lot more money for those Thin Mints.
Alas, there is no Girl Scout badge in economics. Which, when you think about it, kind of figures.
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