Girl Scout Cookie conspiracy

It’s Girl Scout cookie time again, usually a source of joy and calories that I have always looked forward to. But there is a dark side to those disc-shaped delectables. When I moved to my current state of residence in 2000, I was surprised to find out that the old familiar names were gone from the boxes I saw for sale. The most majestic and tasty kind, the Samoa, was suddenly called a “Caramel Delite,” although everything else about the purple box seemed to be the same. In need of my cookie fix and willing to keep an open mind, I bought a couple boxes and took them home.

Well, despite them looking almost identical to the Samoas of my fond memory, they didn’t exactly taste like them. And a lot of the caramel had oozed out of the cookies and stuck to the inside plastic tray of the box, so that it was a huge pain to pry them out in order to taste their inferiority in the first place. “Egad,” I lamented, “They changed the name and the recipe too!” And I thought I was screwed.

But I was mistaken. When I complained (okay, whined) to my sister about it, she said that they still sold Samoas where she lived. And she sent me a box. (This has assured her entry into heaven, if there is such a thing.) Imagine my relief when I opened up a box of those Samoas and found the same delicious coconut and caramel extravaganza that I’d always loved.

So what gives? Turns out there are two different companies licensed to make Girl Scout cookies, and I can say with confidence that one of them produces lousy-ass cookies. Unfortunately, in my area all the councils seem to contract with the purveyors of demonic Caramel Delites, rather than the bakers of wondrous Samoas. So now I have to rely on my sister every year to send me boxes of the real deal. And whenever I walk by a table of Girl Scouts selling, I take a look at the purple boxes. Delites? No dice.