Tech & Biz

The Girl Scout Cookie Skirmish with Walmart!

by Barry Artiste | October 4, 2009 at 04:30 pm

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Barry Artiste Op/Ed

September is Girl Guide Month, where young ladies go from door to door to sell their specially made Dare cookies in order to pay for Girl Guide activities in the coming year. Walmart always smelling opportunity to make a buck, seems to be squeezing this organization out the door by what some believe to be selling their own Asian made brand which is similar tasting and packaged product to the public. Thus in some areas not allowing Girl Guides to sell their cookies outside their stores.

One would think the Girl Guides, like the Boy Scouts who conduct apple drives would be a sacred cow not to be messed with.

Seems Walmart takes sacred cows grinds them up and packages as hot dogs, what recourse do these little ladies have against a big corporate? One wonders?

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Celia V. Harquail, who was having a sugar low, spotted a pile of chocolate cookies on a plastic silver catering tray. She was at a women’s blogging conference in Chicago, which happened a few weeks ago, and was partly sponsored by Wal-Mart.

The tempting treats were new, private-label biscuits that the retailer was testing. Harquail grabbed one and bit into it. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this tastes like a Thin Mint,’ ” she says, referring to the most popular Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. (GSUSA) cookie.

On another tray, a stack of confections resembled Tagalongs, the GSUSA peanut butter patties, Harquail’s favourite. One chomp in, she was struck by the similarities—the melty chocolate, the sticky peanut butter, the appearance.

Until now, every imitation Harquail had tried had been terrible. But these ones, she says from New Jersey where she lives, were “good, tasty, well-done cookies.”