Opinion: No to online Girl Scout cookies

First published in The Madera Tribune on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014.

I’m not sure I’ll be buying any Girl Scout cookies online this year. I think if I get talked into a purchase, I’d rather have it done by an erstwhile young lady outside a store in a shopping center, or one who knocks on my door at home.

Frankly, the Girl Scout cookies aren’t so good that I’d want to go to the trouble of ordering them online, paying with a credit card, unwrapping them from a shipping container and then being miffed because some of them had been broken in transit. That’s the way the cookie crumbles when you buy cookies online.

It’s much more fun to pick out the kind of cookies you want right there from the Girl Scout who is selling them. Or from her parent. I’ve bought a lot of Girl Scout cookies from parents who don’t want to be saddled with a case or two of cookies after the campaign is over. I do that out of sympathy for the parents (most of whom I have known) and in the knowledge the money will go to a good cause.

But I’m darned if I want to buy cookies from a parent online, especially if the cookies happen to be on eBay. As far as I know, nobody is planning to sell their daughters’ Girl Scout cookies on eBay or any other auction site, but don’t be surprised if that happens. Entrepreneurial parents who don’t want to be stuck with a case of Girl Scout cookies will go to any lengths.

About the cookies themselves, I think I read somewhere that the biggest factory which turns them out — ABC Bakers — has pretty much kept the same ingredients since 1937. Some of the cookies taste as though that’s when they were made.

Nothing against the cookies, though, as long as your expectations aren’t set too high.

I plan to buy mine from an actual Girl Scout sometime after Jan. 1 when sales actually begin.