to johnarlington,
you say it makes you made having kids do this. did you write a check to the girl scouts so it doesn't waste your kids time? if you didn't shame on you! if you did that's great! if you did not you should not put the kids down for this unless you were as a kid.

@johnarlington:

plus I used to be a Girl Scout and it's defintely a worthwhile organization, my (future) kids will be enrolled in Scouting orgs. Still have found memories of s'mores and making grilled cheese on coffee cans...

We also sold at malls etc.

And cookies sell themselves! you don't need a sales pitch, they're SOO GOOD - esp Tagalongs & Thin Mints!

I also have to agree with some of the above posters - I have not seen a GS sell me a box in years - it is always some co-worker, boss etc posting the order form at work etc. So annoying.

@orlo: The cookies are priced in even amounts ($3.00, $3.50 or $4 depending on area) to make it easy on the younger girls to do the math while selling. If they raised the price just to cover the rise in commodities, they'd have to raise the price more than the 30% increase in sugar or whatever. In these tough economic times, that would just make it even more difficult to sell boxes.

Also, merely giving money directly to a troop or girl does not help the local council pay for upkeep on the camps, paying for administrative and safety personnel or subsidizing activities for girls who couldn't otherwise afford to go to camp or participate in scouting. I volunteer with a group of girl scouts who live in Section 8 housing. They pay only $1 to participate in the monthly activities we provide to earn badges. Neither the $1 fee nor the amount of money raised in individual cookie sales comes close to covering the cost of the supplies for the activities or the cost of camp.

Aside from that, I'm in the boat that doesn't mind this "shrink ray" all that much. Yes, it is a little frustrating and disappointing to not get as much as you once did, but that's what happens, and always has happened, over the course of inflation.

As someone who is on a tight budget at the moment, I'd say that I would actually rather have the size decreased a little as opposed to the price raised or the quality diminished. For everyone out there who is on a tight budget (and that includes more and more people these days), it's actually possible that they simply could not afford an increase in price for the same size box. This allows those types of consumers to still enjoy the product without being forced to move to something of lower quality or cut this or something else out of their budget entirely.

I know for the DC area, they use "Little Brownie Bakers" as their supplier, and they have some kind of lemon sandwich cookie. Just north of us in Pennsylvania, they use a different baker (I'd have to go look it up) and their lemon cookies are known as Lemonades, which look like lemon slices with lemon frosting on the bottom. I actually ask one of my friends to get those for me instead.

This is one of those products where they could have just raised the price a bit more. I mean seriously, aside from supporting a good cause (and the guilt associated with not doing so) and the cookies basically being the snackfood equivalent of crack, I'm guessing people will still pay.

Suck it up and buy 12 boxes, cheapskates.

@krista: Yes, and not feel quite as guilty when eating the whole row of Thin Mints. ;-)

Someone told me about this so I checked the boxes from this year with some I still have left from last year. I only had Thin Mints and Caramel deLites (Samoas) left. They were the same weights.

The Girl Scouts of Central Texas use ABC Bakers for their cookies. The names are diffent on some cookies like Tagalongs are Peanut Butter Patties, Do-si-dos are Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Trefoils are Shortbreads, and the Thin Mints have a ridged edge instead of smooth.

The other cookies seemed to be the same weight and price as they were last year.

And BTW our troop gets 10% of sales and then an additional 5% bonus. So last year our troop alone made $3000 with 15 girls selling. And we made them sell door-to-door and participate in at least one booth sale. The girls get bonuses to go to camp. The council gets a lot of the money, but they spend a lot on the girls. And like someone previously said, they have to do background checks on all the volunteers.

@snazz: Wrong. I buy them because Trefoils are awesome and I have no willpower.

I think the worst was the year in middle school they asked us to sell Vidalia onions. Freaking ONIONS.

@snazz: There are better reasons not to buy the cookies than inflation sizing.

I won't go into them here because some people go into a tizzy when I explain them in other places.

Frankly, I refuse to buy them unless the kid stands in front of me and makes a sales pitch. That was part of the reason for selling cookies - to learn communication skills.

@ninabi: The parents do more selling than the kids do. admit it.

If you raise the price, people will notice.

If you decrease the amount of product in the package, people may not notice until they've bought the product, or maybe not at all. As evidenced by attempts to design packages that conceal the change, this is usually the objective.

Even if you issue a press release about it, most people are still not going to read it.

The Grocery Shrink Ray, no matter how you try to dress it up, is an attempt at deception. Sometimes it is a halfhearted one, but it is invariably more deceptive than raising the price.

The lesson is that when presented with two choices you don't like, it is okay to choose the one that requires you to lie.

I don't think they could do it to the Samoa's.
There was only like 14 cookies in the box to begin with.

But the cookie company only actually gets about a third of the money, which is fair. They need to cover costs, and certainly need some incentive for doing what they do. Although the local troop may only get what appears from the above comment to be $.50 or so, the remainder of the money goes to the girl scouts central office. And I guarantee to you they are not putting all that money into a vault and rolling around in it. It goes into girl scout activities, camps, etc.

There's nothing wrong with buying cookies for that matter. Sure, honest-to-god charity in the form of donations to a troop would be nicer, but selling cookies is more likely to actually earn money.

YET. :P

First of all, you can plainly see in the picture that while they are comparing the size of the boxes, the box in back is lower than the other one. Secondly, the money is going to a non-profit organization. The cookie sale is the biggest fundraisers the Girl Scouts do and the money goes to pay for events, uniforms, field trips, etc. Also, contrary to what many people believe, the Girl Scouts don't make the cookies. They have to pay a commercial baker (which there are two in the country)for the cookies as well. Therefore, the baker raises their prices, the Girl Scouts must raise the prices to still get funds.

@orlo: Yep, its up to the troop leader what they do with the money. And they did raise the price, too, but it depends on where you are. Here in Wisconsin, I have seen prices from $3- $4 per box.

Now, there are some troops that sell the cookies for more than $3.50/box and get to keep the excess in addition to the $0.50. However, the Girls Scouts have specifically prohibited troops from doing this, and if you get caught you may have your cookie selling status revoked.

@redbess: I am currently a Brownie leader- we get $0.60 per box. And while the boxes have gotten smaller since last year, the cost per box has gone up for us, too. Also, if you are donating, you have to do it on the sly, or the council will take it from the troop. I don't report donations we get for that reason. And yes, at the beginning of each year I must PAY to register myself as a leader. There is a lot wrong with girl scouts, but I can't let my girls down and quit.

I run into kids all the time selling candy, or trying to collect money for their [sports team, whatever], and I can usually tell when they're just scamming.

When you see a cadre of brownies with a pile of cookie boxes, you can be pretty sure that your money is actually going to the organization.

@Canino:

Oh no!!! I love my GS cookies and I love my local GScouts and have fond memories of selling door to door when I was a GS. We'll still be buying those cookies no matter how many are in a box.

I think the final straw was when we were selling magazines, and my only sale was convincing my dad to get me Nintendo Power. The only problem was, the subscription never came, and they said they couldn't find my order. If only I could've taken the issue to The Consumerist.

Oh well.

I spent $30 last year. I guess I will need to spend $40 this year for the same amount of cookies.

Ain't like the increased price is going to kill me.

(eating all them cookies might kill me, but not the increase in price/decrease in package size )

@Dethzilla: LoL my note of the day!!!

@HogwartsAlum: Without shoes either!

Oh, Wendy, you're a woman after my heart.

No, seriously. I see this woman going through "a big thing of Oreos" on a daily basis and she's in dire need of a transplant.

That's why Girlscouts should start selling Beef Jerky instead of those pansy cookies. MAN UP GIRL SCOUTS... MAN UP.

...oh, by the way, shoot me a note if you want to order some. My daughter is selling them.

@aerialmaps:
That is the best typo I've seen in days.

@Thaddeus: If you bought those here in NYC, that means 10 boxes of shrunken Thin Mints. And I thought I was eating too many when I bought 6 boxes of stuff.

I am waiting for my boxes of their new Dulce de Leche flavor cookies.

As others have said, we don't buy 'em because they're a good value (at least not in recent years due to the shrink ray that hits about every other year - or it seems like that). We buy 'em to support the GS and value or not they are good cookies.

Charitable organizations and the such need to understand that once they're not relying on donations and shift to profit on sold items, they have just as much responsibility to the customer for the product they represent as any large faceless corporation does. I'd say more so because they are supposed to be the shining example of how people should behave (ie. not like a bunch of creeps.)

If they would have said "oh, hay, look, this year our Thin Mints are going to be smaller" how many people would look at the little uniformed girl in front of them and put the cash back in their pocket? No, they wouldn't. But to avoid any kind of scrutiny whatsoever they hide behind stealth shrink raying and teach girls how to be sneaky.

AND they don't pull that aeration crap. ("It's not aerated, it's CHURNED!" Fuck you, Dreyer's.)

I think it's WORSE. What is the lesson taught to the girls here?

Get used to the shrink ray stories - they still think its news that OMG companies shrink boxes but not prices.

@snazz: So it is not shame for Girl Scouts Central to consider about prices and costs, but for us to consider the same issues, is shameful?

awwww, boohoo for telling the truth

When I sold them back in the day, they were twice as big a box and they were only FIFTY CENTS.

And we had to walk uphill in the snow to get 'em, too! Both ways!

Exactly. Inflation does this. This is why we don't go to the movies and spend a nickel like they did in the early 1900's.

Anyway, the only cookie shrink ray depression for me occurred the last time I bought Keeblers Deluxe Fudge Grahams. They used to be wonderful, now they are these little pathetic chips of cracker thinly coated with chocolate. I've never bought a box since.

shame on consumerist for putting a negative spin on these and possibly causing some people to not buy them this year.

@dripdrop: I haven't bought a single box since they got rid of the sugar cookies several years ago. I used to buy 12 or more boxes of those and freeze them so I had them all year.

the point is to get the kids out into his community and start talking to his/her neighbors and friends.... and make some change to help their group.

if you dont want your kid learning those skills, then write their group a check and let your kids watch cartoons on saturday.

I was a girl scout leader for seven years. 10 years ago we received about 45 cents a box. The kids, parents and leaders did all the work, too.

I have to agree about the children selling candy bars for school. I think its pretty pathetic and probably a safety issue.

Oh yeah and Santa doesn't exist

:( I want a thin mint

The prices to make the cookies went up by 30%, yet the quantity decreases by how much? 10% maybe? why dont you put those numbers up.

hate all this whining crap about shrink ray

Blue Bell Ice Cream has taken advantage of all this shrink ray action and uses it to market their Ice Cream by stamping Still a Half Gallon on the side of all their 1/2 gallon containers.

I know people buy these cookies because they love them, but if you really want to support your local troops of GS, PLEASE for the love of the gods donate money to the troop or local council instead of buying cookies. The girls do not get a great cut of each box, it's somewhere under a dollar per box.

Most people already know they can get more cookies at the grocery store, but it's girl scout cookies, come on.

also FIRST