As Girl Scout Cookie season winds down, who will be crowned this year’s Girl Scout Cookie Queen?
Today, top-selling Girl Scout cookie entrepreneurs can earn special patches, trips, laptop computers and more. Seventy years ago, there were fewer prize options, but top sellers became royalty.
During the first 50 years of selling cookies, there were more bakers, fewer flavors, and almost no patches for the girls. What did these Girl Scouts earn instead–a crown!
The top seller in a town or council won the coveted “Cookie Queen” title. Other super-sellers might be honored as “Cookie Princess” or a member of the queen’s court.
Small-town newspapers covered the cookie coronations in detail and ran photos of the winners.
How many boxes of cookies would a girl need to sell to be crowned? The simple answer is “the most.”
Not all newspaper stories mention sales figures, and some totals are given in “dozens” instead of boxes. But it looks like 100 boxes would be enough for a crown in the 1930s and 1940s, rising to 500 in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s, patches became the standard.
Cookie Crumbs, my online museum of Girl Scout cookie prizes, shows the proliferation of patches over time.
© 2026 Ann Robertson, writer, editor, Girl Scout historian, but NOT a Girl Scout employee.
Leave a Reply