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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.
One response to “Girl Scout Cookie Queens and Princesses”
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As a GS in surburban NY between 1960 and 1969 our troop sold cookies every year and while I remember ringing doorbells in my neighborhood, I dont remember the cookie sale being the focus of our GS year as it has become in recent years. Camping, visiting the local nursing home on holidays, and troop trips were what I remember best.
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