Get out your sweatpants: Girl Scout cookie season is nearly upon us. And in honor of the Scouts' 100th anniversary, the venerable organization is releasing a new cookie called the Savannah Smiles — coming to a cookie seller near you in late January or early February. Here, a brief guide to this new treat:
What's in this new cookie?
Savannah Smiles are lemon-wedge shortbread cookies "dusted" with powdered sugar. They're named for the hometown — Savannah, Ga. — of Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low. According to a press release, the "cookie is cool and crisp, with just the right number of lemon chips to deliver tiny bursts of flavor."
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Are new Girl Scout cookies a rare occurrence?
Not really, though many aren't successful. A number of cookies have been discontinued over the years, from the Ice Berry Pinatas (filled with raspberry jam) to the Aloha Chips (white chocolate chip with macadamia nuts) to healthier options like the lower-calorie Daisy Go Rounds.
What are the most popular cookies?
Thin Mints are the prime pastry, gobbling up 25 percent of all Girl Scout cookie sales. They're followed by Samoas (chocolate, caramel, and coconut) and Tagalongs (chocolate and peanut butter). Some 200 million boxes of the cookies are sold each year. The cookie sales first began in 1917.
What are people saying about the Savannah Smiles?
I've yet to taste it, says Lauren Sher at ABC News, but for me, "it's unlikely to top the irresistible chocolate-caramel-coconut Samoa combination." Yeah, these lame cookies leave me "underwhelmed," says Matt Brownell at Main St. "This is the organization that's brought us such perennial delights as Samoas and Tagalongs, so when they say they're introducing a new cookie, we hope to be wowed by an unprecedented confection. A sugar-dusted lemon wedge wasn't quite what we had in mind." Plus, "Savannah Smiles sound remarkably similar to another discontinued cookie, the Lemon Cooler," says Schuyler Velasco at The Christian Science Monitor. But maybe it will "buck the trend and have the staying power of more enduring cookies?"
Sources: ABC News, Christian Science Monitor, GirlScoutCookies.org, Main St
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