Thieving elves?

I think those Keebler elves are up to something. 

This packaging has a kind of flair that makes me think of two of the Girl Scouts' most popular cookies.

To be fair, the packaging may be new, but the Keebler varieties are not. Keebler, which has a history dating back to 1853 and is now owned by Ferrero SpA (after being a Kellogg company for 19 years), has been making its fudge-based cookies for some time. But more to the point, Keebler was actually the first commercial bakery to make cookies for the Girl Scouts to sell. Keebler is still involved with the Girl Scouts, actually; its Little Brownie Bakery subsidiary is one of two companies that bake the cookies for the GS gang. (The other is ABC Smart Cookies.)

But are these knockoffs of the Girl Scout brands? I can't prove a connection, although Lifehacker says they are. The Fudge Mint Delights (formerly known as Grasshoppers) are indeed a type of Thin Mint, and the Coconut Dreams match up to the Caramel deLites (a.k.a. Samoas, depending where you live in the United States). But they are not identical. For example, the BusyBee blog did a taste test of the mint cookies a few years ago and found the Thin Mint slightly superior to the Keebler mint cookie. 

What does this all mean? I don't know. My wife was the Thin Mint fan in the family -- in the days B.F. (Before Fred) she and her roommate each bought two boxes of Thin Mints from people at work, not knowing the other was doing the same, and sat down to feast on four boxes. (Not all at once! or so she says.) But my wife thinks that Thin Mints just aren't as good as they once were, that something has changed, or got cheaper, and she won't bother with them anymore. And she thinks all Keebler cookies are poor. She much prefers the Back to Nature brand of mint fudge cookies, now owned by giant pasta company Barilla.

So let's hear your reviews in comments. 

I understand that the Girl Scouts have been distancing themselves from controversy in the last couple of years, and good for them, but frankly, I still think they are a lousy organization, if not completely woke then woke-adjacent. Why would girls want to join the Boy Scouts except that the Girl Scouts suck? The Boy Scouts got driven to bankruptcy, decided to let girls in, changed the name to BSA, then to Scouting, and now they suck even more than the Girl Scouts. The son of a friend of mine has had enough and quit -- and this kid was an ace away from Eagle Scout. He thinks it's a waste of time. The local Scoutmaster is a dummy, and the troops are disbanding one after another. It's pretty sad. 

Scouting may be dead, alas -- but as long as the Girl Scouts of America can make an excuse to do it, they'll keep raking in cookie money. I foresee a future when both organizations are as forgotten as the American Benevolent Legion, but people still buy Girl Scout branded cookies, not even knowing what a Girl Scout once was. 

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P.S.: If, like me, you're curious how a mint-chocolate cookie got to be called a grasshopper, it may have gotten the name from the green cocktail of crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream, which dates back to 1919 (according to Eater). The cocktail was popular in the fifties and sixties, so the cookie likely borrowed the name. By now the drink is not so well known, so the word GRASSHOPPER does not immediately signify mint and chocolate. No wonder Keebler changed the name of the cookie.