Girl Scout cookies versus their grocery store knock offs

all photos by Oona Warren

Girl Scout cookie season has come to an end, but grocery stores have plenty to offer through their various knockoffs. After walking by the Von’s cookie aisle week after week, I got curious about these knockoffs. Are they as good as the originals? If they are, are they… better? And if they’re not, how bad are they? When I looked at the price of the Signature Select brand ones, I knew I had to try them. They’re $2.99 each, half as much as the $6 Girl Scout cookies. I bought three flavors to compare and contrast: Thin Mints, Samoas, and Tagalongs, as well as their Signature Select counterparts. [insert photo 1]

Thin Mints vs Fudge Mint Flavored Cookies

These rectangular minty chocolate cookies bear little resemblance to the original Thin Mint. Instead of sneakily slipped into the cookie as it is in the Girl Scout version, Signature Select’s Fudge Mint flavored cookies sport a thin but prevalent layer of mint underneath the chocolate. They seem to be overall bigger; more chocolate, more mint, thicker cookie in a bigger shape. However bigger isn’t always better. The thick cookie is hard to bite into, and the mint is overpowering. In this case, the knock off can’t even compare.

Samoas vs Caramel Coconut Fudge Cookies

The first and very obvious difference is the looks. The knockoffs have much thinner chocolate stripes, and the cookie is a lot lighter overall, with the chocolate, caramel, and coconut all in lighter hues. Besides that though, the cookies were very similar in taste. Both boxes, Girl Scout and Signature Select alike, were eaten in a matter of days, and I think if you were blindfolded, you’d be hard pressed to distinguish the two.

Tagalongs vs Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies

From the outside, these two cookies look really similar; both are circular cookies evenly coated in a roughly similar shade of chocolate. On the inside, they look a bit different. Once again, the Signature select cookie is much thicker than the original, but this time, the cookie is also much darker in color. Excluding looks, the cookies’ taste might be the closest out of the three that I tried.

While these cookies aren’t an exact match for the beloved Girl Scout ones, some of them fill a hole in our hearts that without the year round knockoffs, would be empty. Some have differences that are hard to ignore, and others are perfect for the sweet deal of $2.99.