TIL that Thin Mints are not the most popular Girl Scout cookie. Yesterday, in Cincinnati, President Obama was booed when he mentioned that he preferred Thin Mints to all other Girl Scout cookies.
This surprised me. For several reasons. First, I didn’t realized they took cookies that seriously in Cincinnati. Maybe it’s time to visit Ohio. Second, as someone who has long preferred Samoas (aka Caramel deLites), I always felt as though I was in a serious minority. Like my family grudgingly ordered one box, mostly for me, out of an order that was primarily made up of Thin Mints.
And, on the one hand, this is a realistic perception. Thin Mints are the Girl Scouts’ best selling cookie—accounting for 25% of all cookie sales. And yet.
And yet … that does not tell the whole story. After all, if we Samoa and Peanut Butter Patty (Tagalongs) fans were to join forces (and we should), we would account for 32% of cookie sales. And if you look at the Girl Scouts’ online poll, you find that 33% of respondents preferred Samoas—compared to 28% who preferred Thin Mints.(Not a very scientific poll, but this doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing Gallup covers, so the Girl Scouts were my best shot at providing nationally relevant results here.)
So, basically, people who are only kind of okay with Thin Mints—you can feel justified. People who absolutely hate them—that’s cool, too. You aren’t alone. There’s more of us then there are of them, we just aren’t a cohesive voting block.
Washington Post on Obama’s Cincinnati visit