Girl Scouts to Introduce New Cookie Flavor This Year, Celebrating 100 Years of Selling Cookies

VIENNA, VA -- Girl Scouts of the Nation's Capital (GSCNC) reports that its members will be selling a new cookie flavor in 2017: Girl Scout S'Mores. The cookie is described as a "crunchy graham sandwich cookies with creamy chocolate and marshmallowy filling." The cookie is inspired by S'mores created around the campfire.

Area Girl Scouts will be out selling cookies at cookie booths beginning Feb. 17. They started taking orders last month. In addition to the new Girl Scout S'Mores, you'll also find: Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils, Do-si-dos, Savannah Smiles and Toffee-Tastic. Last year, girls sold 4.2 million boxes of Cookies in the Greater Washington Region.

You can get your cookie fix by finding a booth near you using the Girl Scouts' Cookie Booth Locator online here.

Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) announced the new cookie Tuesday to kick off the start of the 2017 cookie season, which marks the 100th year of the first known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts. A century ago, girls started participating in what would evolve into the largest entrepreneurial training program for girls in the world: the Girl Scout Cookie Program.

Through the program, GSUSA says, girls learn the essential skills they need to become effective leaders, manage finances, gain self-sufficiency, and develop confidence in handling money. The sale of cookies by Girl Scouts had humble beginnings, born as a way for troops to finance activities. The first known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts occurred in 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Okla., baked cookies and sold them in their high school cafeteria as a service project.

As the Girl Scout Cookie Program developed and evolved, it became a vehicle for teaching five essential skills—goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics— and also enabled collaboration and integration as early as the 1950s, among girls and troops of diverse backgrounds as they worked together toward common goals, GSUSA says.

PHOTOS courtesy of GSCNC