The Girl Scouts have a superstar cookie seller in reality cutie Honey Boo Boo. There are just a couple of problems: she is not a Girl Scout, and the organization has banned her from selling their cookies.
Here’s how Cookie-gate went down.
Honey Boo Boo – who is seven years old and has a popular reality show on The Learning Channel -- has a Facebook page that boasts over 700,000 friends. She posted an ad on said social network urging her fans to buy Girl Scout cookies through her local Georgia troop No. 60373.
The request was met with considerable enthusiasm, as evidenced by a photo posted on her Facebook page showing a car packed to the gills with Girl Scout cookies ready to be shipped to her online customers.
“All cookies that have been paid for have been shipped! Thanks everyone for supporting Girl Scouts!” Boo Boo’s mom, June Shannon, wrote. She also told TMZ.com that they had already shipped over 400 boxes of cookies, and that more orders were rolling in.
But the fact that Honey Boo Boo made the request on Facebook is where things get sticky, as the Girl Scouts do not allow online cookie selling.
“The celebrity factor had nothing to do with this situation. Online sales are against policy,” the Girl Scouts said in a written statement to FOXBusiness.
The organization went into detail in an additional statement released Thursday. “Through an online sales approach, a girl doesn’t have the personal experience of asking someone to purchase her product,” a rep for the Girls Scouts said. “She doesn’t have to learn the responsibility of handling the money and personally delivering the order. When you have canvassed your neighborhood and manned cookie booths for hours, you learn the value of a hard day’s work. There is also a strong feeling of accomplishment when you are personally engaged in the activity."
Shannon does not agree.
"If I can raise more money for a troop, whoever they are, especially in an area where they don’t get a lot of money, and parents can’t afford to buy a ton of cookies, why wouldn't I help?" Boo Boo’s mom told TMZ.com. "We're doing nothing wrong."
The Girl Scouts did say the Georgia troop will be able to keep the money and the credits for the cookies Boo Boo sold before the ban. And the kerfuffle may in fact cause some changes in cookie selling rules going forward.
“We will continue to explore online approaches to selling cookies,” the Girl Scouts told Yahoo!. “But they must be fair to all Girl Scouts and provide the same type of learning opportunities.”
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