The only place you’re supposed to be able to get Girl Scout cookies is from the scouts, so how did a bunch of discount stores in South Carolina end up selling these treats at upwards of 90% off?

WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, SC, recently looked into this mystery and found that the stores had purchased them from a wholesaler, who had apparently gotten the cookies from an affiliated baker as a donation after the conclusion of the most recent Scouts sales season.

The Scouts tell WSPA that the cookies were donated in “good faith and consistent with past practices to a domestic hunger-relief charity,” not with the intention of them then being resold to at a discount retailer.

Sales of the coveted cookies are generally restricted to the troops, who are expected to learn lessons of responsibility and leadership through the process. Additionally, heavily discounted offseason sales of the cookies may make the treats less attractive when the season rolls around again.

“If the public thinks that they can buy discounted cookies after our cookie sale is over, then it could harm the programs that are available to girls,” explains one regional Scouts exec.

The store chain that sold the cookies is apparently removing the product from shelves, though the owner maintains that he did nothing wrong.

“It is not uncommon for manufacturers to get rid of any overage or overstocked items at the end of a season. This is how stores like ours survive, by purchasing these items at a drastically reduced rate and selling them to the consumers at a discount,” writes the owner, who says “this circumstance is not different from many others where we provide items at prices so much lower than all of our competition that it is mind boggling to some.”

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