Girl Scouts Hope to Set World Record for Cookie Sales

Photo via YouTube

Tom Brady wasn’t the only one setting records in Phoenix last weekend. The Girl Scouts Arizona Cactus-Pine Council saw the Super Bowl festivities as an opportunity to go down in history books, and quite literally rallied the troops to set a Guinness World Record for the most cookies sold in 24 hours.

Through Guinness World Records, organizations are allowed to request new record categories, so the council — which includes about 600 troops throughout central and northern Arizona — suggested cookie sales. “They already had 24-hour fundraising records,” council communications manager Heather Thornton tells Yahoo Parenting. “We wanted to make it specific to cookies, so Guinness said we had to sell at least $75,000 of cookies in the time period to set the record.”

STORY: Girl Scout Cookies To Be Sold Online This Year

Guinness chose the $75,000 number because that’s the standard they have used for other fundraising goals, Thornton says, but if they wanted to give these Girl Scouts a challenge, perhaps they should have set the bar higher. Between 3 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday, these Arizona girl scouts smashed that record, selling more than 88,000 boxes of cookies for an impressive $355,000 – five times the original goal. “We actually think there were many more sales that came after the 3 p.m. deadline,” Thornton says.

Before the record is official, the council has to send in deposit slips, photos and written accounts for review, but they’re confident they’ve made cookie history. “We wanted to help girls set a big goal to shoot for since that’s part of what they’re learning in the cookie program,” Thornton says. “As soon as we know the Super Bowl was coming to town, we thought, ‘how can we capitalize on that?’ To have everyone working together towards a common goal seemed like a great idea.” To that end, every girl scout was challenged to sell at least 49 boxes in honor of Super Bowl XLIX, a goal they “blew out of the water,” Thornton says.

STORY: Why Teen Girls Should Avoid Soda

To set the record, troops set up booths at local grocery stores and in Super Bowl party hot spots in Scottsdale, Phoenix and Glendale and, at the last-minute, were even able to secure a location to sell at Super Bowl Central in downtown Phoenix. “We wanted to take advantage of this time where customers who might be in town visiting are willing to spend the extra $4 on some cookies.”

Thornton says she still doesn’t have specific data as to which cookies sold best, but she says that in the past, Thin Mints have accounted for 36 percent of cookie sales.

Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? E-mail us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.