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It's my first time being in the US for girl scout cookie season, so I finally get to actually try some instead of just imagining what they're like from pop culture references.

We got most of ours from order forms brought into Jules's work by doting parents, though the kids did help with the deliveries or write little thank you notes. One girl scout was selling cookies outside of the supermarket, so we even got cash out to let the kid practice making change – though her mum was doing most of the actual selling, and to be honest I guess handling actual money isn't really a useful skill any more (friends with kids report that shopping playsets now come with pretend credit cards and pretend readers).

The ones I've tried so far:

Thin Mints: These are fine, I guess? Much like an After Eight mint with a biscuit inside. I really liked mint-flavoured sweets as a kid – the green Cornetto was a favourite, and also inexplicably the mint Aero – but as an adult I tend to prefer real mint, and to eat it with savoury food.

Tagalongs: Heavy on the peanut butter, for which (the opposite of mint) I’m more of a fan than I was as a child, but I still don’t much care for the texture.

Girl Scout S'mores: A sugar bomb, but sometimes you want a sugar bomb. I’ve never actually eaten a proper campfire s’more, though as a teenager I did regularly babysit kids who – having lived in the US for a couple of years – liked to try to make them in the microwave. And I did once get evacuated from a hotel after some drunk people tried to melt marshmallows on a gas hob. These cookies are a quick and efficient way to eat chocolate and marshmallow that don't involve any appliances.

Adventurefuls: We asked the very shy child selling cookies with her mum outside the QFC which were her favourites, so of course we had to buy a box of them. They’re drier than you’d expect for something marketed as ‘brownie-inspired’ (so I guess not made with real Brownies?), but salted caramel is popular for a reason.

Samoas: Okay, these are actually really good. Enough coconut to make them interesting, not too much chocolate, and the caramel makes them nice and chewy. I would buy these in their own right. The main problem is that they are very small, so it’s far too easy to eat five in rapid succession.

I still think there’s something a bit odd about training up little kids as individualistic fundraisers, and I think there’s probably a lot of frazzled parents running logistics operations. But I will eat the several boxes of Samoas we’ve got tucked away in the cupboard now, and order more next year.