A sure sign that spring is here or is at least coming is Girl Scouts going door-to-door, or setting up shop with a table in front of you local grocery story and selling their world-famous cookies.

Well, last night I learned that it’s all a big scam and that you can have your Girl Scout Cookie fix year-round, and at a fraction of the cost.

Last night I decided to put on the CBS Sports Radio station as I was driving to get dinner for some reason, and they were discussing the best Girl Scout Cookies, if they are smaller and more expensive now than in the past (yes and yes) and basically anything that could to fill time on this show.

That’s what a caller called in a dropped a bombshell into my life, and maybe yours.

The caller, and I’m paraphrasing here, said that Keebler owns Sunshine Cookie Company, which makes all of the cookies for the Girl Scouts. The caller also revealed that because Keebler owns Sunshine, and essentially Girl Scout Cookies, they have access to some of the recipes for your favorite Girl Scout Cookies, and that they are available year-round, and at a much cheaper price than Girl Scouts charge.

Needless to say, I was floored and needed to go investigate this for myself.

Sure enough, I walked into the cookie aisle at Walmart and there on the shelf, in Keebler packaging were Samoas, but they obviously weren’t called that, they go by the name of Coconut Dreams. They also have Grasshoppers, which are their version of Thin Mints, and while they didn’t have a Keebler version of Tagalongs, the Walmart brand did!

Needless to say, I bought all three kinds to test out at home to see how they stacked up to “real” Girl Scout Cookies.

There is no difference. Absolutely none. The Coconut Dreams are exactly Samoas, and what’s crazier, you get more in a box than you do from Girl Scout Cookies!

My three boxes of cookies, after taxes and everything: $6.50.

A normal box of Girl Scout Cookies is what, $4 or $5? So yeah, I’m getting the exact same cookies, at half the price, and I can get them whenever I want and don’t have to wait around for them to be delivered.

In fact, just to show you how much you’re getting robbed by buying GSCs from Girl Scouts, I went ahead and did the math.

• In a pack of Keebler Coconut Dreams, there are 18 cookies at $2.60 a box. That is 14 cents per cookie.
• Girl Scout Samoas, there are 15 cookies at $5 a box, which rounded down is 33 cents per cookie.
• That’s a 58% markup buying from GSC versus the store.

So yeah, if you’ve been dropping $4 or $5 a box and savoring every last bite of your Girl Scout Cookies because you thought it would be a whole year until you got to have them again, you got played.

Maybe some of you already knew this and were holding out on the rest of us, but still, it blew my mind and made me reconsider a lot of things in my life.

Now, I’m not bashing Girl Scouts and all the things they do that are good and make a difference, but I am saying that you probably don’t ever need to buy their cookies again, because the same option is available at Walmart right now, and at half the cost.