Scout Out



The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts (or "Scouts" and "Girl Guides" in the world outside Eagle Land) are ubiquitous institutions around the world. Almost everyone knows someone who's in them. So, it is no surprise that in the land of fiction that they would appear.

However, there's a problem. The Scouts are trademarked.

Thus, rather than bother with obtaining permission, they make a Bland Name version of the Scouts.

Compared to the real life Boy and Girl Scouts, these fictional versions are The Theme Park Version of the groups. All Girl Scouts will only deal with selling cookies (and often be evil) while the Boy Scouts will only do merit badges, often for random and absurd reasons. Sometimes they'll combine the two, and you'll have male and female scouts selling cookies to get merit badges. Boy Scouts also occasionally help old ladies across the street. Usually the Girl Scouts are renamed something involving flowers or other girly things, and the Boy Scouts are usually renamed something related to wilderness or camping.

There's some Truth in Television to this, as real life alternatives/knockoffs/spinoffs to the Scouts have appeared all over the world.

This trope is particularly common in animation, usually appearing one episode and rarely mentioned again.

Aeni

 * Pucca has the "Dragon Girls" featured in one episode.

Comic Books

 * In Trinity #12, there's a throwaway gag about how on Anti-Matter Earth the "Bonfire Girls" and "Girl Sentries" are in the third year of their Cookie Wars. Fought with automatic weapons and explosives.
 * This rule does not seem to cover referring to characters as, say, "the big blue boy scout".
 * That probably is because a) he's Superman and b) he's a boy scout, not a Boy Scout (of America).
 * It's entirely possible that Clark joined the Scouts while growing up Smallville.
 * The Junior Woodchucks, in the Donald Duck/Disney Ducks Comic Universe of Carl Barks and his successors, take the "Be Prepared" motto of real-world Scouting into Crazy Prepared territory. Their Great Big Book of Everything is so universally comprehensive that they eventually evolve into The Illuminati, charged with protecting secrets forbidden to non-initiates.
 * Bone's "Tall Tales" anthology book featured the "Bone Scouts" in the stories' Framing Device.

Film

 * Troop Beverly Hills: A movie about the "Wilderness Girls"
 * "Wilderness Girls" also sell cookies in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1.
 * The "Firefly Scouts" sell cookies in the Vin Diesel movie The Pacifier.
 * In the movie Wag the Dog, the scandal that prompts the plot to happen involves a "Firefly Girl" that the President is accused of fondling just fourteen days before election time.
 * Up had Wilderness Explorers. Their uniforms are virtually identical to the Boy Scouts' official uniforms, though the colors are different.
 * The Wilderness Explorers apparently weren't satisfied with having just one Nuclear Science badge - two different ones (adorned with a radiation symbol and mushroom cloud, respectively) appear in the New Adventure Book.
 * The uniforms being "virtually identical" may be due to preliminary plans to actually make him a Boy Scout; according to this (third message), Disney/Pixar dropped that idea after being reminded about the BSA's membership policies.
 * In Arlington Road a Scouts-like organization plays an important part in the story.
 * A Girl Scout appears in the first Addams Family film, trying to sell cookies. Wednesday asks if the cookies contain real Girl Scouts.
 * Mr. Smith Goes to Washington features the "Boy Rangers".

Literature

 * In Jingo, Carrot creates the Wolf Cubs (so called because Angua is involved), a version of the Cub Scouts. Its very reluctant and embarrassed membership actually comprises two of the nastier kid gangs in the city, who go along with it because when Carrot gets enthusiastic about something, it's very hard to say no.
 * Also Cub Scouts were originally known as Wolf Cubs in the UK.
 * "Wolf" is still one of the ranks in Cub Scouts (the second one, if you don't count the "Tiger Cub" organization for preschool kids).
 * A Series of Unfortunate Events book 10 introduced the Snow Scouts, whose alphabetical parody of the Boy Scout Law holds them to be "accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantined, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered."
 * Averted in several stories by Robert A. Heinlein, including the novel Farmer in the Sky, which feature protagonists actively involved in the Boy Scouts, and not a Bland Name version. This was because they were originally published in Boy's Life, the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America.
 * The Sharing in Animorphs models itself as a sort of combination Boy/Girl Scout group, but they are actually a front group of the Yeerks to make people into Controllers.

Live-Action TV

 * 3rd Rock from the Sun had the "Beaver Scouts".
 * Interestingly the British Scouting movement includes Beaver Scouts as its most junior unit. Don't worry, they usually don't notice the Double Entendre until they're too old to be a member...
 * Friends has the "Brown Birds".
 * The Golden Girls had Sunshine Cadets.
 * Family Ties had Sunflower Girls.
 * Disney's That's So Raven had the Sunshine Girls. They show up again in Hannah Montana, another Disney Channel show.
 * The Middleman had the "Wilderness Girls," perhaps as a Shout-Out to Troop Beverly Hills.
 * Drake and Josh featured the Campfire Kids.
 * The Adventures of Pete and Pete had Kreb Scout Monica Perling.
 * The Nanny had the Red Robins.
 * Bones featured the Woodchucks, a Girl Scout-esque group affiliated with the Jeffersonian.
 * Averted in You Can't Do That on Television; on at least one occasion a genuine Canadian Boy Scout uniform was seen.
 * Criminal Minds had the Tadpoles, whose recognizable uniform helped solve a case.
 * The Space Scouts in Red Dwarf.
 * The Brady Bunch had the Frontier Scouts and Sunflower Girls for all of one episode, when Marcia joined Greg's Scout troop to prove that a girl could do anything a boy could do; Greg then forced Peter to join Marcia's Sunflowers (Greg was too old) and sell cookies to prove the other way around. Naturally she succeeds and he fails.
 * In the opening credits to The Odd Couple a scout is seen helping a Little Old Lady across the street; when Felix tries to help her she bats him with her purse, then the scout punches him in the chest.
 * Robin on The Muppet Show once joined the Frog Scouts, whose difference from the Boy Scouts was rather obvious.
 * There are plenty more groups where that came from.
 * Corner Gas has no problem with this trope, as the Girl Guides are seen selling cookies in at least one episode.
 * Full House had one, either Honey Bees or Bumble Bees. Instead of troops, they had "hives".
 * There's a cream you can get for that...
 * Averted in an episode of Saved by the Bell, where Zack goes Disguised in Drag to spy on Kelly. When "she" claims to have been a Girl Scout, turns out Kelly was too. She asks him what troop he was in, and he answers "Um.... F Troop?"
 * Played with in The Goodies episode "Scoutrageous"; the organisation Tim is a member of is the Scouts, with full British Scouts uniform (albeit the 1930s version, because it looks funnier) and "dyb dyb dyb" salute, but his rank is Brown Owl, which is from the Brownies (junior Girl Guides). Meanwhile, Graeme and Bill form an evil Scouts movement, which leads to them earning the World Domination merit badge, and Scouting becoming illegal.
 * Spaced has Creepy Twins that look suspiciously similar to UK Guides cleaning the cupboards for 'Bob-a-Job' week in Daisy and Tim's flat. (Despite 'Bob-a-Job' week being a Scout, not Guide, activity that had ceased 10 years previously!)
 * Parks and Recreation has the "Pawnee Rangers" for boys and the "Pawnee Goddesses" for girls, the latter founded by Leslie Knope because girls were not allowed in the former.
 * T.J. Hooker had a daughter in the "Girl Rangers."
 * Sabrina on Raising Hope is a former member of the "Beaver Scouts."

Music

 * "The Battle of Kookamonga" by Homer and Jethro features both but is sung by the Boy Scouts.

Newspaper Comics

 * Snoopy's "Beagle Scout" troop, in Peanuts.
 * Averted in Calvin and Hobbes, where early strips had Calvin as a member of the Cub Scouts.

Video Games

 * Psychonauts has the psychopathic "Rainbow Squirts", who try to sell "Rainbow Treats" to everyone.
 * Mentioned a few times in City of Villains, where the evil supervillain dictator sponsors "Spiderling Scouts".
 * Team Fortress 2 has the Saxonettes.

Web Comics

 * Eerie Cuties after some jokes from Dave about "Snakey Scouts" had melusine Brooke return home with "Snakey Scouts" emblem on the back and a bunch of merit badges, though in "Art Scholarship Interlude", not main continuity.
 * Dangerously Chloe once had Chloe show a "Scout Sign". Whether she picked this up on a side, back in Charybdis Heights or in Tartarus Academy, which evidently is as paramilitary as AA and has uniform vaguely similar to Girl Scouts, is not known yet.

Western Animation

 * DuckTales (1987): "Junior Woodchucks", notable because it played a major role in many episodes.
 * And their female counterparts the Junior Chickadees.
 * Kim Possible has "The Pixie Scouts".
 * Phineas and Ferb has the "Fireside Girls", who are pictured above. Like the Junior Woodchucks, they come prepared for any situation, they have a handbook for various subjects from Car Maintenance to Time Travel Machine Repairing and accomplishment patches for absurd tasks such as Alligator Wrestling and moving mountains with their bare hands. They also subvert a lot of the elements described: they're not named after anything particularly girly, they aren't evil, and they appear frequently in the series.
 * Doug had the "Bluff Scouts".
 * The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy had the "Person Scouts".
 * The Mighty B! featured the "Honeybee Scouts".
 * Everyone in Camp Lazlo is one of these, the boys are the "Bean Scouts" and the girls were the "Squirrel Scouts".
 * Averted in the Italian dub, which uses "Boy Scout" and "Girl Scout" without any problem.
 * The Emperor's New Groove has the "Junior Chipmunks", they taught you how to talk to squirrels.
 * The Flintstones had the Cave Scouts, who all decided to go camping at the same site that Fred and Barney decided to camp at.
 * Partially averted in The Jetsons when Elroy's Space Cub Scout pack went to the Moon.
 * Averted completely in Yogi Bear: it specifically mentioned the Boy Scouts all met for a jamboree at Jellystone Park.
 * Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi featured the "Tapeworm Scouts".
 * Hey Arnold! had the "Campfire Lasses", who all had Scottish accents to go with their name.
 * Jackie Chan Adventures had Jade join both the "Buttercup" (girl) and "Dragon" (boy) Scouts.
 * Fillmore! had the "Red Robins", who happened to be crooked.
 * The Simpsons had the "Junior Campers".
 * Lampshade Hanging: the Junior Campers meeting room has a sign on the door saying "Not affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America".
 * Another episode had a rivalry between two such groups, the American Indian-themed Pre-Teen Braves and the Cavalry Kids.
 * A "Radioactive Man" episode had The Scoutmaster (with his boy minions) as a villain, who talked like Paul Lynde.
 * Recess had the Woodchuck Scouts. Slightly subverted in that Phil the Scout wears what appears to be a normal Boy Scout uniform, and is a frequently recurring character.
 * Exo Squad had ExoScouts, who were actually much like military cadets than scouts.
 * Noteworthy if only because they were a scout troop using their scout skills to survive in the mountains due to the less-than-friendly Neo Sapiens having conquered Earth.
 * Sounds like someone on the writing staff was a Robert A. Heinlein fan ....
 * Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy had the Urban Rangers.
 * The Oblongs had the Little Amazons.
 * South Park had the Mountain Scouts.
 * Rocko's Modern Life had the Weasel Scouts.
 * The Fairly OddParents had the Squirrely Scouts. Timmy's dad was a scoutmaster who had the high rank of "flying squirrel" (Ground squirrel was mentioned as a lower rank).
 * Franklin had the Woodland Trailblazers, which weren't introduced until the program's final season.
 * The Bunny Scouts in Max and Ruby.
 * King of the Hill had the Order of the Straight Arrow (the Boy Scouts have an honor society called Order of the Arrow). Later, it was mentioned in passing that Hank had been a Boy Scout.
 * The Problem Solverz has the Little Explorers.
 * The Backyardigans has the episode "Pablor and the Acorns", in which Tyrone, Tasha, and Austin were Acorn Scouts.
 * Averted in The Boondocks, with Cindy being a member of a Girl Scout troop. She also defends her turf drug-runner style....

Real Life

 * The Toy Scouts in Doctor Steel's fan club, the Army of Toy Soldiers.