Pumpkin Spice & All Things Nice.
Summer is coming to an end. Autumn is on the way. Apple picking, pumpkin patches, and Halloween candy. The three hallmarks of autumn, but will it stay that way?
In the last few years, there has been an upstart. An interloper A pretender to the crown. You already know what I am about to write, You’ve read the title.
Pumpkin spice.
Do you know what’s in pumpkin spice? No, of course you don’t. Nobody does. As far as I can tell, It’s either a blend of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and sometimes allspice, or it’s the floor sweepings of hell.
Pumpkin spice wants in and it is only interested in the top spot. It is honest about being happy to displace treasured family memories of picking apples or pumpkins with the grandparents. That golden time before they left us, when the autumn weekends consisted of carefree days picking fruit and vegetables like a migrant worker at just two to three times what it would cost in the local supermarket. It doesn’t care if your children’s memories of Halloween are not as good as your own. If the memories consist of Mummy drinking pumpkin spice lattes with her friends instead of going door to door and collecting sugary goods from people you ignore for the rest of the year, then it’s OK with that.
It’s here to kick ass and kick ass some more. It’s mostly about kicking asses. It is the most violent of all the food additives.
I know what you are thinking. How can anyone have such strong feelings about pumpkin spice? That is a good question. I wish I knew, but I can tell you it is causing me anxiety just thinking about it. Knowing that it’s coming soon is enough to make me want to hibernate till spring.
It’s difficult to avoid. It’s everywhere! It’s not just in coffee. You can buy pumpkin spice Cheerios, a food so bland they added honey to make it more exciting, and they succeeded. Honey Nut Cheerios are delectable! They then did nothing to the Cheerio range for the next fifty years. Then they got into bed with the devil.
Twinkies. Who at the Twinkies factory thought we’ve nailed all the other flavours, let’s do pumpkin spice next.
Protein Powder. I think it is fair to say it was a desperate time that led to Maxpro protein powder coming up with what can only be a hail Mary of a product.
Jello. Jello was invented in 1897 and since then we have had what? Six flavours? They had a good thing going, and by not tampering with it, they became a favourite of kids everywhere. So how do you ruin Thanksgiving for everyone under ten? You make the Jello taste the same as the pie you’ve just eaten. Cold smooth sweet, it’s the same reason kids like Coke. Why don’t you just make pumpkin spice ice cream and have the whole dessert taste the same?
Good Lord, they did!
Halo Top. Ice cream comes in all sorts of flavours that are essentially vanilla, strawberry or chocolate disguised as something else. Halo Top saw an opportunity and they took it. They saw an opportunity to ruin Thanksgiving for all of us.
Butter. Made by Land O’Lakes, who I can only assume are sadists.
Popcorn. On its march to destroy everything we love. Pumpkin spice has found its way into several brands of popcorn. Because if there was something popcorn needed, it was to be a little more sticky.
Dog shampoo Because it’s normal to want your food and drink to smell the same as your pet.
Deodorant. But what if you want to smell the same as your dog and your food and your drink? That’s OK, Proctor and Gamble’s Native brand has a spiced latte deodorant, to make that hellscape a reality.
Toothpaste. To quote my dentist when I mentioned this to him, “Fucks sake.”
Beard Oil.The only outcome of this could be your face smelling like you spilled your coffee.
The only product I haven’t seen is pumpkin spice-flavoured instant coffee. That would make sense, but then nothing about pumpkin spice, or as I call it, the Devil’s pepper, makes sense.
Perhaps it’s not the flavour or the over-whelming presence of it at a certain time of the year. Perhaps it is people who like it. They all somehow form into a homogeneous blob, and while no group is a monolith, this one is.
Soon, everything in their home will be adorned with orange tartan ribbon. Somewhere in each one of these pumpkin spicers houses is a LIVE LOVE LAUGH sign. Does the back of their car have a stick man family? Why yes, it does.
One day in the future, psychologists will draw a Venn diagram of the people who like pumpkin spice and the people who post minion memes. It will be one circle.
It’s rumoured Hitler liked pumpkin spice, you wouldn't want to be like Hitler would you.
Pumpkin spice is coming. Be careful out there.
