Ah, fall. The leaves begin to change their color, temperatures start to cool and students show up to class with Pumpkin Spice Lattes on Wednesday mornings. As much as I love PSLs, pumpkin spice is another trend whose season has come and gone.
When this trend initially grew, the delicacies were mostly dessert oriented and almost all the available products had a flavor compatible with pumpkin spice.
Despite my jokes, I have reason to highlight how crazy this trend has gotten. The products that now follow this craze never cease to amaze me, with each new product essentially more artificial than the last. For instance, companies have recently released pumpkin spice bistro salads, pumpkin spice kale chips, pumpkin spice licorice, and the list continues on.
I wonder if companies actually taste what they’re producing beforehand because each one of the products mentioned above have not received anything higher than one star rating according to POPSUGAR.com.
Maybe this year we’ll have pumpkin spice Doritos or even the pumpkin spice toothpaste, which Buzzfeed has jokingly predicted. The limit of acceptable products should have stopped long after the release of the PSL, and should have never met paths with savory foods. Sheesh, it’s like I need to teach these companies to how to get it together.
The sea of orange wrappers advertising pumpkin spice shouldn’t even start to appear until it’s actually past the autumnal equinox which wasn’t even until Sept. 22. Every year it seems companies are releasing their products earlier and earlier despite the actual season. But I don’t believe very many people want anything pumpkin spice during their final days of summer.
It’s funny to think that this all started with the PSL. The PSL is a sweet overload for whoever purchases it, which is probably why it’s so popular with teens. Despite this, it’s definitely one of my seasonal favorites and probably the only thing I like from the pumpkin spice trend.
In this light, I must truly applaud Starbucks and Tumblr hipsters for creating such a large online empire for the PSL; I mean what would autumn be like without all the Instagrams and Snapchats of the beverage? Thanks to our countless local Starbucks on every single corner, this trend has already made its annual return on my social media feed.
I will admit that two years ago, I was among the crazed pumpkin spice lovers, but as times change, people need to move on. It’s 2016 people; we’re supposed to already have flying cars and teleportation, but sadly, we’re stuck on spending our valuable time on creating even more pumpkin spice junk.
